Tuesday 12 July 2011

My first blog! I will be talking almost exclusively about 1vs1 play.

Hi everyone, I am a person, and I've decided to make a blog about my favorite hobby, Starcraft 2! If you have never heard of Starcraft or Starcraft 2 before, it is an RTS (real-time strategy) game.
It is an extremely fast-paced and competitive game that requires perfected strategies to be victorious at high levels. In fact it is so popular in South Korea that has basically become a sport, where there are teams who practice together, and then compete in tournaments. They have several channels where the top professional games are broadcasted. The most competitive and popular matches are 1 vs 1.
How the game works is, you are looking down on your base from an overhead perspective, and you start off with one building that produces workers. You use those workers to harvest 2 resources, first minerals and then vespene gas. You continue to produce as many workers as you can throughout the game in order to have a larger economy. Workers cost some minerals, but they soon pay for themselves. You then start building an army using the resources you have collected. The goal is to destroy every single one of your enemy's buildings. Once you have done that, you are victorious. Usually your army will clash with the opponent's army before you are able to freely destroy their structures. You cannot see what your opponent is doing unless you scout what they're doing with a unit of your own, or scan their base (a Terran ability).
There are 3 races in the game and 4 race options available before a match begins: Protoss, Terran, Zerg and Random--random meaning the computer will decide by random chance which race you will be the moment the game begins.
Each race has completely different buildings, workers, and army units available to them. All army units have different characteristics, ranging from being a melee fighter (zealot), to a unit that is able to fire from  a long distance and cause splash damage where multiple units are damaged within a small radius (tank). Some units are even capable of causing terrible, terrible damage to the opponent's army or base through psionic storms(a Protoss ability), or even calling down a nuclear missile(a Terran ability). Some units are extremely fast, others are extremely slow. Some units can become invisible (cloak) for a certain amount of time while they have energy, some are able to cloak perminately, requiring detection units from the opponent to be able to be seen or attacked.
Considering all the strengths and weaknesses that army units may have when facing dynamic units of the other race options, there are many strategic decisions that a player needs to be aware of. The way you play or the type of army units you may build as Terran against Protoss for example may be completely different from the way you might play against Zerg. This demands meticulous training and strategic planning from professional players against each race option. This is why most players don't choose Random, especially at the professional level of play because they will have to learn all 9 matchups vs every possibility of race option (pvsp pvsz pvst zvsz zvsp zvst tvst tvsp tvsz). Other times players will choose a race for themselves simply because it is their favorite to play, or easiest for them, or best suits their playstyle.
Top tier players will be so accustomed to each matchup, they will know exactly the order and timing to build each one of their buildings for each particular strategy they are doing. There can be much variation between strategies, including going for an aggressive strategy where you plan to attack very early, keeping your enemy on the backfoot, going for a technology focused strategy where you can gain a tech advantage over your opponent so you can kill his workers or defeat his army more easily, or you can go for an economy focused strategy where you defend until you have a great amount of money come in and can produce many more low tier army units.

Anyways I hope that gives you an idea of what Starcraft 2 is all about. In the future, I hope to update this regularly and include some screenshots of my gameplay, and some strategies, including build orders, timings, and just general tips.

starcraft 2 rocks!

8 comments:

  1. nice! i play sc1 cause i cant afford a dvd drive to install sc2. keep them strats a commin tho!

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  2. Good news for you, you don't need a dvd drive for starcraft 1 or 2, you can download both of them online via blizzard's website using your battle.net account, and providing your cd keys for the corresponding blizzard game you have.

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  3. Great!!! I love sc2! Look on my blog its most the same only a slight different! I sure follow this love it :D

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  4. kinda makes me wanna switch from warcraft :P

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  5. great guide....my friends love this game

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  6. I will update soon ive just been busy last few days. And yeah you should switch over, sc2 is amazing, and the ladder system is pretty awesome.

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  7. When you gunna update yo starcraft 2 blog?

    http://computer-repair-diy.blogspot.com

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