Blizzard makes deal with AMD

"The semiconductor company also said today that it has entered into a partnership with Blizzard Entertainment, purveyor of arguably the most popular PC game in the world, World of Warcraft. As part of the development-partnership deal, AMD will also begin bundling unspecified Blizzard Entertainment games with all ATI Radeon graphics cards."

Rest of the article.

This also probably means we will see those cinematic ads when you start up a game: "Works Best with AMD Graphics Card!" All I know is after this deal I'm probably going to put a Radeon card into my new PC.

Community Event!

Karune made a post on the battle.net forums today about some kind of upcoming community event in which we all judge the in-game models.

"We have a planned community event around the Dark Templar in which we hope to get much feedback about the models in-game of these units. More info will be available as we approach closer to BlizzCon." - Karune

I wonder what it could be. We will find out closer to BlizzCon, which I am probably going to!

Esports News Article in Australian News

"In fact, competition has never been stronger. In the world of video games, electronic sports, or "eSports" are on the rise, and have been for years. Numerous organisations are attempting to push competitive video game play through to the mass market, but they face an uphill battle."

Rest of the article

It's always great to see esports in the mainstream news. StarCraft 2 is really going to help esports grow in the west, and Blizzard is going to be riding shotgun on this goldmine. The only tragedy is that the west is becoming more accustomed to console games; Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are now gaining popularity and esports have already started to take off. Hopefully Blizzard can shift all these gamers back the PC with StarCraft 2.

Legionnaire's Advice to Beginners

Legionnaire's alive and well, and even posted at Teamliquid.net in a thread of a beginner asking for help; how nice of him.

Anyways, some of his good advice includes:

"1 - Load up a replay of yourself. Click on the nexus/CC (harder with Z - but click on hatchery and watch the larvae / minerals) and just watch the probe production. The nexus should never stop building. It should always have 1 queued. Particularly early -mid game. If you need to ask 'when do i stop building them' you aren't at the stage in skill to EVER stop!

2 - Hotkey buildings. more improtantly, hotkey Production buildings. and learn the unit production keys.

3 - Watch your mineral count. If it gets high, utilize step 1 and 2!

4 - Scout. i always scouted late, but i pretty much knew what most ppl would do. You do not. You must scout. Scouting provides information, and information provides counters to builds. So many people build canons, or build things just for the sake of doing it. Why waste lots of money building something you dont need? When you can build something you do need!
For beginners, just learn the 2-3 most common strats that your opponsition race uses. And scout for it. If you see 1 fact or 2, your basic build should switch over to a better counter. etc. The counter doesn't need to be 'huge' it just needs to take advantage of what you've learnt. If you see a 2nd upgrade going at a fact, you can expect vulture/mines soon! Get goons! etc etc

5 - When you get an advantage, expand.

6 - Learn early game builds. Late game doesn't matter, early game is where it counts. This used to mean a lot more until everyone became replay whores, but the point still stands.

7 - Macro well. this is all hotkeys, mineral expenditure, and expanding." -

- Legionnaire

This is actually first class advice, from one of the best foreigners of the game. The rest of his advice can be found here. Some of it actually helped me, especially since I'm just returning after a four month break.

Happy gaming, guys.

One of the Last Great Games

sAviOr[gm] vs. IntoTheRainBOw on Peaks of Baekdu

Quite possibly one of my favourite PvZ games of all time. Brilliantly played by both players; RainBOw putting up a superb fight against the Maestro, sAviOr, at the height of his dominance. RainBOw shows off his fancy micro with reavers and high templars, obliterating the Maestro's everlasting stream of units. The game bounces back and forth and it is hard to tell who is going to win throughout the game.