Soma2035

Gonna guess either Ganondorf or Sephiroth will come out ahead in the contest, as most popular video game character typically goes to either Cloud or Link. My vote will probably go to Sho. :P

Does anyone remember when it became possible to change the enchantment on the steel gauntlets received from Family Crest? I can't seem to find the news article referring to it. Edit: Never mind. Why do I always search for half an hour or so, unable to find what I'm looking for, post for help, then find it 10 seconds later? >.< Here if anyone's interested: http://services.runescape.com/m=news/garden-of-tranquillity?allcat=false

I think you're just bad at Zerg. Or maybe I just get bad Terran opponents. When I play random, I typically have no trouble dealing with Terran as Zerg. Sometimes I just get flat-out outplayed, but that happens with every race for me. The game is really more balanced than most people want to admit. Maybe right now it looks like Terran has the edge, but throughout the beta I noticed a similar pattern. At the beginning, it was Mutalisks that were widely regarded as "unstoppable." The Stalker really hasn't changed much. Photon Cannons and Missile Turrets barely changed at all. What it took was people realizing that Missile Turrets costing 100 instead of 75 is OK, because they do better now, and Photon Cannons still do their job, and Stalkers were better than everyone gave them credit for. Then there was proxy reapers - the mathematically impossible to stop build. Which of course isn't true anymore since people realized it's perfectly okay to skip the first Zealot and rush to Cybernetics Core, then chrono-boost out a Stalker seconds after the Reaper arrives. There was a Planetary Fortress Rush phase too. And a phase where Psionic Storm was useless. And a phase where Thors were too big to do their job (in fact, Blizzard shrank them, but, ironically enough, I've frequently seen Thors being used to block up choke points such as an opposing ramp during an attack, a purpose for which a larger Thor would actually be better). A phase where Hellions were useless. The way people play the game changes - people discover new strategies, which in turn, shift the balance of the metagame.

Terran harass depends greatly upon your opponent and the map. Look at Terran v Zerg. Hellion harass is a great way to start, but your opponent can beat it by placing spine crawlers, and especially if he transitions to Roach. If he does transition to Roach though, Tier 2 will ilkely be delayed, so Banshee / Viking harassment will be very effective. If he doesn't transition to Roach, he's probably aiming for a Mutalisk transition, in which case you should prepare to set up turrets, and build Thors to back up your Hellions. On Kulas Ravine or Lost Temple though, you have high ground to work with in a lot of places. In this case, Thor and Siege Tank drops backed by Vikings can devastate their expansion. On the other hand, against Protoss, Hellions and Banshees aren't quite as effective. Fast Stalker is standard against Terran now to stop Reaper, and also punishes Hellion harassment. You're actually better off just pushing early with a small Marauder force. Banshees can be effective as long as your opponent doesn't pull out a Robotics Facility. Once they do, you don't know how many Observers they have and where they are. You can still use Banshees to force them to build more Observers and position them in awkward places, but don't commit to them. Battlecruisers are actually a fairly strong transition if you see a Robotics Facility - use Banshees to force them to position cannons / observers around their own base and mineral line, and pull out a few fast Battlecruisers, which easily clean up gateway and robotics facility units. On the other hand, if you see them going fast Void Rays, hellions do work fairly well as they won't have the money to invest too heavily into Stalkers or upgrades. Hellions, Marines, and Ravens work well in this situation, and auto-turrets can really cause some damage. Against Terran, harassing tends to be a little bit more difficult, as the 1/1/1 build makes most forms of harassment easy to counter. You can try Banshees to waste their scans, but if they spot your tech lab (I often scan specifically looking for their Starport's add-on when playing TvT) they'll be able to counter it simply with 3-4 missile turrets... which are a good investment anyways because the engineering bay is useful, and the turrets will also deter drops. I typically just try to contain rather than harass in TvT games, as a Marine / Siege Tank / Vikings force is very hard to break without a superior Viking count. Of course, if they're contained, you can expand and increase your own Viking count, and also set up turrets to give your Vikings an edge. Reaper harassment tends to work decently, but the damage to your own economy is typically greater than damage to theirs if they respond well, so it's not worth it.

League is a bit more difficult than the practice matches. :wink: Still pretty fun nonetheless even though I pretty much suck. Finally scored gold on all the challenge missions today, they really aren't that hard at all once you find a good strategy to stick with. I did have a few problems with some though, mostly the one with the sentries and high templars, and especially the one where you have to build up a massive army in a short time. Was worth it though, the portrait is pretty sick. Kerrigan > Spectre. :D The Terran Macro challenge is actually very easy for any decent Terran player. Psi Storm Assault could be a little frustrating if you didn't save frequently, or didn't notice the little tricks the terrain gives you.

If you're having difficulty, and you're willing to cheat slightly, use a wall of Dark Templars, backed up by Void Rays. Save after each wave, and if your wall crumbles due to an Overseer, reload your last save and this time, lash out and kill the Overseer before it reaches your wall. Your wall will crumble anyways when mass Overseers come, but if you built up enough cannons and Void Rays, you'll still go down in a blaze of glory, achievement and all. ;)

It's better than coming back from Diablo II and holding alt to see items, or hitting i to see your inventory. Or coming back from Starcraft II and shift clicking to try to pick up all your drops and go back to attacking.

