This does not look pleasant or pleasurable.
Ah, innuendo. Where would popular writing be without you? Likely in a very well-appointed restaurant, eating a comically over-sized banana that no one would dare comment on as being somewhat salacious.
Thank god we don’t live in that world.
Instead, we live in a day and age with no Starcraft II, at least for the time being. But in that time that you’re, well, just being, you should probably get off your ass and do something. Since it likely won’t be work, here are three suggestions to help occupy your time until a) the Beta comes back b) the game gets released or c) that girl calls you back. Since the first two have actual “within this millennium” timelines, you hopefully won’t have that long to wait.
Fortunately, the SCII community has not crawled under a rock to drink Mountain Dew and weep into the dirt while Blizzard polishes (re: breaks) their favorite new toy. Instead, amateur map makers, website builders and would-be TV hosts are off and running to bring you the latest Starcraft action.
First off is the download-able user-made map known as “Thaddius”. This is playable offline using the Beta information you’ve already download, so unless you were a n00b and deleted it, you should be good to go. Basically, the author, Ryan Rowland, created a SCII version of the Thaddius boss encounter in WoW. The way this worked in WoW was that you had 10 or 25 people who attacked a boss that randomly put an electrical charge on them. If you stood next to players with the opposite charge, you would get electrocuted, and these charges would change from time to time, requiring movement. Periodically, the boss would also pick someone up and give them a big ol’ electric hug. Fun times. It required co-ordination and patience, and at least a basic grasp of what “+” and “-” meant. Not surprisingly, many WoW groups had a great deal of trouble with this boss.
The SCII map has you controlling a group of Marines and several healing units while fighting a giant Mech of the same name as the WoW boss. He still does his shock grab and polarity change, but the “grab” is more of a “shoot someone with lighting”. If you’re standing too close, it arcs out and hits other people. The idea of the map is to train players to increase their APM by reacting to a set of ever-changing circumstances. A single mistake in Marine placement or not moving one fast enough can result in Cajun-fried defenders of the Dominion. The map is available via StarFeeder.com.
Next, if you’ve got a hankering for Starcraft II talk, check out Day[9]TV at Ustream.com. This is an excellent source for not only SCII strategy news, but general content as well, and from all reports is actually mildly entertaining.
If you’re really not into playing offline SCII or watching nerdTV, then you can settle in for a good read of SCforall.com. Created by Artosis, yet another oddly-named but famous (apparently) Starcraftian, this one has a great deal of SCII news and opinions, mostly from a Korean standpoint. If that’s what you’re into, then enjoy this helping of Western Pacific goodness.
Sure, at the end of the day, none of these are really Starcraft. Microing is fun, TV is great, and reading is, well, a dying art, but they don’t really satisfy.
True enough, but neither do Twinkies or those Super Joe Louis chocolate sandwich things, and we’re willing to live on those almost indefinitely.
So long as our heart valves last until July 27, we’re all good.
