Dota 2: The International 3 - Day 3

Well, first of all let's start with clearing something up!

The other day I mentioned that MLG Columbus would not have Starcraft 2 in it's line-up of games.. some speculated that this was due to MLG dropping it.. However it came to light that the reason that it would not be there, is because Red Bull gaming requested a date lock for that weekend from Blizzard before MLG did.

So let's move on to the thing that is dominating the world of E-sports right now.. The International 3, what an amazing load of games that happened last night?! I won't go into great detail as I didn't manage to see all of them.. cause well, I'm old, I was tired and fell asleep while it was playing away on my TV!

I will however talk about the first matches. I won't go into details about who played what heroes, unless it's requested.

First off, we had the team of the tournament so far, unbeaten in the preliminaries and still going strong, team Alliance taking on team DK.. the odds were heavily stacked in favour of the Alliance but on the other hand you have arguably the best carry in the world on the team of DK, in the shape of DK.Burning. Aside from that DK.Super! has been playing really well this tournament.

The first game saw a 1 hour 25 minute match that was as much about posturing and not losing as it was about actually winning. At times it looked like Burning could do the impossible and carry his team to victory and cause Alliance to lose their first set, but the Alliance was too much for them and took the first. Lod[A] leading the board with 12 kills, 2 deaths and 9 assists.

The second game was a 48 minute match that saw Alliance grab a first tower at just over 2 minutes but DK took the first blood and a few uncharacteristic mistakes by the so far unbeaten team Alliance. At times it seemed that the Alliance would overcome these mistakes but in the end DK seemed determined not to lose 2-0 and with that, they took game two. Burning topping the board with 11 kills, 2 deaths and 9 assists.

The third and final game in this epic set saw [A]s4 take first blood around 5 minutes.. the game was a 40 minute long thug snap.. if you're interested in finding out who won or further details of the games themselves then head on over to the Dota 2 YouTube channel, where you can find replays with many languages commentary! Or of course you can watch all of the replays in the DotA 2 game client itself.

Team Liquid after an enourmous run in the losers bracket sadly departed from the Tournament after loosing to the reigning champions Invictus Gaming in one of the last best of 1 matches at the event.

A big story from the happenings last night was a dubious move from Na'Vi - now I'm not saying which set this was or what it decided! The rules say it's allowed, so I guess it's viable. What it is, is that Pudge throws a hook as he's being ported back home by Chen. So if the hook lands, the person hooked gets ported to their opponents base with the Pudge. A lot of people are saying that they don't agree with it. What do you think?

Personally, I guess since it requires the hook to land and for it to be really well timed.. and that it's able to be done in the game and if it's known about but hasn't been fixed then it's just a game mechanic to be used..

In other news, the WCS finals are being played out today and I'll tackle that in another post.

With that though, I'll tip my hat and as always, if you enjoyed the read, subscribe, check out all my other lovely content!

Ciao for now!

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Dota 2: The International 3

Let's just start out by saying.. holee moley!!

G'wan, take a look.. ah you will now won't ye?

http://www.dota2.com/international/home/overview/

For me.. well, I'm impressed. The only other tournaments that I have watched have been Starcraft 2 ones and somehow they didn't seem to be so.. well, huge.

Valve has done a good job I think! The hall looks pretty darn cool and so does the booths the players sit in! The picture below was taken by someone on the DotA 2 team and looks pretty.

All this aside, I was watching the tournament at home. In the luxury of my own little space.. and by all accounts, so were around 1 million other people.

That's right, 1 million peak concurrent viewers.. I had heard quite a few numbers thrown around yesterday for peak concurrent viewers but this is the highest.. and well, I'm astounded. I was shocked by the Starcraft 2 viewer figures when I first started watching but this is on a whole other level.

It really does help that you can watch the tournament games on twitch.tv and in the game client itself!!!!

Then let's talk about the production; there was a small issue in the first match where one of the casters mic's was acting up.. and that was it.. that was the single problem I encountered during the first day of the main event.

