- 6 refers to supply count at which the player builds Spawning Pool (Zergling tech structure). 6 is very low for that and usual strategy is to build drones first for stronger economy and Pool at 12. 6Pool strategy tries to take advantage of the fact that opponents usually have nothing but workers against the Zerg player's Zerglings.

Thanks. =D So, more militia-rush than hero harassment. I think I'll read up on SC2 a bit (beyond this thread). My computer can't run it, as I've abandoned my old computer for a netbook, but I'm interested enough to enjoy occasional replays.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

Ha! I'm glad more people enjoyed the TLOwnage video. TheLittleOne (LiquidTLO) is one of Europe's most creative players, and he is just so much fun to watch. The spinning barracks and factory made me very happy.

Actually, I'm completely wrong, and you were right. Mr Day[9] explains it himself in Day[9] Daily 118 TLO TvZ, at around 3 minutes 30 seconds into the video.

Starcraft 2 is a little depressing for me. I was moved into the gold league, which I was okay with, I figured I'd move up quick enough.
But I must be bugged or something, because the system keeps matching me up against diamond players and I win about 70% of the games I play, but it's still refusing to move me.
Right now I'm first in my division (obviously) and about 200 points ahead of the number 2. Stop torturing me Blizzard ;_; I'm a loyal customer!

I'm pretty sure the leagues mean basically nothing. You're matched according to your point rating, not according to what league you're in. As far as I can tell, the leagues are just a fun little label on the surface so that you can see immediate progress and have concrete goals aside from "I want my rating to be x".

You'll move up to platinum one of these days. And you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself in diamond shortly after that, (say only a few days to about a week later). Bnet seems really stubborn to promote people at first, but then it suddenly goes a lot smoother (at least that's how it's been for a lot of people I play with)

- I agree. It seems to be loosely based on ELO rating, only that players start at 0 points and can't go lower. Points thus appear from nothing. I wonder how this inflates point rankings over time.

Oh yeah, fun site to check your global ranking
http://sc2ranks.com/

I've been wondering that myself, particularly with the bonus point system. Does anyone know of any good posts or articles analyzing this? My best guess is that rankings will not inflate over time. Essentially, once your points have gotten up to your true skill and leveled off, bonus points will simply push your rating a little higher than it should be, but playing matches will bring it back down. You could probably abuse the system by having two accounts, one of which you only play when you have enough bonus points stocked up that you know you'll double your reward on every win. But people generally won't do that since you'd have to buy another copy of the game.
Cool, I hadn't seen that before. I'm ranked 17,762nd in the world, yay!

I get the feeling that the points we see are also fluff (and are just used to place us within our divisions).

[edit] So no one is in the oceania/se-asia region? I thought it might be fun to make a 2v2 team, I'm feeling kind of lonely on b.net. Stupid Blizz, what made them decide region locking was a good idea .

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19/02/2011: this grumpy person takes a voluntary holiday from L19.

Indeed, explo and I are apparently the only two european L19 players on bnet. Would be cool to have a duathlon tournament: sc2 games and go games. But alas, region locking says noooo.

Patrick Allen 3d is going to the MLG Raleigh SC2 Pro Circuit which is in a couple of weeks. He's been doing really well in SC2, just joining Quantum Gaming (http://www.qgaming.net) and ranked 66th in Blizzard's top 200 SC2 ladder post and 334th worldwide (out of 1,000,049 who are in leagues). I've been getting a lot of tips and advice from him which has helped my game. Hopefully he'll do well and maybe even give a little plug for Go in any interview he gets . He is "Time" in the list: http://www.mlgpro.com/content/news/3109 ... t-Released (interestingly enough, there is another player going who goes by "Josekii"...hmm).

That's awesome. Do you know him IRL? (Sorry, but talking about SC2 always makes me want to use more internet abbreviations.) If not, how do you recommend procuring such a mentor? My rating is about 400-425 points right now.

I've met him IRL yeah, I got to know him through Todd B. and we brushed shoulders in 2 USGCs. He even helped me a bit with my Physics homework in the 2008 USGC since I was also taking summer quarter classes at the time. I don't know how you'd go about finding a mentor/sparring partner...maybe try playing in a casual weekly tournament? You'll be brushing online shoulders with some pretty good players I'd reckon. But yeah, definitely surprised me when I saw he was very hardcore in RTS games .

