Buy Starcraft Online

Starcraft 2 is honestly one of the best games ever made. And that's saying a lot for a sequel. Most sequels never quite get it just right. They either lose the feel of the original or are just plain silly. Movies too, but with starcraft 2 Blizzard was able to get a game that is cutting edge with a ton of changes that still feels exactly like the original game did. And that's not easy to do. And perhaps one of the coolest things you can do now is buy starcraft online, an option that just wasn't available even just a few years ago.

Even just five years ago high speed internet access was a lot more iffy, not to mention slower. But as that kind of technology takes some tremendous leaps forward, it has ushered in the possibility of buying games, downloading them and never having to mess with driving to the store and using the cd's or dvd's in the box. It's still going to be a lot faster to do that, unless you live like 500 miles from the nearest store.

So really all you have to do to buy starcraft online is go to battle.net and create a free account there. Once you have a battle net account you can buy a game key right from the interface and get the installer for starcraft 2 in just a few minutes. Now, the game download itself is absolutely massive, so be prepared for a wait - probably a long wait. Unless you're on a T3 connection or something it's going to take the better part of a half a day, or even several days if your connection is wonky.

You can also buy starcraft 2 online from other vendors, but let the buyer beware. there are some very good game sellers out there that have good customer service and slightly better prices than Blizzard itself, but you're also opening yourself, and your computer up to heaven knows what. It may cost you a few bucks more, but at least with Blizzard you know what you're getting and you can be sure you're getting it without viruses and sypware and any other little nasties you might potentially get from other sources. We have used vendors like _________ before and found them completely reliable, however if the few bucks is important to you.

And that's all there is to buying starcraft online. It really couldn't be any simpler, although it could be a lot faster. But that's not really Blizzard's fault after all, we'll just have to wait another five or ten years until connection speeds (hopefully) can catch up to the sheer size of these games. Perhaps that internet 2.0 we've all been hearing about will help by getting rid of the whole packet protocol, but that's a little ways off at least. But for now, this is what you're stuck with, but at least you can buy starcraft online right now if you want to.

how to play starcraft

Starcraft 2 is one of the most anticipated games in a long time. The original starcraft, along with the brood wars expansion had a nice ten year run - like a lot of Blizzard games. and it was still just as playable as it was the day it was released. But it was in need of a facelift and starcraft 2 has not been a disappointment, to say the least. If you've never played starcraft, you owe it to yourself to go grab a copy of the game right now and experience the very best RTSG (real time strategy game) ever made. It's taht good, honest. And here's a little bit about how to play starcraft 2.

The first thing you have to do is get an authorized copy of the game. The best way to do this is go grab the box from your local retailer and pop it in your computer, but there is another way to do it as well. You can go to Blizzard and sign up for a free Battle.net account - buy a game key and then download the game straight to your computer. It's a BIG game, so that download is going to take a while, like a half a day or more depending on your connection speed. But if you have a fast connection and don't like getting out of the house, it's certainly an option.

Once the game is loaded you're in for a treat. It's a beautiful game and so much fun it should really be illegal in most states. OK, I may be overstating a little, but not very much. 

Starcraft Replays

Starcraft replays have always been popular, and there are good reasons why. With the next generation game starcraft 2 now on shelves (you've got your copy already right?) those replays have even more cool features like stats and all kinds of ways of looking at them. In some countries like Korea (duh) those replays go onto television with almost screaming commentators making sports-like color commentary along the way through the match. Starcraft as a sport seems a little over the top to me but there are some really good reasons to get into those replays that you might not have thought about yet.

Starcraft is an especially complex game because it is RTSG (real time strategy game). Strategy games are complex enough as it is, but when you add in the time factor it speeds up the amount of strategy you have to do in the shortest possible period of time. You can think if it asa bit like chess where you only have one second to make a move. Chess is hard enough when you have fifteen minutes or even hours to analyze what to do next, it would be brutal if you had to play it as fast as possible.

Those replays let you in on the secrets of power playing that the pros use. You know, those guys who are playing starcraft for big bucks on television overseas. The pros are the ones who develop all the killer builds and great micro strategies that trickle their way down through the rest of the ladders, and the best way of figuring out the current state of the art when it comes to starcraft strategies comes from watching those epic match replays.

You can learn an almost infinite amount of information by watching starcraft replays if the thing has a good announcer and you know what to look for. It's even better if you can get the original file and watch it with all the statistics and stuff at your fingertips. Dissect what the very best players in the world are doing with their macro and you're sure to learn a few things that can really help you improve.

