Avian Gamers Network

After years of waiting, StarCraft II will be released on July 27th

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/sta ... announced/

cool,

guess it's about time to find an illegal activity to pursue to raise money for my new comp.

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The Cord
Occasional Caretaker of the Horde Maelstrom Guild
Ex-Section 3 Director

I've got mine ordered, Cryus. Should be a good time waster until The Old Republic. The online beta was pretty intense.

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

Right now I don’t have internet in my CLU. My boss is working on it. But even then, the internet sucks at camp hix. They are looking into buying more bandwidth, but I would not doubt that they block games like this. Still I am going to buy it while I am out here, we shall see.

Honestly, I'm more excited about the single player aspect. The online competitive play is ridiculous. I tried a couple of games with my brother, and did OK. I played some pickup matches, and was beaten so badly I couldn't even comprehend what was going on.

After lots of practice, reading strategies, and watching videos online of good players, I still could only win maybe one game in eight or nine. And I was in the worst ranked league, bronze. They also have silver, gold, and diamond. In order to play competitively, you have to use macros and have everything you ever do bound to keyboard shortcuts. You have to use the mouse very little, because its just too dang slow. You also have to be intimately familiar with each races units, buildings, and pros and cons. Playing the beta was not nearly enough time to master even one race.

It also helps to have the reflexes of a teenager. It isn't a "twitchy" game like an FPS, but you can't have any room for pondering what to do, and once you've decided on a strategy, you can't waste time finding the unit or building and clicking on it. You have to hit the key for that unit, hit the key for the action you want, and cycle to the next unit. Even in the midst of a big battle, you have to flit back to your base and keep micromanaging your production and units, and then flip back to the battle to keep crushing the opponent.

I'll never be able to play online at a high level. I may, with enough practice and time, be able to make it into a silver league. I'll never be able to go higher than that. It is a fun game, though. I don't think of graphics being a big reason to play an RTS, but the graphics are really nice to look at, as well.

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

I am debating whether to grab this right away or not. I definitely won't be getting it for any kind of competitive play. I suck at RTS games.

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"

I just realized that this date is just around the corner. I did not preorder, I guess I will have to wait until it is at the PX, or maybe get Danyale to ship it to me.

Working 16+ hours each day, I really don’t have much time for gaming, but I am a huge StarCraft fan... maybe I can find a way to squeeze the campaign game in somewhere.

My copy is on backorder currently :-/ oh well I didnt preorder and am in no real hurry for it

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Section 6

I was hoping there would be some starcraft fans back here at the old Avian house.

I got the game two days ago and have been really enjoying it. The single player campaign has been greatly improved. You can now choose which missions you want to take, upgrade units, hire mercenaries, and upgrade technology with research artifacts inbetween missions. The campaign feels more enveloping and atmospheric. It pulls you into the universe a lot more than the first one did.

The multiplayer does seem quite tough. There are a lot of ridiculously good starcraft players out there. But I think multiplayer would be loads of fun with of group of friends that know each others skill level and can make fair teams. Plus there are custom maps in multiplayer such as tower defense games which are a fun distraction from normal play.

Has anyone gotten in game yet??
I would love to form a party with some old Avian friends

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"There is no such thing as a free lunch."

My CPU is having some blue screen issues that I want to resolve. Once that happens I intend to pick the game up. Mostly for SP, but I'd play MP with friends.

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"

Here's my info to add me to friend list. I'm sure ill be playing a lot this weekend
Username: Tdog
Character code: 896

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"There is no such thing as a free lunch."

I have my copy, played it some this week. Seems like a really cool game.

Took me about 10 hours to get it running on my wife's computer (HP laptop). It was having lots of graphical corruption, almost like the video card was overheating, but it plays everything else fine. I got a hint of an issue when installing the game, and it says it doesn't recognize her graphics card.

Long story short, it was a bad graphics driver. Since its an HP laptop, only HP can supply the damn drivers for it, and of course they aren't as up-to-date as ATI's webpage. But ATI's drivers won't install, tells me the hardware isn't compatible, and I need to get the driver from HP.

I've since lost the site where I got the driver, but I had to download a hacked driver that was the current version from ATI that would install on the HP laptop (driver created by a "Robin Hood"). I had to go into safe mode, uninstall the video card and driver, use a third-party tool to rip all ATI drivers from Windows, and then install the hacked driver. Works like a charm now.

