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![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/blizzconbanner1zj0.gif)
Welcome to the TeamLiquid.net Blizzcon Blog, where we'll be bringing you coverage of all things going on here in sunny Anaheim.
I am here with yubee, NeoIllusions, Dknight, Manifesto7, DJetterstyle, and omgbnetsux.
This blog will give you the little details about Blizzcon that the official newsposts and analysis articles won't cover.
Keep checking back, this will be updated frequently.
What you will find here:
- WoW players being made fun of
- Comments about ProGamers' haircuts
- Excessive geeking-out about Starcraft2
- Random fun observations
- Video and pictures (coming soon)
What you will NOT find here:
- Detailed analysis and technical stuff about Starcraft2
- Official interviews or other more serious stuff
- Disclaimer Details about the game posted here and on other sites are all subject to change. None of it is permanent.
Yesterday we were just overwhelmed with so much new fun crap. Playing SC2, excitedly updating about it, watching matches live, screaming with Teamliquid, and of course meeting the pros:
+ Show Spoiler [Videos of TL and ProGamers] +
Our first ninja attack on the ProGamers
The Day 2 Blog will not be as long or comprehensive (simply because everything was pretty much reported yesterday) but hopefully there will still be some cool little details.
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 2 Part 3
- In the pre and post game interviews, Savior gave some pretty awesome answers but the crowd was decidedly pro-Nal_rA because he was the underdog. I guess people in general just have an innate love of Protoss.
- We made a few signs that the camera picked up. In case you missed them, we wrote "Autocast is for noobs" which drew a lot of laughs from the crowd, and also "Real men macro."
- We held up a sign that said "Real men proxy" and then Ra immediately proxies and loses the grand final to Savior because of it. Savior somehow has ESP for cheese, as he pooled both times he got proxied.
- We also held up a sign "Blitz = Carriers" for Tasteless to see and he immediately included it in his analysis for the PvT game on Blitz X.
- The War3 pro games, while intense and definitely requiring skill, were just so hard to watch. They were exciting but you could tell the crowd got much more into the Brood War games.
- Savior vs Nal_rA in the grand final game 1 was a long game where Nal_rA did a lot of damage with reaver-sair but somehow Savior still macro'd over him, with a giant 5 minute fight over the center area between almost every unit on both sides. Both BW matches were so great for the casual audience, they were loud and cheering and the place was packed.
- The Iris vs Nal_rA loser's bracket finals was very entertaining. There were a ton of people watching, and many of them weren't very familiar with BW and cheering at every little thing. Iris did a pimp move on RLT early game where he had one unsieged tank and hid 3 stacked mines under a floating rax and Nal_rA lost 3 goons to them. The Iris-Nal_rA series was just very entertaining all around, especially games 1 and 2.
Blizzcon Blog Day 2 Part 2
- I'm in a bit of a haze after playing so much SC2, basically we just went there from 10am to 10pm, played SC2, watched the pro matches, ate, and played SC2 more after eating. Kind of sad it's over, but I definitely got my fill of the game (this will change in about 20 minutes).
- I played about 13-15 SC2 games today. We played a bunch of 2v2s in house between TL.netters which was pretty intense, but we also noob bashed quite a bit. It's really so unbelievably unfair, the 2v2 games are going like TL.netters maxing out in 10-12 minutes and the other players still on one base.
- The best moment I saw was yubee landing a maxed out 200/200 army of vikings into some random kid's base (at the 15 minute mark), and the Blizzard employees who were in charge of seating people were watching and went "jesus christ" and started laughing.
- TL.net crushed everyone. There were some pretty embarrassing moments for noobs because the games had a 20 minute time limit, so usually TL.netters would get an advantage early game, then quickly max and do a giant final attack around the 15 minute mark. Its fine to say "gg" after a real game but sometimes awkward after your two groups of units get rolled over by two maxed out armies.
- It is TOO EASY to macro. You just make 10 gates, select press a button, and your money goes down to 0 and your supply goes up 50. It really is way too easy to build a huge army and spend all your resources. I don't know how they'll fix this. Neo suggested just allowing mass rally-set but somehow changing the way macro is handled. Right now you can set 3 Nexuses to one hotkey, 10 gates to another, and macro perfectly.
