You’ve got something in your nose…
While trolling the web for Starcraft II related information – patch 18 is live and the Beta will be over on Monday, July 19, as a heads up – we found a little link to the “Starcraft 2 Mastery Guide” by Jay Cooper, apparently produced by a young man who had little to no Stracraft experience before he got his sweaty mitts on the Beta.
This e-book is supposed to provide the ability to transform “complete noobs who have NEVER PLAYED Starcraft before into Diamond Ladder experts in a matter of days.”
And who knows? Maybe it actually does. From the way the author of the webpage speaks either he or whoever wrote it for him has actually played the game before. He describes being harangued by another player in a 2v2 match when he couldn’t spit out his build order in one nice, neat, and making-him-ever-more-unlikely-to-get-laid package.
But instead of crying into his Mountain Dew, our intrepid strategist dug in his heels and got beat the hell down a hell of a lot. Eventually, he stated winning matches, apparently even against players that had been mentioned on (gasp) blogs! This was the big time.
According to the completely unsubstantiated webpage of our electronic author, he is now a diamond-ranked player with the ability to communicate every single scrap of strategy knowledge a player will need to join him at the pinnacle of pwnership.
Ok, we have two things to say about this.
First, the website looks for an ad for one of those “it’s not an investment scam! We promise real money real fast right now! Just give us your bank account number, date of birth and the time of your last bowel movement and you’ll be rolling in cash. Oh, and we need a small investment.” deals. We half-expect websites like these to have a small ‘*’ at the bottom with text like “99% of all participants were unsuccessful. Higher than average suicide rates among enrollees are purely coincidental.”
Granted, this is for an e-book, not a life-changing get rich quick scheme, but the setup of the page, the continual questioning of “are you ready to [blank]?” gives it the same feel.
We’ll [blank] when we feel like, dammit! Don’t pressure us!
As well, the book is advertised for “a low cost of $37”. The author had considered selling it at $97 as recommended by his friends, because the guide could make him a fortune, but he decided to be a humanitarian and offer his wisdom for a reasonable price.
But wait! There’s more!
Get your $37 in quick, because soon the e-book (which includes regular updates about how to be more awesome), will become a membership per month situation. $37 right now guarantees that you will be awesome as soon as possible for as long as possible.
Don’t get us wrong. We like the idea of strategy guides that are actually useful, and maybe this one is. It’s the way that the website is designed – the greasy, too-intense aspect of it that makes us want to turn off the monitor and sanitize it with a strong cleaner.
There’s also the concern that if the guide is so INCREDIBILY AWESOME and everyone buys it to make them uber-leet, who’s going to be left to suck?
Wait.
We sense an opportunity here.
For only $3.14 per month, recurring indefinitely, we will gladly publish the latest and greatest tips on how to be truly abysmal at Starcraft II. No other tips will make you as truly bad as fast as we can with our patented “Usuck” system. A mixture of ridicule and terrible, terrible advice, we’ve been making the best bad players since the Starcraft II Beta began.
Get those credit cards out, people. Start sucking today.
