StarCraft 2 and blogging

I have been getting away from blogging. It just hasn’t been in me. Video games should be fun, or you should stop and blogging should be the same. It felt like blogging was a chore more than an outlet for my opinions. I was trying to keep up a post a day which given my fairly hectic life was a bit much. I did it for a decent amount of time though, so I need to be happy with that.

I’m going to blog my StarCraft 2 beta experiences. This is entirely for me. The reason I have decided to do this is because I learned a lot about what I want in a MMO from blogging my time in WoW. It enables me to go back and read how I felt about the game at an earlier point. I think that is a valuable asset and can prevent the long dreaded nostalgia people tend to use as a scapegoat for positive previous game designs.

As it stands I love StarCraft 2. It feels like StarCraft: Brood Wars but with positive improvements. The unit AI has been greatly improved and I think playing the basic game is a lot easier. The units have enough good AI to facilitate menial micro tasks such as splitting up among your minerals in an efficient and timely manner. They changed some unit hotkeys and macro commands so that you can control unit production and allocation easier too. It’s been said that a great game is one that is easy to learn and hard to master, so far that has proven the case for SC2.

I’m currently not very good at it though. This isn’t to say I suck. I placed in the Platinum League, though I wish I would have thrown a placement game now and ended in the Gold League. Since being the Platinum League I’ve gone about 7-10 with a total score of 12-10 since they count your placement games as total games played. I guess that isn’t bad, but I have higher expectations of myself than this. Three of my friends are in Beta with me and given certain living situations and roommates with certain Beta Keys there are up to 6 people who can play on some of these accounts at any time. So we typically 2v2 against each other when everyone is on.

What I’ve found is that they are MUCH better than I am. I know where I’m weak, I just can’t seem to overcome my gamers block in game. After about 40-50 supply and my first assault I don’t know what to do. I typically lose a lot of troops on my first push and then I get countered with nothing to fight back. I have tried waiting to counter myself and it always seems like my enemies can re-mass units faster than I can. Practice, practice, practice… That is what I need. I’ve been watching LiveFeeds from Team Liquid and 4 or 5 SC2 channels on Youtube. I know a lot of what I’m supposed to do, I just need to implement it.

If I get better that is all that really matters. I’m not a pro gamer and I’ve never been the best among my friends. I’ve always been competitive and good, but never the top. This is going to take some patience and practice to break through this wall I’m hitting so I can improve.