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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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: 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: 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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