Then, this morning while waiting for the games to start again.. the news broke that MLG have, for the moment dropped Starcraft 2 from their Columbus line-up... the current speculation is that it's being replaced.. most likely with World of Tanks.. since they already have League of Legends as their main show.. I think, anyway and I'm not so sure that Riot(who makes League) would take too kindly to DotA 2 being added in to the same show.

For the moment all we can do is sit and wonder.. after all, there still is WCS(The Blizzard run World Championship Series) running along and still pulling in around the same amount of viewer numbers.. though that is a lot smaller than that of The International. But then, the International is a annual event.

It helps that they aren't really in direct competition with each other.. unless you consider this weekend.. where all the WCS finals are on the same weekend as the International.. which I'm not even gonna go into...

Time to get some food, then watch a whole load of DotA 2!

If you've enjoyed reading this, then follow me on Bloglovin and on Twitter @McKnublet - You can also watch me playing games on Twitch.tv and even see some highlights at my YouTube - Click me and subscribe!

Ciao for now!

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What up?!

Howdy doody!

Been a wee while since I took some time to write one of these here blog buddies!

So let's have a brief catch up. I had been living in the UK and working for a games company there, now however my other half and I have moved back to Ireland.. I'm currently unemployed and claiming back the money I put into the Irish system during the four years that I was employed here previously!

On the plus side; since we moved back and I got my lovely new PC all set up and we got some slightly better internets..

See! A little bit of an improvement.. and so I've been able to start doing something that I wanted to do for ages! Stream. Yes, that's right! You can watch me play games! How awesome am I, playing games so that you may watch?!

The program I'm currently using to capture the games is called Open Broadcaster Software or Obs. It's relatively easy to set up.. especially if you follow this handy guide there on TeamLiquid. You basically play your game, the program captures it then sends it to a website(Twitch.tv is the one I am on) and then that let's other people watch it!

So what does that mean for my Blog? Well, nothing reaaaally though it should mean that I may start posting more regularly now that I am spending more time at the computer(though most of that will be spent playing games).

I'm also taking a web design course online that also covers blogging and how to make them look nice and shiny. Hopefully you will get to see some changes go on here as I progress through it!

Oh yeah, I did have something else I wanted to say!

[DISCLAIMER] I'm aware that this is old news, but I only just found out about it but you'll have to let me ramble before I get to the point.

With that said, let's go on a fantasy trip! You buy a computer, you then have to pay a monthly fee to connect to the internet, you then also have to pay a monthly fee for say a Netflix account... but then you must also pay google a monthly fee in order to use Chrome to watch movies... in our world that sounds crazy right? And yet.. read on, dear friend..

So let's put this in real terms, what I'm really getting at is X-Box Live Gold. You pay for the console, you then pay a monthly fee for an internet connection, you also then pay a monthly fee for say a Netflix account.. and then you must also pay microsoft a monthly fee .. for what I'm not sure.. but I know that it's brilliant on their part.

I had no idea this kind of skullduggery was going on! Why exactly do you have to pay twice to be able to access things you pay for on something you have already paid for?!

You can follow and watch my live stream at McKnublet or even subscribe and watch some random clips of videos on my YouTube channel. I generally announce on my Facebook and Twitter pages when I'm streaming live. Whoa, linkfest! Sorry!

Anyway, ciao for now! Expect another update in a couple of days! I have a lot I want to talk about - my streaming fun, my Starcraft, Diablo and DotA 2 progression.. and also games I've not yet discussed!

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Starcraft 2: HotS and stuff

I figured it was about time I did a bit of a natter about Starcraft.. and I guess it's the perfect time to do it, with Heart of the Swarm being released in 9 days and the beta was closed on the first of March(I think), which was two days ago! Since I've been spending a bit more time checking out twitter, I have seen a lot of pro-gamers tweeting that they don't quite know what to do to fill their time now that they can't play HotS.. I don't have that issue, mainly because I haven't played it for quite a while!

Apart from that though, for those who have been living on another planet, the new HotS trailer was released the other night and here it is!

I am mainly looking forwards to the campaign being playable and to see what has changed in the overall SC2 experience. Heck, I guess part of my time till HotS is released will be spent checking out the features that were implemented into WoL, that I never actually knew about! I'm sooo out of the loop!

