The folks over at Blizzard have come up with an ingenious solution for assuring NDA (none disclosure agreement) compliance for their latest StarCraft 2 beta (at least for me anyway.)
Step 1 – Make the beta online only. Step 2 – Only enable head to head game play. Step 3 – Invite all the best StarCraft players in the world (yeah that’s right, Koreans also, you know a whole nation of people who are born instinctively knowing how to play StarCraft.) Step 4 – Sit back and rest assured that most people will never actually make past the first five minutes of any game as they have no chance of beating anyone with crazy SC skills.
Makes it hard to break that NDA if you have no way of really seeing much of the game.
That is certainly how its been for me. The longest any of my games have lasted thus far have been around ten minutes and they usually consist of me oohing and ahhing over how my poor team is getting their asses handed to them by units I didn’t even know existed.
Shocking that I haven’t been playing more of the beta, I know.
Somehow I totally missed April Fools this year. Granted its not really a holiday (sort of like Pie Day) but its all in good fun. And fun is after all fun, right? (^_^)
Turns out that I hadn’t really missed all that much. Then again I’m a day late so maybe I missed all the fabulous ones.
Anyway, here are the ones that I think are definitely worth sharing:
Evil never looked so cute. Or maybe cute never tried so hard to be evil. Whatever the case, cute clearly triumphs over evil in this fabulously entertaining tower defense game.
I have long been a fan of playing the dark side of things, especially when presented in a humorous light. Dungeon Keeper 2 hooked me, while Overlord cemented my devotion. FFCC – My Life as a Darklord only reaffirms that humor and evil are made to go together. Throw in some cute and it’s nigh irresistible.
(Its such an awesome title how could I not run with it?!!? Probably should have been Monthly WoW Woes, but that certainly doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.)
DPS (Damage Per Second). The never ending quest for the all time highest damage output EVER. What is the DPS ceiling and how can I get there???
Since both of my World of Warcraft characters are DPS-centric, this question comes up for me often. My love-hate relationship with recount doesn’t help, as I can’t seem to get by without it, but playing with it is almost as impossible. Would I do better without it? Keeping track is eminently distracting. Though having such a clear display of ones performance (compared to everyone else) is highly motivating.
I ended up drafting first, which might have helped, but then I’m never sure who to draft, thus my draft order is always a bit wonkey. Never the less I got a team that started out a bit slow but ramped up nicely.
The team finished the season middle of the pack and as luck would have it, most of my players actually participated in the final fantasy playoff weeks.
I dedicate this win to Wes Welker ~sniff sniff~ who kept us strong but had to leave us at the end for a serious knee injury.
Thank you team! I couldn’t have done it without you. =)
This is a huge topic. The meta-game for WoW is already incredibly complicated, but the meta-game for the WoW-software dwarfs it by leaps and bounds. From new interfaces to smaller addons; a vast array of options are available. Then of course we can’t forget Ventrilo and all the hardware that that spawns.
Oh you could play without all these fancy gadgets and gizmos but they really help in so many situations by increasing response time, easier access to all raid members, alerts, maps, shortcuts, and so many more wonderful ease inspiring additions that playing without almost seems archaic. Granted on a bit patch day you will be playing without them, until they are patched anyway.
This really comes in two parts, strategy on how to play your character and strategy on how to be successful in an encounter. Both of these can be theorized ad nauseum, but nothing can make up for experience. So brush up online and then jump in.
Taking the step from being a casual player, who runs a few heroic dungeons every now and then, into a player that is raiding effectively and with purpose (my definition of hardcore) is a massive undertaking. It requires far more focused knowledge and experience then just playing casually. Suddenly many aspects of your character, aspects that were easily ignorable before, become incredibly pertinent.
I love getting games as presents and when said game turns out to be a) one I don’t own and 2) one I really like, it’s a near miracle. Turns out, Culdcept Saga is such a miracle.
The fabulous friend, who gifted us this excellent experience, knew that waiting would just not do. So he presented it at the first available opportunity. It was just some random day, but I have since dubbed it “Culdcept is Awesome!” Day. (And like most holidays/birthdays/anniversaries I never remember the actual date!!)
This thing is, even though the game arrived with such fan fare I didn’t believe it was going to be that great (because, really, how often does it happen that a fabulous game gets shoved in your face?), so it just sat around for a while (sad and lonely).
After the third call from my friend asking how I thought the game was, I finally popped it into the xBox and started playing. I devoured it whole.
As a Hunter most of my attention is focused on a few things, DPS (the higher the better), Pet management (as in try not to have it run off, agro everything in range, and thus kill my entire party/raid), and agro management. Sometimes I even get to crowd control and back in the day I used to pull (ah the days of Feign Death pulling, recapturing a fine EQ moment).
I pass off agro as much as I can with skills and feign death and I do a pretty decent job of staying out of harm’s way, but there are still times where I manage just a bit too much damage and get the attention of the big bad monster anyway. It’s made worse by my need for pick up groups, meaning the skill and equipment of the tank is not something I can count on.
And then the Death Knight joined the happy little World of Warcraft family. The more I play alongside them, the more I love them. A skilled Death Knight can keep agro like no other class.
It’s fabulously fun, but it’s also made me lazy. I hardly pay attention to my agro anymore. In times of panic, which inevitably happen (not always my fault!), I have lost track of my feign death button (due to laziness) and actually died. DIED!
This is of course entirely due to the death knight being so awesomely awesome. Pretty soon I will just auto follow the Death Knight tank around and sit back with a hot cup of cocoa. And they said hunters were easy to play before. Pah!
y.