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

grr i hate driver issues like that. I'm playing with graphic settings all on low b/c the gpu on this computer is one of those not so good integrated ones. Oh well at least the game still plays, even if it doesn't look like the pretty pictures on the box.
lol @ Robin Hood
Sent you a friend request Cetera

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"There is no such thing as a free lunch."

My copy is in the mail. Should get it in a week.

So what do you guys think of the game?

The online is definitely easier than it was in beta. Probably on account of more noobs, less hard-core fans. I'm winning right at about 50% of the matches I play. I'm still in the "practice" league, though.

The game seems very cool. Lots of new things in it. The graphics engine is amazing, and they do all cutscenes in the game with the graphics engine. Its weird, because you never really get to zoom in on the individual units, but they could look great. The engine itself is really top-notch if you've got a nice card. They pull off some amazing stuff with it, and the in-engine cutscenes look better than a lot of the pre-rendered stuff from 4+ years ago.

The gameplay is pretty fun. The campaign storyline is pretty good, surprisingly so for an RTS. It has kept me playing for longer stretches of time than my wife approves of, so you know it can't be all bad. There is lots to do in the campaign, and lots of little side "quests" that I keep going out of my way to do. You get troop types gradually, and can purchase upgrades via loot earned in missions, as well as researching upgrades. Its not real deep, but it is fun and pulls me along pretty well.

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

I got the game a few days ago, quickly installed it, but I can’t get the damn thing to run. A small window keeps popping up saying StarCraft II requires a patch, when I click to download the patch the screen flickers and a moment later I get the same window saying the game requires a patch.

I looked for help, and I see all kinds of advice, but none of it is working for me. I am not sure; maybe work is blocking the patch files. I hear they look like torrents.

I found a patch mirror site, downloaded the patches, unzipped them, and placed them in the StarCraft II folder. When I launch the game, nothing new happens; I get the same patch required window. When I launch the installer it says there are no patches to install. Maybe I am not placing the patch files in the correct location.

I am going to fly to Dubai and Kuwait this Saturday to teach a Primavera 6 class. Hopefully I can download the patch from the hotel.

Blizzard's patching basically does use torrents. They are UDP packets broadcast from their servers and everyone else who has the patch. Its very similar to the way they patch WoW, and a lot of work networks don't tolerate it.

If you are running Windows 7, you may also be having file access issues. Don't install the game to your Users directory on your C:\. Install it to some other folder that you create outside of the normal Windows folder structure. Sometimes Windows 7 blocks access to programs that are trying to make changes to files in those folders, thinking its a security vulnerability.

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

I had to use a proxy server to get the patches started. Took all night, but I got most of them straight up. The last one locked up on me, so I replaced the incomplete files with the ones I downloaded manually. So now the game runs, but I cannot authenticate. Word on the street is I need to go to McDonalds, or Starbucks and authenticate from there. Trouble is there are no McDonalds out here where I am at. If I get a chance (highly unlikely) I will try to go to the MWR, or a pay internet Cafe on the boardwalk. More than likely I will just do it from the hotel Saturday night.

“Almost there”

Ok, I got it working. My company is blocking the ports the game need to communicate to battle.net. The connection from my hotel room in Kuwait allowed me to authenticate, now I can play the campaign.

I love this game.

By the way, this game is bad-ass. I freaking love it. The story line is great, the presentation of the story line is great, there's a little bit of emotional tie-ins and drama, but overall it is just a well told, well put together piece of software. Can you expect anything less from Blizzard?

I just finished the campaign. (Can you tell I don't get to play much in the way of video games anymore?) I'm more impressed with the graphics engine that they use to do the cinematics in realtime than I was before. It is pumping out stuff of higher quality than I think even recent FMV in games like Final Fantasy.

The game play is addicting. I've been getting involved in the multi-player, and I continually want to jump in to another battle, "just one more." Its reminiscent of playing Civilization, just one more turn. I don't quite understand why they don't have all the units from the campaign available in multiplayer unless it is simply for balance reasons.

Anyway, if there is anyone out there who's been on the fence as to purchasing this game, its worth it.

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!