The changes I'm talking about are patch 2.0.4, the full patch notes can be found here. The main ones that piqued my interest were the following:

Anyone can now create or join a Clan and participate in private clan chat, post news on Clan affairs, and more. Clan tags are pre-pended to character names of all players who join a Clan.

The very idea of clans is pretty cool and the fact that clan tags automatically pre-pend onto your name just rings out as awesome to me.

Players will soon have the freedom to select any game region to connect to and play.

Global play, wayhay, now I get to test my mettle against those pesky non-foreigners.. who will no doubt destroy me at any and every turn!

The overall AI play experienced has been greatly enhanced.In a custom game, players can now elect for an AI player to follow a specific build order, such as Full Rush, Timing Attack, Straight to Air, and more.AI players will now report key information back to their player allies, such as when they are scouting, attacking, expanding, and retreating.Additional AI improvements, including the ability to issue specific commands to AI partners, will be coming in Heart of the Swarm.

Any updates to the AI is pretty sweet, it got pretty tiresome playing against the AI when all it did were the same tactics and all that happened when you ramped up the difficulty was that it ramped up the speed at which it did the same tactics, really.

In other news, my pc still hasn't arrived yet :(:(:( though it should be delivered sometime tomorrow! Hopefully just before I get home from work.. though it will probably be delivered right before I have to go to work... then I will have to go to work and actively have to not think about my new pc and what I could be doing with it.

I've been playing a bit more Diablo 3 in the past week, I started doing something new.. leveling hardcore characters.. after doing a bit of research I found out that the best way to do this is to level 3-5 at the same time.. so I'm leveling a Witch Doctor, a Barbarian and a Demon Hunter on hardcore.. oh, did I forget to mention that I will be limiting myself by not using the auction house for the duration of leveling.... ohhh and did I also forget to mention that I will be attempting to do this while set to Monster Power 10.

Daunting task! At the moment, it's going pretty easily.. though they are only between levels 7 and 12.. the plan so far is that I will level one of them up 5 levels, then swap to the next and so on. I am allowing myself to trade between the characters however.. which is why I picked the three classes I did, as the Barbarian's main attribute is Strength, the Demon Hunter's is Dexterity and the Witch Doctor's is Intelligence.. so any drops I get, I will be able to use on at least one of my characters!

I'm looking forwards to it, exciting times!

Though, with my new pc I am getting free copies of the new Tomb Raider, Bio-shock: Infinite and Crysis 3.. so I'm not sure whether or not I will be playing those, or trying out some new things on the beast! I can't quite do what I really want to do just yet as my internet connection is still a big pile of tripe.

That's all from me!

Ciao for now!

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I'm baaack

Okay so I know I've had quite some time off from writing here!

There has been a lot going on, obviously! I've been trying to concentrate on work and of course my little free time has been put into playing a few games.

But what have I been playing? Well, that is the question! I finally set up a Steam account - most people I know found it crazy that I didn't have one! I guess I was dubious about the whole thing.. then forgot about it for a long while! I never needed it when I was at Blizzard as I was more than happy logging into WoW for a few hours and massing many hours playing and watching Starcraft 2 and then Diablo 3.

So, my first impressions of Steam is pretty good! The whole reason I set up one, was because I got given a beta invitation for Dota 2. Which is a pretty darn fun game, when you get the hang of it! It's a MOBA - which means Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. I'll go into a bit more details about that at another time!

After I had played a few too many hours of Dota 2, the Christmas sale started on Steam.. oh boy, such an incredible amount of savings were to be had! Why hadn't I started up Steam before??

I managed to pick up a couple of games - X-Com: Enemy Unknown, Civilisation V: Gods and Kings expansion, Age of Empires 3, Bioshock 1&2..

I plan to write some sort of reviews for all of them as I play through them but since I bought them I haven't had too much time to sit down and get nitty gritty with all of them! Most of my game-time was spent playing X-Com and Civ 5... purely because I remember playing the first X-Com games and the first Civ games oh so many moons ago!

Then I picked up another game, Ace of Spades - which I didn't think I would be too keen on, since I hadn't played Minecraft.. and this is very much like Minecraft but with guns! You can check out the launch trailer here.

