Happy Starcrafting: Too Long Edition

Blizzard Talks About Cheating in Starcraft II

Blizzard have told us, as you can read below, that the time of the cheater in Starcraft II will come to an end soon. This is nearly the same type of approach they use in World of Warcraft where they will constantly ban or suspend the hackers, cheaters or exploiters in waves. Hopefully that first wave will be coming soon! Check below for the full quote.

Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating in any form in Blizzard games very seriously, and that’s no different for StarCraft II. If a StarCraft II player is found to be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form, then as outlined in our end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play StarCraft II with his or her account.

Playing StarCraft II legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net, and it goes against the spirit of fair play that all of our games are based on. We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future.
Blizzard Entertainment

 The NVIDIA GosuGamers Art Contest Winner Announced

The winner of the long running NVIDIA GosuGamers Art Contest was finally chosen. There was apparently a lot of drama involved in the voting and choosing of the winner. The one that won apparently only won it with one or two votes at the time of the poll’s closing. A lot of people complained that the second place should have taken it… I disagree. If you have a look at the first and second place submissions and don’t agree with me…

Well let’s just leave it at that. The person that won’s entry, which can be seen below, is a lot better than the second place entry. The amount of detail, the precision, the skill. He is just a superior artist. congratulations to Charles “Tabnir” Liu for winning the NVIDIA GTX 460. You can see his submission above. If you are interested in the second place entry you can see that here.

Kas Wins Competo Cup #5

The Terran player Kas managed to take Competo Cup #5. I am still trying to figure out who he actually played against. The coverage of these tournaments is really, really bad. I will update this post as soon as I know. At least we know it was Kas that won it.  

Strelok Wins ZOTAC Cup #22

The Terran powerhouse Strelok managed to win ZOTAC Cup #22. He faced off against Zerg player Dark.Force in the finals and managed to take it with an impressive 3-1.

MaNa Wins Go4SC2 #37

The Protoss player MaNa took the Go4Sc2 Cup #37 over this past weekend! He battled it out against the Terran player SjoW and took it with a score of 3-1.

Demuslim Wins Take’s Homestory Cup

TaKe’s Homestory Cup took place this past Saturday between the IEM German Qualifiers and SteelSeries Go4SC2 Cup #37. Eight top European players competed for the prize of 300 EURO. Demuslim proved to be the best player on the day, though. In the all Terran finals Demuslim managed to take BratOK down with a score of 3-1.

GosuGamers King Of The Hill VOD’s

The VOD’s of the GosuGamers King of the Hill that happened last week are finally up and can be found over at the GosuGamers website. These games were incredibly exciting and are definitely worth a watch for any HuK or MorroW fans!

NVIDIA GosuGames King of the Hill VOD’s

Four Kings Adds Starcraft II Lineup

The legendary Clan, The Four Kings, has announced their startup lineup for Starcraft II. Currently they only have the two Protoss players Bischu and MyWa. They plan on expanding the impressive lineup further soon so we’d best keep an eye on that!

July Moves To Starcraft II

Korean professional StarCraft gamer  Sung Joon ‘July’ Park has announced he is moving into the world of StarCraft II. The 23 year old (25 year old in Korean culture) player’s contract with StarCraft Pro-league team STX Soul ended in August and he did not sign another. We will be hearing more about which team he is joining for Starcraft II soon. Stay tuned for more on that!

IdrA And Tasteless Join Evil Geniuses

This past Tuesday Team EG announced the acquisition of two big names in the world of Starcraft 2. Gregory ‘IdrA’ Fields and Nick ‘Tasteless’ Plott have joined their ranks. That puts the EG Starcraft II Team at 8 incredibly impressive players.

ANGRYAFRICAN and Dreamer Leave Ventus Gaming

On the local side of things Barry “Dreamer” West and Richard “ANGRYAFRICAN” West have left the Ventus Gaming MGO. The two brothers claim to have been too busy to continue playing for the clan and are rather focusing on their jobs. We don’t know much about the reasons for their departure but it must truly be a sad day for Ventus Gaming. It will be interesting to see what the brothers have planned for the future, though.

Blizzard Fan Art Updates

The Blizzard Fan Art Section has been updated once again with a few amazingly cool new pieces of art. You can see my personal favourite addition by Sheh Ming-Yee (Sheh) above and the rest of them in the link provided below!

