Starcraft 2: IEM and slow internet

This will be a short one! My PC arrived yesterday! Oh my days! The tower is huge! Much bigger than my old one, that right there tells you that it's better.. cause bigger is better right?! While I'm writing this, it's downloading stuff on my nice and slow interwebs.. joy, it just did 10,001 windows updates. Ok, that may be an overestimation but still.. it was a lot! I love getting a new computer, but then I also hate it very much.

I've downloaded steam and D3.. oh! With the graphics cards I got, they gave me a key to Tomb Raider, so that is also downloaded - going to give that a bit of a play later. They also told me I'd get keys to Bioshock: Infinite and Crysis 3 but they have yet to arrive. I'm excited to see what Crysis looks like! Currently downloading SC2.. C'mon! It takes so long! Now, I know I complain a lot about my internet.. so.. take a look at this! Note: This is without any downloads running.

Apart from that, I watched some of the first day of the Intel Extreme Master's Starcraft 2 tournament. Instead of deciding to use the Wings of Liberty, they decided to go ahead and use Heart of the Swarm(which is released in 7 days!!!). At first, I was quite sad as from the games that I saw played - two Protoss Vs Zerg, the Zerg buddy lost :(

However, there was one hero waiting in the wings of liberty to take up the mantle of ultimate Zerg buddy... LiquidRet. He is part of Team Liquid and has been for a long time! The guy has put a lot of effort into playing HotS and it showed. I won't spoil any results for anyone, but safe to say it was really enjoyable to watch! If you are interested, you should check out the VOD's from today's games!

Time for me to try out some of them games!

Ciao for now!

p.s. I was about to post this and then saw this new blog post by Travis Day about Diablo 3's itemization - very cool read and some promising thoughts in there. Find it here.

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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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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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Productivity Vs Me

Howdy doody!

So, today is my fifth day of non smoking..annnnd the cravings are pretty bad. For the most part my coping strategies are that I am avoiding all the things that used to make me want to smoke. Though, I can't escape the dreaded work.

So what have I been doing? Well, I played some HotS Beta.. but mostly when I have been playing games, I have been whipping butt in Diablo 3. I figured it was beyond time and finally got my Barbarian to level 60. It was easy once I got some better gear.. which I bought from the gold auction house using the profits of my other level 60 toon's.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed playing the Barbarian, it's quite like the Monk but a lot more bulky, doesn't look like he'd snap in two if some group of monsters looked at him sideways. Also that pretty much all of the sounds of the maneuvers you use are very gratifying.. it sounds like it hurts! Which afterall is why we play such a bloodthirsty game.. because it sounds and looks so bloody!

I'm not going to go into too much depth about the Barb, I'll leave that for the post specifically about them but I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to!

I had a day off work yesterday and for once I was quite productive... shock horror! I fixed my darlin's bike after going and getting a new inner tube, I bought a new lock since the nice guy at the post office depot snipped my old one for me*, bought some food and hit level 60 with my Barb!

I'm actually stupidly good at procrastinating, like a lot of folks I guess, which doesn't help when I am wanting to do stuff... you know, like work.. and writing blogs.. and well, everything! So it's always a bit of a surprise to me when I actually manage to get stuff done.

I think the next post will be about the HotS Beta, which I have managed to keep quiet about till now... wait for it, it's coming!

Ciao for now!

*Though I am thankful to that guy for helping me, I could have been anyone just trying to ram keys into a bike lock! He could have just helped me steal a bike... though it was indeed my bike and I had been there for... some time.

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Random scribblings: Kicking habits and passing tests

Small update, since today so far has been an awesome day.

I passed the driving theory test in England.. I had already passed the theory test in Ireland.. but never got to take the practical before I moved back to England and due to the way things work I couldn't just take the practical here.. even though I had already passed a theory test! So now I have to book some lessons in preparation for the practical.. which I'm kinda worried and yet excited about at the same time.

Even though I had to come into work right after I had taken the test, it still didn't put a dampener on my day.. and even though I'm still at work now, it ain't no thang.. looking forwards to going home, having some excellent home-cooked food and having a celebratory sleep.

I just thought.. and the best thing about passing the theory test today, is that I can get back to playing HotS and D3 instead of taking mock tests ^^

On top of that.. the National Health Service is running a campaign in October to help people quit smoking it's called Stoptober, so I decided that after .. too many years smoking that it was time to quit properly! I'm kinda anxious about it but looking forwards to reaping the rewards of joining the non-smokers.

If you have any advice on fighting the cravings, feel free to throw it at me!

Just had to share :)

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