That's me for now I think, promise I will be back soon!

Ciao for now!

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Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Heyo all!

So, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the Beta that is going on for the next part of the Starcraft 2 legacy.

Basically, it's a few new units for each race that will be available in multiplayer and a whole new campaign story, this time instead of from the Terran perspective, it's told from the Zerg(WAHOO!). Needless to say because I love the story/playstyle of the Zerg I am really looking forwards to it.

At the moment, you can only play the multiplayer because they need to balance the new units so they aren't like super duper overpowered in the competitive side of the game. But what do I think about it? Well, the new Zerg units are well, quite okay.. but there is at least one change that I am really really happy about.. and it doesn't even really effect the game in general..

As Zerg, all your units move faster on this stuff called creep.. you need to spread the creep with your Queen unit by planting these things called Creep Tumors. In Wings of Liberty these things couldn't be planted on anything like a ramp.. and when you spread them the next one just sorta appeared.. but now... now the spreading has an animation.. it looks like a snake travelling over and above ground to the next point you clicked! And you can put them on ramps!

Not even really a huge change.. but it made me stupidly happy. Perhaps more happy than I should have been about such a small change.

One thing that I was really sad about, was that they had said that one of our units; The Baneling, which explodes in a mess of green goo and happens to be one of my favourite units would be able to move while burrowed under the ground(Note: in Wings of Liberty it could already burrow under ground but couldn't move and was lovingly called the Baneling Land Mine). But it seems they have removed this ability :'(

This is the first of many posts about the Beta, I will most likely go into more details about the new units for each of the races.. or maybe just make one post dedicated to each race and throw info at you about them like that.

In other news.. I have managed to finally get Battle.net SMS Protect off my account and have got it updated to my new phone.. hopefully now I'll be able to start selling stuff in Diablo 3 again!! If things even sell there anymore. I guess I'll find out! Wish me luck!

If you have any feedback or have something you'd like me to tackle let me know, also please follow me on Twitter @McKnublet and subscribe etc!

Ciao for now!

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Starcraft 2: The Day[9] phenomenon

Heyo all, welcome back to my blog! I hope you are all enjoying reading this as much as I am enjoying finally scribbling my random thoughts down! I realise I haven't done a post about Diablo 3 for a while, so after this one I think the next one will be dedicated to my Monk character.

So while I was playing around with the 2v2 games about a year or so ago, I discovered Day[9]. He was a pro-gamer in the Starcraft: Brood War and he did very well for himself! At some stage he started making shout casts and for those who don't know.. shout casts are where some guy gets a replay off two other guys playing a game.. then describes in great detail as much of what is happening as they can. 

Now, I think a lot of his success stems from him being a naturally funny guy.. alongside the fact that he knew his stuff when it came to Brood War. He put out a LOT of content. He plugged in his webcam and talked about Starcraft for an hour or so for five nights a week, a feat he is still pulling off to this day(barring when he is out of town).

His shows have varied topics, usually as he states "It's day9 daily, where we learn to be a better gamer" and they actually do help and some of his thinking and suggestions can even be applied to other games. I would attribute my rise from Bronze to Gold to having watched his streams almost religiously for ages! For the most part now, the daily is analyzing games that he thinks are interesting and might help his viewership in their aim to get better. 

In my opinion, the best thing about his show is Monday's version - Funday Monday. Where he generally imposes a restriction on his viewers and asks that they submit the replay to him and then the next week he will play the best replays on the Monday show and generally laugh at how terribly awful the games are thanks to his restrictions. Usually he has a comic spurt at the beginning of the show where he discusses something about his day or past.

From hearing him talk about it, I found out about a professional team who had a website, which had a wealth of information on the game and a whole host of pro-gamers who stream their practice games live. I never thought I would find so much enjoyment from watching people play a computer game but with Starcraft I can't help myself, whenever I get a free moment I tend to head over to http://www.teamliquid.net/ and flip on a live stream. Of course I have my favourites and I tend to only watch Zerg players... cause well, Zerg 4 lyf.

If you are interested in hearing more about Day[9], I would highly recommend his daily #100 which can be found here - http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-100-my-life-of-starcraft-3505715 - It's quite a long video but he talks about how he got started in Starcraft and how his life has been changed by this game.