- The Phoenix is ridiculously imba. It's 150/100, has a longer range than mutalisk, is just as fast, and can be massed straight from the stargate. It's ground and air damage is insane. You can establish map control and there aren't any real counters vs Phoenix PvP, and all the TvP counters suck horribly against T ground. I'm sure that stuff will get patched and fixed but right now all we did was Phoenix rush.
- The games are a bit too gas-reliant. The units just cost so much gas and you tend to accumulate gas. With Protoss you can just make 10 gates and mass zealot, but with Terran there aren't many real options, except mm (which kind of suck and have too many counters).
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 2 Part 1
- Another point I missed yesterday: the Blizzcon staff and especially Dustin are really accessible and cool. They don't have egos about what they are putting in or taking out. From his interaction with me/mani/yubee, Dustin seemed just like us, a big gamer who cares a lot about everything. It felt like we have a true gamer in charge of SC2, which is awesome. He was even getting excited with us while watching the vid of us meeting the Korean pros.
- I also forgot to mention that yesterday I got a very clear, precise footage of Xellos, Nal_rA, and Reach all talking on battle.net complete with them checking their friend lists. That's right, I have about 40+ progamer smurf accounts in my camera.
- I'm really happy that these six were the Pros they sent over. Since I'm assuming Blizzard wants to deal with the least number of Pro teams as possible, I figure three from SKT1 (of July, Gorush, Oov and Midas) would've been cool, but the KTF guys are fan-favorites and the CJ players are the very best right now.
- Everyone on the staff was too tired to watch Proleague finals last night. I was running on 3 hours of sleep and running around all day on pure adrenaline. Today will be much more mellow. I think we'll all be just playing SC2 constantly when we're not watching Pro matches.
- Manifesto had to leave this morning to go back, so Blizzard is actually looking for a second caster to help Tasteless out. Mani did such a great job yesterday and it really sucks that he won't be able to do it today.
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 1 Part 5
- The TL.net meetup at BJs was a success despite everyone getting there after 10:30pm and the waitress fucking up distributing the bill correctly. How many bills were there exactly?
- Mnm got a nice birthday cake free from the restaurant, happy 18th!!!
- During the Iris/Savior winner bracket final, Manifesto was so nervous to be a commentator. As he opened his mouth to livecast for the first time we immediately held up a sign that said "MANI I STOOD FOR YOU" and made him fuck up in the middle of his first sentence rofl.
+ Show Spoiler [show picture] +
![[image loading]](http://teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/hot_bidownsmanifesto.JPG)
- Between games 2 and 3 of the WB Finals, Iris wasn't joining the game Manifesto created. On the Iris FPVOD screen you could see him proxying two rax in the center of the map, and that's exactly what he did in the next game.
![[image loading]](http://teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/yubeeownsmanifesto.jpg)
- Tasteless and Mani were fucking AWESOME as a livecasting pair, making TL.net shoutouts, funny comments, and even little insider jokes. Very entertaining and I'm quite disappointed Mani can't stay and cast tomorrows games too.
- We played Starcraft II quite a bit more. Liquid`Meat hooked us up by helping a bunch of us cut the line, and yubee/Neo were paired in 2v2 against these newbs that waited for hours. Yubee then proceeds to BBS (with dual reactor core) and eliminates someone within the first two minutes.
- I also played a game where my team had 8 Thors and about 30 phoenixes and after the game we learned that the guys we played had not realized there were "advanced" buildings.
- Part two of our Guerrilla Journalism includes a 12-minute piece where Tasteless interviews the progamers and I teaches simple Physics. Other features include Manifesto scratching his ass while talking to Coach Cho, Xellos hating TeamLiquid for the rest of time, and Easy Button madness.
- Hot_Bid Progamer Rating Chart
- Savior - 8, for continuously pressing the easy button for 20 minutes
- Yellow - 10, for giving TL.net a big shout out in the post match interview
- Reach - 9, for giving TL.net props and for liking his cheerful
- Nal_rA - 10, for being a good sport about autographs and for loving the cheerful/easy button.
- Nal_rA after he fulfills his promise of using the easy button as a ceremony on Korean TV - 18
- Iris - 9, for being a cool mother fucker and generally quite nice. He made the translator lady answer my question about the cheerfuls.
- Xellos - 4, for not being happy about the cheerful and for being BM to x_woof_x when he asked for an autograph (said "go away" in korean when x_woof_x's back was turned). Was generally in kind of a bad mood all day so maybe he's not normally like this
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 1 Part 4
- Mani is going to commentate with Tasteless soon on the Iris vs Savior winner bracket final.