There are lots of places to watch good starcraft replays such as battle report and HD, but it remains to be seen exactly how everyone is going to use the replays from starcraft 2 with all the nifty upgrades they include. But I'm sure it won't be long before you will figure out how to make the best use of those replays once they are hitting a broadcast website near you. So get to watching and you're sure to improve your starcraft 2 gameplay by leaps and bounds.

Starcraft Trainer

 I've been playing video games longer than I care to tell you about. Probably too long, as a matter of fact. I couldn't even begin to tally up the number of hours (or money) I've spent on gaming over the last - well - a lot of years. But games are fun and a bit addictive and provide a great escape from the everyday without too much in the way of side effects. Sure, there are those who think that games make people more likely to go on mass murdering sprees and all sorts of other nonsense, and there are probably much better ways to spend your time, like with a good book, but overall I think that's it's a pretty innocuous pastime. But with every new generation of games there are those looking for an unfair advantage, and starcraft trainers are no different.

I went through a stage like that myself actually. Looking up cheat codes and what not on the old original nintendo. It was a lot harder to do in those days to be sure, but the internet has changed all that in a huge way. Now cheat codes and hacks and cracks are available all over the internet at virtually a moment's notice. One quick search and you can figure out how to cheat in way that basically make you a godlike entity in the game. A virtual NPC if you will. Able to easily beat what you once found almost impossible, or maybe even completely impossible to do. But after a year or so of using cheat codes back in the day I quit, for good.

It turns out that using cheats makes the game not a game anymore, but rather a rush to the end. And the end of cheating leaves you with a bit of an unsatisfied feeling. Actually it's completely unsatisfying. There is no challenge to a game if you hack it. That's what made those old huge console games so much fun for so long. They only had three buttons and there was no way around having to play the game against the rules. I'll never forget a friend and I finally beating Rastan (yeah I'm old). We whooped and yelled and jumped around like we had actually done something worth yelling about. But it was fun - playing with cheats and beating the game? Not fun at all in the end.

So when it comes to starcraft trainers you can be sure that they will always be around. But really, what's the point in using a trainer to simply finish the game? You'll rocket through the campaign that you paid good money for and then you'll just be done - and bored more than likely. It's a complete waste of time and has some other negative potential consequences as well.

Many trainer programs are actually viruses or spyware in disguise. No elite programmer is going to sit down and spend several hundred hours hacking a game that's just going to change in a few months without some kind of motivation. Typically that motivation is money. But sometimes it takes the form of simple punkness. THey can get a cheap thrill knowing that they are crashing the computer of every person silly enough to load their little subversive program - a program that probably doesn't do anything to starcraft at all.

So in the end, it's my opinion that starcraft trainers and cheats and hacks in general are just dumb. Why pay money for something and then not get anything out of it? It seems a little weird to me, but only because I already know that I've tried cheating and it was a whole lot less fun than doing it the good old fashioned way - and just beating the game outright all by myself. It's a whole lot more fun and satisfying to win.

Starcraft 2 Protoss Strategy part 2

We looked at a few of the things you're going to have to keep in mind when it comes to starcraft 2 protoss gameplay in part 1. Now let's look a bit more precisely at builds so that you have an better idea of what starcraft 2 protoss gameplay looks like from the inside. Of course, we just don't have enough space here to give you a complete strategy, but there are some excellent guides available to give you all the nitty gritty details.

The nice thing about protoss if you like to micro is that the standard opener is pretty simple to handle on a macro level. With fewer decisions to make everything becomes how you use your smaller unit numbers to defeat your enemy who is probably massing lots of bad guys against you (especially zerg). So the standard opener goes like this:

Probe, Probe, Probe -> Build Pylon

Chrono Nexus, Probe, Probe

10-12 supply, Gateway

That's pretty much all there is to it. Once your gateway is up all that's really left is tactical decisions based on expanding and unit choices or upgrades to counter what your opponent is doing. Effective scouting is a must for protoss strategies of any kind to work well. You have to be able to see what your opponent is up to and try to move before he does so that you have time to get your (typically) slower units into play against his weaker (normally) forces and stomp them out.

One build that will get you shooting up the competition ladders is called a 4 gate push. You won't see it all that much in platinum and diamond leagues, because the players are good enough to know how to stop it with highly coordinated and precisely executed micro, but for anyone who is short of very very good, it's really hard to stop a protoss player who is good at a 4 gate push.

Start just like we outlined before and then go for a cybernetics core. Build one assimilator after that and warp gate tech research as soon as the core is done. Then build a few more probes while the assimilator is finishing and get them working. At 150 minerals after this grab 3 gateways and after that it's just zealots, stalkers and 2 or 3 sentries while the warp gate tech is finishing up. By the time you can use the warp gates you have a nice little army to send through it. This whole time you need to be scouting and get a pylon close to to his main base while not letting him find your extra gateways. If you can get a gate close to both the natural and an expansion you've pretty much won. Pop through one gate and hammer away for a bit, then when you start taking to much of a beating just hop through to the other base and wipe it out.