I'm worried about the way Activision-Blizzard is going. I mean microtransactions. 60€ for a game, but then you'd have to pay to change your name. I'm pretty sure next we'll be seeing user-created maps and mods as additional purchasable content. After all, EULA states that all content created is Blizzard's property if you send it to their servers. With no LAN, using A-B's servers is the only option.

Microtransactions use the following business model:
1. First you impose arbitrary restrictions or neglect essential features in software
2. Then you kindly offer a shortcut around the restriction / add small feature for some $$$
3. Community is happy that "problem" gets solved

In a sense it's a way to drive the leverage. Like in poker, you're hesitant to fold when you've already invested money in table. "You only lose big on good hands", as the saying goes.

I remember ten years ago when you 'owned' the copy of software you bought. You could play it for many years, download any content and patches the community created. Reverse-engineering was possible. Nowadays there's mostly big enterprises which spend millions to develop games. Stakes are high. Sell on impression. Buy out your opposition. Corner the market and drop the passion.

I have the same criticism. The idea that you have to log into battle.net to do anything and that it's impossible to play over a LAN makes it feel like you're paying $60 for a service rather than a product. It's a shame, but ultimately I still have an absolute blast playing, so I can't complain. And if they want to introduce fees for mods, okay. As long as it never costs extra to play single player or league quick matches, they've provided an amazing, full-featured game right there. Anything else is gravy. Some people act like game companies are a government that needs to respect our gamers' rights, which is wrong-headed if you ask me.

The region locking stuff really galls me. What ever happened to old adages like "deliver a product the consumer wants, and you'll make money" or "if people demand something, the market will deliver"? There wasn't a big, pent-up demand for region locked software. It's completely anti-consumer. How does Blizzard make money by preventing someone from playing against their friends in other regions? For that matter, who makes money when an American tourist can't play a DVD they bought while on vacation in France? How can that put money in somebody's pocket? I just don't understand the economics of that.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

I don't know about starcraft, but in the case of DVDs, the region locking is to permit them to sell the same DVD at different prices in different regions without the chance that people in the discount regions will resell the DVDs to people in richer regions.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I think the reasoning is that it allows them to price things locally to the limit the region can bear. If you have two markets with vastly different price levels (say, Japan and China) and you don't want to use DRM, then you have three options. You can charge both China and Japan the "Japan" price and then nobody in China will be able to buy it. You can charge them both China's price and then you won't be making nearly as much profit from Japan as you could be -- they're willing to pay lots more per DVD than China is. Or you could charge them different prices, but then you'll notice that a lot of "Chinese import DVD" business will suddenly start to spring up in Japan, where people buy them at China's prices and sell them at just below Japan's prices. Once again, you're not making as much money in Japan as you could be. The "solution" is to region-lock them so that the Chinese can only watch their version, and the Japanese can only watch their more expensive ones. That's why if you look at a map of region codes, they don't correspond to physical location as much as socio-economic levels.

Of course, in practice what happens is that China pirates everything and Japan buys region-unlocked DVD players, so it's a fair question why it still happens. But you can see why it sounded like a good idea in the beginning...

EDIT: Darn, daniel beat me to it by a minute

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The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain, and simple to express: Err, and err, and err again; but less, and less, and less!

- You're right. I still think the campaign and multiplayer options are worth 60€. But now I know that 60 euros doesn't include the level of customer support I've come to expect from Blizzard. Want to change name? Sure, 10 bucks. I mean geez. Warcraft III supports multiple profiles in case your family members want to play. SCII supports exactly one and sharing with family members is explicitly prohibited.

Leaving out LAN has two reasons:
1) It should make piracy more difficult if all games happen in Blizzard's servers
2) One unified platform for games can make Blizzard money (tournaments for example), which players could otherwise skip

For us players it's a risky business. How well will Blizzard deal with hackers? Will the map pool contain fresh and balanced maps? Is it possible for a group of friends to play custom map together? Everything depends on Blizzard's willingness to spend on maintenance, which in turn costs us one way or another. This is the high stakes business model.