- We watched Iris vs Yellow games on screen and did the "1, 2, 3 FIGHTING" cheer. Tasteless even paused in his commentating to allow us to do it. We made sure the progamers heard us.
- We were holding up a sign that said "Teamliquid.net" and later "Thx 2 Shield Battery" to the cameras.
- Yellow shouted out to TL at the end of game interview, saying "Thank you to Teamliquid.net for welcoming us to Blizzcon." Unfortunately the Blizzard translator didn't translate it right. But we heard Yellow say "teamliquid" so that was enough.
- Protoss tech tree and Terran tech tree.
- More game impressions... the Thor takes ridiculously long to build, and is actually kind of weak without support. Same with the Mothership, it costs a boatload (500 gas) and you can make more than one, but really its not that good.
- Cobras are sick. They move like vultures but instead of being strong against small units like the vulture was, its strong against siege tanks. So when I dropped yubee with tanks, they died like instantly to Cobras.
- Phoenixes are officially imbalanced. You don't even need to use their ability. They mass really fast, inexpensive, and deal so much damage to both air and ground units that you can just mass and win with them.
- Our TL.net guys quickly stopped playing each other in 2v2, as the games would never get high enough in the tech tree. So we started staggering ourselves in the line and just doing ridiculously greedy builds to capitalize off the newbie 2v2 teams we played. Like supply-CC-CC-Rax or Forge-nex-nex into 5 motherships.
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 1 Part 3
- Manifesto and I got backstage in the ProGamer lounge for about 20 minutes with all six progamers. It was basically Iris, Savior, Xellos, Reach, Nal_rA, Yellow, Mani, me, the CJ coach, and a translator or two.
Check out Reach giving TL a shout out in the middle
- Manifesto's hands were literally shaking when he gave them the cheerfuls and I could not hold the camera still--sorry if it's shaky or focusing on their torsos, I had a hard time focusing on filming.
- It was awesome. They knew about TeamLiquid and they (for the most part, rofl) liked the "cheerfuls" that we made.
- We gave Savior the easy button and he loved it! You can hear him pressing it constantly for the next like 20 minutes. You can also see Nal_rA, as soon as he saw the button, demand that he have one. Mani ran out to a nearby Staples and now they all have "Easy" buttons.
- Big props to those who made the "cheerfuls." The Pro's loved them! Thanks to yubee (Iris), pachi (Savior and Xellos), Kennegit (Reach), zxk3 (Nal_rA), and affla (Yellow).
- Dustin Browder came out afterwards and watched our video of the Pros with me, Mani, and yubee. He's literally JUST LIKE US and fucking cool too. He definitely listens and cares a lot about the whole Starcraft "feel" and says TL.net is the place where he goes first for opinions. So please everyone next time you're talking about him on the forums remember that the dude is great (video to come later).
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 1 Part 2
- The more we play this the more faith I have in Blizzard. They are listening to the communities, their balance guy is Pillars, SC2 is going to be fucking awesome.
- There is an idle worker button like Warcraft III's.
- The units are really responsive and fast.
- Instead of being a predictive genius, whoever started the "maybe supply depots can lower in to the ground" thread may have had his idea stolen. Demand royalties!!
- Don't tell anyone but I think we (as in TL.net) single handedly made the siege tank better.
- Dustin listens, he really does. When you click the actual buttons on the control panel they didn't "pop" indent, but when Mani suggested it I think they will put it in. Sick.
- You can access the tech tree map in the game. Rushing people while they are looking at this already seems to be an effective strategy.
- The new siege tank is FUCKING AWESOME. It's a bit pricier at 200/150 and more powerful. When those two prong thingys clamp down, you can feel the ridiculous power.
- As you may have heard, Tempest is out and Carrier is back in. Verdict is still out as to whether they = instant win.
- The controls are FAST. The battles are FAST. There is a lot of rushing and capability for rushing.
- You can bind buildings together. This makes it significantly easier for lower APM players to macro.
- Workers STACK. Workers automine when rallied. They also split intelligently, ie if you send 6 SCVs to one mineral, once they get there they will spread to 6 different minerals. Cloning and splitting is still faster, but you don't have to practice cloning first few workers anymore.
- You start with 6 SCVs. No real change in gameplay but it makes the beginning of the game slightly faster.