And that's kind of what protoss strategy is all about. With shields you can use the warp gates to get right up close to an enemy base, run in and fire away while your shields hold and then warp to another location. He will be pulling troops to fight off your attack in one spot, but before he can do much more than break through your shields you can be in another spot where there are little to no troops or reinforcements. It takes a lot of good micro to do this, but if you get it down it's hard to stop.

Starcraft 2 Strategies part 2

The rest of multitasking is execution speed and tactical triage. before you can even think about doing any of this your macro has got to be perfect every single time and completely second nature. You can't do five things at once if you can't do one thing well. Start with great macro and you're more than halfway there - to victory. The next part is perpetual motion through high execution speed.

If you watch matches between good players you'll notice that there is always a LOT going on. There is rarely a time when a unit that is not designed for static defense isn't moving. But if you watch weaker player's games you'll notice things like units sitting around a lot doing nothing, buildings not churning out more units, scouts not scouting. The difference between pros and nubs is how many plates they can keep spinning at once, and how many locations on the map they can keep in constant motion. The micro of all that stuff isn't quite as important as all the stuff moving itself.

Which brings us to tactical triage. You can't ever fall into the trap of watching a battle unless it requires macro in order to turn the tide of the match. And before you enter a battle like that you better make damn sure that you have two or three other attacks already in motion to put pressure on somewhere else in your opponent's bases. Idle troops on one side of the map while you try to win with micro just isn't nearly as good as doing a little bit of micro here and there and keeping all of your troops in perpetual motion. Units should never sit still, even if they are not attacking anything. If anything just to keep your enemy guessing about what the heck you're doing moving all your chess pieces around the board.

If you know what to watch and what to ignore you are well on your way to good tactical triage. Get that little cluster of zerglings moving and never let them stop. It really is like spinning plates. If you are zerg against terran and are relying on your arbiter you need ot be able to get into action before he gets emp'd. That's execution speed and triage. But even if you lose that arbiter you might still be able to win if you've got three other small attack forces already in motion that will hit them where they are not looking and not prepared. The more things you give your opponent to react to, the better chance you have of keeping them playing defense while you get to go on the offensive.

They say defense wins championships, but that's bull. At least in starcraft. In order to win consistently in starcraft 2 you have to keep the pressure up and get ahead of your opponent's economy and unit resources. That means taking things out as often and as widespread as you can. Just a worker here and there along with a marine or two and maybe a building - it all adds up over the course of a match. If you can kill that worker or three in one spot while you also take out a small expeditionary force over there and a building at their expansion - well, the game is practically in the bag because you were able to multitask three attacks at once without dropping the ball on your macro.

Starcraft 2 Strategies

I almost hate to tell you this, but I'm not really very good at PvP games. At least, i wasn't until I drew on a lesson I had learned much earlier in life in an entirely different game. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even a computer game at all. For a while I thought I wasn't all that good at RTSG's like starcraft because I'm getting over the hill. You know, old guys just get whipped by young studs right? That should be hogwash in a strategy game. It's not all about how fast you can push buttons in weird combinations and it certainly has nothing to do with how much I can bench press. It does have a lot to do with how fast you can think, and I should have an advantage there - older and wiser you know? And that's how I really improved my starcraft strategies, by relying on an old rule and a different kind of natural talent.

The old rule I mentioned? The best way to get better is by playing against those who are much better than you. Way back in the day I was pretty good at table tennis. Or so I thought. Then this little guy from the Philippines showed up and was beating me like 21 to 3 every single game. and he had this shot that you couldn't return - I mean it was basically un-hittable. But I didn't get mad, I just played him about 500 games. And it forced me to improve. By the end of a semester I was able to make the matches respectable, and even win a decent percentage of the time. I never did get as good as he was, but I got a lot better myself.

And that became a sort of rule for me from then on. Any time I wanted to get better at something, I just went and put myself around the folks who were the very best at it and constantly compared myself and my performance to theirs. I figured out what they were doing that made them so good and then emulated their every move until I was good enough to add some flavor of my own to the process. And it works, every single time - and starcraft strategies are no different.

If you really want to get good - the answer is to get your butt handed to you about 500 times. Honestly - play against really good competition and just grow a thick skin. They are going to laugh at you, kick dirt in your face, and all the other crap bullies do, but every time you get blown up you'll know one more mistake you can't make. eliminate a mistake here and one over there. Get a little faster at this and something else. Know how to work against a 4 gate push and a 6 pool - before you know it you'll be a LOT better than you ever were.