Final BlizzCon Report [Pics too]

Didn't think I'd get it, but I GOT IT BABY. Reach is a cool guy it seems, and after the photo was snapped, he said "Thank you" to me as if I had just helped or given him something. Maybe he felt me mentally caressing his buttocks and liked it?




So before the SC match they had a WoW Q&A session where a bunch of socially incompetent WoW nerds went up to complain about some aspect of WoW and question when appropriate changes will be made. This dude here is the most hilarious looking WoW downy I've ever seen. I hate to be mean, but really, this guy talking with a high-pitched voice and hilariously crossed eyes had us (TL guys) absolutely rolling.














yubee and hot_bid on a date, look how cute they are together . The vintage 2005 wine bottle is totally appropriate.


Grubby and his gf playing sc2

Here are just some quick 1 min clips of XellOs playing. I would've taken longer videos but I was still unsure with how the video feature works on my camera (which isn't mine), so I didn't really plan to make a long recording. For some reason, when I uploaded it to youtube it seemed to have gotten darker. I even use a pretty high brightness level on my LCD. But meh, hopefully you guys can enjoy it or something.

I said I wasn't going to make this write up, but I think I have to, considering I am currently among the top 25 best SC2 players in the world (according to yubee, due to TL.net's absolute domination in SC2, we're probably at the top of the top right now ). We played somewhere around 10 games today, 15 games in total, I was partnered with NeoIllusions who has some sick protoss ground macro. I'm not going to write an essay, and I think it'll be easier to follow in bullet points anyway, so here are some thoughts:

- "Death" in SC2 is confusing and detracts from actual gameplay. In SC1, when a marine dies, there is a loud cry and he pretty much explodes and red blood goes everywhere. Even for SCVs, there is a poignant sound to be heard, that if you hear it, you instantly think "dead scv", and there's still a bright explosion. In SC2, units take a tad too long to die, with no distinct death sounds. Some mechanical units diminish into rubble, and for the time being it's not really noticeable that something had really died there. This isn't a HUGE issue, but it does detract from the game in that sometimes you want to know exactly, at a glance, how many of x has died. Additionally, as a spectator sport, it helps the audience understand certain things better when things simply blow up, not take an ice age to slowly deteriorate.

- As far as balance goes, obviously there isn't much because it's still so early. Terran, as I see it, is completely useless as of right now. Right now meaning, with no Zerg in SC2 yet, and with certain Protoss units just being too overpowered.

- The Phoenix is the most imbalanced unit in the game right now. They control somewhat like mutalisks in SC1, but are much deadlier. For harassment purposes, it only takes 4 Phoenixes to kill a probe (off 1 volley of shots). It is relatively cheap, can be made VERY quickly (it's basically a corsair that owns everything on ground), and there aren't many counters to it, ESPECIALLY from the Terran side.

- As far as strategies go, we kept devising new strats and constantly improved on them. As of right now, the most optimal strategy in my opinion for 2v2 is double protoss, with early game builds being flexible, just as long as you eventually mass archons and phoenixes. Archons may be the only viable counter to the Phoenix right now, but Archons are pretty much on the high-tech side, whereas Phoenixes are medium tech and are much easier replaced. Archons might not even be that great of a counter simply because of the Phoenix's mobility as an air unit. The Terran cobra should've been able to counter the Phx, but it's too slow and can't keep up with a smart Phx user. Same with the Viking, even with air-transformation upgrade. I expect the Phoenix to be changed within a week.

- The game engine is roughly more like WarCraft 3's. This isn't too bad, as it wasn't particularly the engine that stunted War3 (it was more the hero and creeping premise instead). The biggest problems, however, might be the overabundance of "noob-friendly" features that are a controversy amongst us SC1 elitists. Such features have been addressed already, including multiple building grouping, auto-worker splitting, rally-to-mineral functionality, combat log (tells you when something is completed in text version), etc.

- On the brighter side, as I've said before, gameplay can be fast-paced, especially if players opt for early game confrontation instead of FE macro whoring. Mostly because marines will still die in 3 hits to a zealot, etc. Also, as you progress in tech, certain units start oscillating in their effectiveness due to the armor/attack types (such as in War3 and SC1), which means the unit you were massing before can be rapestomped in 2 seconds by some unit some kid made by grouping all his high tech production buildings together and pressing one hotkey. What this essentially means is that micro and macro still play a huge factor.

- Like SC1 and War3 before it, SC2 relies a lot on adaptability to your opponent's builds and trying to stay on top of game flow. The biggest things are basically, if you go MM (there are no Firebats btw, which sucks because mm sucks vs charged-zealots), your terran opponent for example, can tech to Vikings (vulture-level tech) and have an advantage because Vikings are light-armor killers. You have to respond accordingly, by having enough Cobras (a combo of a vulture/goliath, only assume the vulture also kicks ass and doesn't do crap concussive damage) to take out the Vikings, etc. I thought this specific aspect was cool, because it spawns all sorts of unit compositions that complement each other, for example viking/cobra, phoenix/zealot, etc.

- I think there are more, but I'm getting a bit tired and have forgotten quite a bit. Regardless, it's been fun, especially noob-stomping with NeoIllusions.