Your computer must be a little bit ancient. XD My semi-new laptop was ~$600 and runs Starcraft II just fine. You might be better off just waiting until you're ready to get a new computer.

If you're playing on Hard / Normal, the trick is to push out early. If you're on normal you don't even need extra units, with a bit of micro your starting marines can reach the rebel camp. If you're on hard you might need 2-3 extra marines, but that's about it. Keep churning out SCVs non-stop though, and make sure to get your extra supply depots when you're 3-4 away from the maximum. As long as your SCV production is fairly constant, you should reach 2-3 SCVs per patch pretty easily. That's when you stop. Build a second Barracks when you have the funds in between keeping your marine production up. You rescue a Barracks with a tech lab, so now you'll have 2 non-stop producing marines, 1 non-stop producing medics (until you run out of gas, then just pump marines. Push hard and fast and you should definitely clear it well before 10 minutes. Oh yeah, make sure you dispatch the Factory, then the Barracks, then the other buildings. You don't want him to constantly be producing units which will whittle down your force. Don't give up unit production once you attack, just rally all Barracks to the front of the base. Yeah I was doing the factory and barracks in first, but I didn't think that maybe the enemy started from scratch with their forces too, so I was always trying to build up a larger army first. I'll try your tactic next try. :thumbup: They do start with their army, but the key is building your army fast and efficiently. You don't have time to waste building up a massive army, you need to make sure you have just enough troops to bring down their units, and start dishing out damage to their buildings while keeping your unit production up.

If you're playing on Hard / Normal, the trick is to push out early. If you're on normal you don't even need extra units, with a bit of micro your starting marines can reach the rebel camp. If you're on hard you might need 2-3 extra marines, but that's about it. Keep churning out SCVs non-stop though, and make sure to get your extra supply depots when you're 3-4 away from the maximum. As long as your SCV production is fairly constant, you should reach 2-3 SCVs per patch pretty easily. That's when you stop. Build a second Barracks when you have the funds in between keeping your marine production up. You rescue a Barracks with a tech lab, so now you'll have 2 non-stop producing marines, 1 non-stop producing medics (until you run out of gas, then just pump marines. Push hard and fast and you should definitely clear it well before 10 minutes. Oh yeah, make sure you dispatch the Factory, then the Barracks, then the other buildings. You don't want him to constantly be producing units which will whittle down your force. Don't give up unit production once you attack, just rally all Barracks to the front of the base.

I started doing this but I got bored kinda quickly. I ended up playing an all-brutal campaign instead (no playing other difficulties for tech or to skip harder missions).

Anyone from NA on at the moment? I'd like a chance to play with or against some Tip.Iters. :)

I personally don't think the ranks or the leagues mean much. I made it to Rank 1 Diamond during the beta, and I placed into platinum pretty easily but I'm not particularly good... Still, if you want to play, I'm up for a few games, against each other or 2v2. Let me know if you're interested? SomaCruz 802

Edit: Never mind, just remembered you were EU. Guess that was another Calcium.

It's free to play online so far, although Blizzard has hinted at a program to distribute especially good UMS maps at a small fee (with part of the fee going to the creator of the map). You probably won't have to worry about this, however, as it's the maps with custom models, sound effects and icons that will actually qualify. Some of the stuff you played in StarCraft: Brood War is already available. I didn't play many UMS maps but I know there are already numerous Tower Defense games. Nexus Wars, Golems, Mount Impossible, Phantom, and Evolves are all back too. The problem isn't whether the maps are out there. The problem is the poor interface on Battle.net 2.0 makes finding new maps a hassle. htttp://www.sc2mapster.com is dedicated to creating maps on SCII and I've seen several promising maps that have been reportedly uploaded to Battle.net 2.0 but for the life of me I can't find them. :( Oh, if you played DotA from Warcraft III, Heroes of Newerth, or League of Legends, there are already several maps similar to these being made, although they're all still being polished. You don't need an e-mail address to add a real friend. You have two options - adding a player's real ID, or their character ID. Also, there aren't any chat channels, but there are private chat rooms. If you create a party with your friends, a chat room automatically opens for you. You can also chat with said friends. Other than that, you can chat during games but that's about it.

SomaCruz 802 Always looking for more people to play with or against, but don't expect too much. I barely scraped through some of the challenges... :P EDIT: Forgot I'm playing in the NA region.

