EPTIt's too bad that it had to end eventually. Good and bad times were had. Units rose and fell to and from power through the patches and new friends were made. Though phase 2 was so incredibly short in comparison to 1, I was still glad enough just to play through it.
Many zerg units went through some incredible changes, the newer units obviously went through the most. My favorite unit, the roach, has gone through too many damn changes. I had to sit through nerf after nerf of the wonderful roach, it saddens me to this day. Then again, it used to be pretty incredible. Maybe I'm still stuck in the mindset of how strong it was. I won probably 75% of my games because of fast 1 base roach rushing. Though, it's not really rushing since just 6-10 roaches after a few minutes used to be so effective. I feel that the double supply nerf for roaches probably evened them out to be one of the more balanced units. Without scouting, roaches are a risk. Obviously that means that I should scout, but I'm not sure I've reached that level yet. Speedlings are usually a safe bet against toss. I can distract them long enough to create a big batch of Mutalisks and they're likely to keep building zealots if I keep enforcing with more lings to speed around their supply. This also ensures that IM not being attacked.
SotG: State of the Game Podcasts
Been going through these lately. Obviously, they're almost exactly like ArenaCast. Get a bunch of big name players in together to talk about the latest patch notes and tournaments. Sure, you won't hear much strategy talk in here, but it's fun to hear a bunch of e-famous talking about SC2 like they're on 'The View' with penises.
One section that struck my interest today was when they were talking about a silver/gold tournament. I'll have to go back to listen to it a bit more closely as it was just playing in my car, but it sounded like a lot of fun. They mentioned incentives for silver players to possibly meet people to practice with, get your name out, and generally meet some new friends. The rewards wouldn't be cash or anything like that, but lessons from pros. This is a fantastic idea and it's no wonder so many people signed up. I probably will do so as well. I believe this league is called the Get Better Fast League featured on the TeamLiquid forums (linked).
Just for reference, I play under tom_c or tomc.
Another thing I wanted to talk about is how right the casters were when they were saying that players from copper to gold (who pretty much started at SC2 and weren't good enough or just plain weren't competitive enough to play at a higher level of SC2) didn't really have much to do during beta other than ladder all the time. This is 100% true. Yes, there's a few custom games worth playing, but overall you're not playing 4v4 against friends if you only know a person or two from RL that you've convinced to try their hand at a strategy game for a change. I see people streaming with lots of people in vent with them, with friends list going at around 15+ realID friends online at a time, when I have maybe 5-6 and ALL of them are just on WoW. Does the social aspect of chat channels really make this much difference? Or have they just been competitive enough to get their name out there as a player who wants to play? I enjoy laddering, but it does get old especially with the amount of badly played cheese on silver. You're hard put to find 5 good games in a row, with 2 of them being proxies another 6 pool ect. Some might argue that those are real games as well, but early game is not my weakness. I'm used to early game. It's late game that's the most fun and hardest to get used to.
I have more to talk about but I'll save it for another entry. Thanks to everyone who played beta, even if I'm not even close enough rank to play against you. Everyone's streams, Husky/HD's VoD's, replays, and discussions have helped immensely. I hope to see everyone return on the 27th. I'll be out there with the millions of other nerds at GameStop picking up my preorder. But I'll get a discount for working there once a month. HA!
In last news, the 'dota' for sc2 is coming along well. I looks and plays very similar to hon, except it's not a $30 waste of money for the same one map and a few extra non-dota heroes. I had to sneak that jab in there, sorry.
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