- Mining rate is still the same. Yellow minerals mine 12 instead of 8.
- The Thor is fucking cool. It's huge but definitely isn't a superunit, it actually is kind of weak without support. 700 hp, 6 food, and costs an assload.
- I have snuck into the Press Room posing as Manifesto7's cameraman and now I don't have to wait to play SC2 or have a time limit for it, while everyone else is downstairs is in line.
Blizzcon Blog Day 1 Part 1
- Our general consensus on Starcraft II game strategy includes rushing the fuck out of every Thor-wannabe making noob with Zealots. I can't fucking wait to see all the idiots going "oh wowee look at the interface!" and 30 seconds later dying to an all-in SCV+marine rush.
- My goal will be make some kid cry because he can't last long enough to build units that he wants to see.
- "Savior drone" has been confirmed as a new Zerg unit. What does it do? It is 20 drones.
- We smelled some WoW players leaving earlier than us this morning. They really are quite into it.
- I am about to leave to go play Starcraft II in the gaming halls, which are open from 9am to 10pm.
- I have brought a Staples "easy button" to give to Savior. If he busts it out after beating some random noob in the OSL, my life will be complete.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/easy_button.JPG)
- Today's agenda includes finding ProGamers to give them "cheerfuls", watching Pro matches, and playing Starcraft II 1v1s and 2v2s for 10 hours.
- Neo, Yubee, and Dknight are still asleep in my room. They are weak. I, however, already training for law school, am 100% fine after only 3 hours of sleep.
- Apparently omgbnetsux had to crash early last night because the night before, he had "problems with the law." More details to come.
- Yesterday Liquid`Meat randomly fell asleep and then wakes up and before even opening his eyes starts drinking his beer.
TL.net Blizzcon Blog Day 0
- Manifesto has temp banned yubee for one week due to what happened in the lan games played tonight
- After much trash talk, the following happened between Mani and yubee:
+ Show Spoiler +
Mani: After I beat the shit out of yubee I'll eat this roast beef sandwich.
Mani: I'll play you ANY matchup. what matchup do you want to play?
Yubee: TvT
5..4..3..2..1 Start @ Tau Cross.
Yubee: you are going to get 14cc'd
Mani: don't get cocky there are only 3 starting positions
Yubee: better scout soon
Mani goes rax gas and yubee rapes him with 9 pool speedling (switched race last second)
- Manifesto7 and Liquid`Meat completely dominated the community staff 2v2 Starcraft II tournament. Liquid`Meat made a lot of the "triangle things" and owned with them.
- Liquid`Meat arrived 2 days early and is pimped out at the Sheraton hotel. He spent the last two days driving around in a rented Ford Mustang, and has already visited the Playboy Mansion.
- Manifesto has lost a TvZ to yubee where yubee completely fails a five pool. No PPlug so you can't see the chat, but the turning point in the game was yubee holding off Mani's entire army by simply typing "i am going to hold lurker you."
- We have met up with Liquid`Meat, Etter, omgbnetsux, CharlieMurphy, Panorama, and PTC-Hurricane. We are currently all crammed into Manifestos room doing LAN and drinking beer (and NOT peeing on walls, wink to those that get this).
- Here is a look at the inside of the Blizzcon attendee packet:
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/packet1.JPG)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/packet2.JPG)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/packet3.JPG)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/packet4.JPG)
- Check out our printed "cheerfuls".
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/TLcheerfuls.JPG)
- No sign of the ProGamers yet. We printed out the "cheerfuls" (fan banners) for the Pros but we have to find them before their matches tomorrow.
- There are huge banners showing Blizzard concept art. Pretty cool (video soon).
- The Beta Key for a "future Blizzcon game" is for the WoW Expansion, not Starcraft II. The beta for Starcraft II won't come out for AT LEAST a year. Just kidding. I have no idea what the Beta Key is for.
- The line is ridiculously long and unorganized. Trying to get the badges was a nightmare, the line barely moved. Very happy to have VIP passes (no wait).
- Walking through the line listening to the WoW players is an... interesting experience.
- I was standing next to a bunch of WoW players in line and I have never seen grown men giggle in that way before. There was one dude standing and not participating, and I asked him what game he was here for, and he said "Starcraft II, nothing else." Good man.
![[image loading]](http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7209/packet2ve7.jpg)