*Barring a task inside Kuradel's dungeon in which Ferocious Ring is assuredly better than the Berserker Ring

Never has it been more clear that we have entirely different tastes. o.O I've liked all of one game on your list. Most of your list I couldn't stand playing. Won't deny that they're good games, just completely not my style. :P

We should make Team Tip.It. :o Also, Patch Notes 16 are very, very incomplete. There were actually a lot more changes than you'd expect after seeing the abridged notes, but there were many serious changes. Zealots / Reapers / Barracks all had build time increases, Neural Parasite was changed dramatically, the mechanics behind Force Field were changed dramatically, new animations were added (mostly dance and cheer animations, but Terran units now have a dropping from the Medivac animation), Hold Fire (Ghost) was changed to a toggle rather than a temporary status (when you click it, the Ghost puts his gun away, animation and all, and doesn't pull it out unless you tell him to attack). There were lots more too. Oh and voice changes (including a quote when you finish researching Weapon Refit) and new soundtracks. :D

You know you're going to die 30 years from now, so 29 and a half years from now, you buy all the life insurance you legally can. Your family, tempted by greed, then kills you to collect on life insurance. Unfortunately for them, the ruse is discovered and they wind up in prison. This almost feels like corrupt-a-wish...

By sequel, I mean an actual sequel, and not what is more or less a second part of the game... IIRC, TLA was meant to be part of the first game during development until they realized it didn't quite fit. So I consider them pretty much one game. :P In any case, the point still stands. Most of the money I've spent or will spend on video games in the foreseeable future stems directly from the games I pirated years ago, that I wouldn't have touched otherwise. Maybe I'm a complete oddball, or maybe the music and movie industries are different, but I still don't see software piracy on the same level of theft.

Must have missed the date... when's this next tournament happening? I changed computers so I'll have to remake my team entirely. :(

You aren't alone. First off, I am going to say that piracy is not theft. It's copyright infringement. It doesn't make it any less of an offence; I even think that it should remain as such, even if they reform the law. Ideally, I would be happy with a good compromise between the entertainment industries and the pirates, but both sides have such silly arguments that I just can't see it happening. It's a shame that it has to come down to things like this and the Digital Economy Bill, to say the least. I think this thread is somewhat of a sad reflection on today's society as well. I wonder, just how many of you have actually bought physical copies of albums? I'm not talking about those digital downloads either; there is zero sense of ownership in some music you have bought from iTunes. If you're going to pull the "they're not worth my money" argument, use this terrible hypothetical as something to think about - if you were an independent artist on a small label, how would you feel about people saying that music you put a lot of care, time and attention-to-detail into and performed, mixed and mastered it to the best of your ability, how exactly would you feel if someone told you that your music "isn't worth the money"? Probably pretty damn horrible. Don't get me wrong - I download a lot more than the average person, but I daresay I also buy a lot more than the average person too. That "imminent infringement" stuff is pretty terrible showing though and that is exactly why this won't pass. I just wish we would actually get some co-operation between the two sides of the piracy argument for once. Actually, it's significantly less of an offense. Theft deprives the victim of property. Piracy may reduce profits of the victim. It may not. It may in fact benefit the "victim." When I was in middle school, my friends and I bought the bunk posted on the Gameboy Advance ROM websites that said "It's legal as long as you delete the game in 24 hours." One of my friends told me about three games called Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Golden Sun. All three of the games looked boring as heck to me. In fact, I had played a Castlevania game before and hated it. Here are three games I never would have paid for, one of which I thought I would hate even as my friend forcibly downloaded it onto my computer for me. Right now, among the few DS games I own are Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Harvest Moon DS (Which is terrible by the way), and a couple other Harvest Moon games. And I've been waiting many, many years for the Golden Sun sequel announcement at last year's E3, which I intend to buy right away, despite having the means to download it if I wish. Over 2/3 of my game collection stems from these games I downloaded years ago. Notice that the CV games I own today are all handheld, and are all most similar to Aria. Reputation is a funny thing. I don't know if the first CV game I played was a complete oddball, or maybe the console CVs are really like that one. But I can't even be bothered giving them a try. On the other hand, the $200 to $300 worth of software I downloaded almost a decade ago I wouldn't have purchased. But the $300+ of software I've purchased in the past five years, I wouldn't have purchased if I hadn't had the chance to play the predecessor games. I'm well aware this isn't typical. But it isn't an isolated incident either. This is why piracy isn't nearly as detested as theft - there's no way to prove it actually harms the victim, and many people share experiences that imply a benefit for the victim. Crimes are as much about the victim as the perpetrator - stories like Robin Hood praise criminals for their deserving victims because people have a hard time sympathizing with the victims, and with good reason. Similarly, while intellectual property rights are important, it is asinine to imply that intellectual property theft is a crime on the same level of theft of physical property. That would be like equating an armed robbery with a burglary. One of them just hurts the victim so much more than the other.

except that there will be basically 0 demand and huge supply, rune boots are now better and cheaper. This. +2 strength bonus has very little significance. PKers use it because it's essentially free. Hardly anyone is going to be willing to pay 75K for it.

I have over 30 pairs due to GWD. You use them if you don't feel like teleporting (not uncommon, especially if you're using Ancients at the time). I knew several people who religiously banked spare items (holy and unholy symbols, hammers, and climbing boots) using Pack Yaks, and I wouldn't doubt it at all if they had 200-300 pairs.