Please subscribe for regular updates! :-D

Ciao for now amigos!

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Starcraft 2: The middling

So, where was I? Oh yes! I remember..

So I was left with Zerg! Why not? The general creepiness of the race seems to suit me.. or so she who must be obeyed tells me!

After I had completed the campaign, I was ready for the ladder! Or so I thought, I dutifully played my placement matches and got the wondrous Bronze league! Though, as with most who got placed Bronze, I thought myself far better than that! I was at least Gold, maybe even platinum in my mind!

I ended up playing quite a few matches and having double the wins that I had losses, which only went on to prove to myself that I was better than Starcraft 2 was giving me credit for! Then, after a series of being cheesed which thoroughly annoyed me, I stopped playing for a while. Maybe one or two seasons went by and still I didn't play.

Then one day, Chris again I think asked me to play some games with him. So I did and it re-kindled my interest in actually playing and I plucked up the courage to do my placement matches and got placed in Gold. I don't know how.. maybe it was the many hours that I had spent watching Day9 (http://day9.tv/), he inspired me to change how I played but more about that later!

Armed with my newfound knowledge on how to play the game, I played a few more ladder games but mostly I just played random 4v4 games, they can be so much fun! Especially when you get placed with some awesome players and they all just trash talk each other for the duration of the game. At one point, during an especially good month of working night shift, we had 5-7 people all playing each other on lunch! This was the first time I played Shaun, who had never played against a person before and picked Terran as he'd done the campaign.. in our first game I promptly proxy hatched in his base and spine crawler rushed him.

Eventually though, my enthusiasm for playing dropped off, mostly just because I was so busy working and doing the whole being social thing. Another couple of seasons passed and someone else from work started to really get into playing Starcraft and asked me to start playing with them. Shaun was back and gunning for me. He now played Zerg like me and at that point I think I was a little above him in skill.. can't say the same now though I think!

We played together quite a lot, 1v1s and 2v2 team games.. I think they are some of the fondest memories I have of playing competitive Starcraft games, just sitting on Skype chatting while blasting out match after match. Around that time, we decided to start our very own funny little team. We used up our name changes and became team Bad Micro. We thought and still think we are so clever! Because this made my Starcraft moniker BMMacDaddy and as anyone who knows a little about Starcraft will know, BM also stands for Bad Manner. We had quite a few people talk crap to us about our name, to which we would always respond politely and happily notify them that it meant Bad Micro, but secretly we enjoyed the little smack talk that would erupt from our name.

That's all from me for now, next time I'll go into more detail about how Day9 changed my Starcraft life, introduced me to watching professionals playing and where I am at now, with Starcraft 2.

Ciao for now!

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Starcraft 2: The beginning

With the Heart of the Swarm beta going on, I wanted to talk about how my love affair got started with Starcraft 2.

So how and where do I start! I have been playing starcraft 2 since it was early beta, on and off I might add.

It all started because ... Well because I got into the beta automatically because of work. I had never really played rts games all that much, I mean I messed around with games like command and conquer and warcraft: orcs and humans. The latter I only played a few times because I didn't have a computer and had to go round to my friends house to play.

I had no idea how the game worked, sure I knew you built workers and an army and then you killed your opponent but that was it. As you might imagine, I was terrible. At that point in the beta you couldn't play the single player mode so I ended up playing like 5 games on the big bad internet. I think I lost them all, surprise surprise.

My excellent start to playing starcraft 2 instilled in me something which I battle even now, the dreaded ladder fear. I'm not sure who else may suffer from it.. its not so much that you are scared of playing on the internet, more I think that you are scared of losing to someone you don't know. As crazy as that sounds.

At that point, I had an excellent playing buddy(Chris), who was just as terrible as I was. We played quite a few really bad games against each other.. I think I might even have some of the replays saved from that time.. if you are interested in watching some terribad Starcraft let me know and I'll let you have them!

I think it was then that I found that I couldnt play Terran and Protoss was a girls race, which left me with zerg...

It's time to get ready for work, so I will carry on with this later!

Ciao for now!

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