Blizzard Fan Art Section

Keep checking back here for more updates and information from the world of Blizzard and Starcraft II!

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Happy Starcrafting: Guests, Art And DreamTeam Edition!

StarCraft II Custom Map Contest Ends Soon

I know, I did post about this before. I just thought it worth mention that Blizzard’s Custom Map Contest is ending soon! You only have a couple more days to get those submissions in!

We just wanted to remind you that the first ever StarCraft II Custom Map Contest will be drawing to a close on September 11, 2010. If you’re hoping for a chance to have your map featured at BlizzCon, win a trip to the convention, and score a cool $5,000 in the process, then put the finishing touches on your map and submit it before the deadline.

Read the contest page to learn more — don’t miss out on your chance for glory!

If you have yet to submit your map or just want to see what’s up for grabs, be sure to check out the contest page.

NVIDIA GosuGamers Art Contest

You can no longer submit art for the GosuGamers Art Contest! Awww! But, for those of us that were not able to muster up something worthy of submission, there’s always voting! After four weeks the contests entries are now closed and GosuGamers have a post up with all of the entries that made the final cut. You can head on over there if you want to cast your vote or just see who’s most likely to walk away with that NVIDIA GTX460!

 

NVIDIA GeForce artwork contest: Voting process begins

First Altitude TeamLiquid Open #1 (EU Server)

As you can see below it seems like TeamLiquid is getting into the tournament business. Their first open tournament boasts an impressive prize poll of $500 and is set to take place on September the 18th! Known ‘pro’ Starcraft II players will be able to register before the general public. You can read more about that over at the thread on the TeamLiquid Forums.

TeamLiquid is proud to announce our first TL Open, a 512 player open registration tournament run entirely through our website. This will hopefully be the first of many TL Opens. Each one will alternate between the EU and US servers and have individual sponsors. The first tournament will be held on the Europe server, and anyone with an EU battle.net account can enter.

The Altitude TL Open #1 will be held on Saturday, Sep 18 10:00pm KST[local].
Check-in will begin 30 minutes before the tournament starts.

Altitude TL Open #1 (EU Server)

 

Blizzard Talks About “Guest Mode” and “Offline Mode”

Blizzard has a handy little post up that covers, in detail, everything you can expect from the ‘Guest’ and ‘Offline’ modes in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. There are a few things here that I didn’t know myself. Like the fact that in Guest Modes you can pretty much do it all, except play multiplayer or get achievements!

Uncovering “Guest Mode” and “Offline Mode”

New Starcraft Dream Team

Former BroodWar player and MBCGame HERO coach ‘Lee’ has decided to put together a team of some of the bigger names in the Korean Pro-scene. Now, while I don’t know many of the Korean Starcraft II Pro’s, I do know Tester and Cool. That said, as of now, the newly formed roster of team TSL (Team SCV Life) is as follows:

• sSKS (a.k.a. Tester)
• FruitSeller (a.k.a. Cool[fOu])
• Clide

It’s looking pretty impressive and this new team is probably worth keeping an eye on! See the full post over at GosuGamers.

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Happy Starcrafting: Monday Edition

There has been quite a bit happening in the world of Starcraft in the past few days, let’s see if we can get a bit of it covered in this post! I am still thoroughly enjoying my time, albeit limited, in the game. I think I am currently about six or seven missions in and about to start a rather intimidating mission that I think was called “Whispers of Doom”. It’s all been amazing so far and  I can’t wait to jump in there again when I get some free time! But anyway, let’s get to the news!

Free Character Name Change Coming Soon

As the title says Blizzard is going to be giving away free character name changes in the near future. I think a lot of players will be happy with that and I personally know a few that chose their current character nicknames as sort of spur of the moment things and are not really that happy with them anymore. Furthermore I think a lot of World of Warcraft players that came into Stacraft II didn’t quite understand the significance of the nickname they chose. Good idea doing this Blizz and it’s nice to see something coming at us for free for a change!

We wanted to let everyone know that in the near future we’ll be allowing everyone a chance to change their chosen StarCraft II character name for free.

In some cases, people chose character names that don’t represent their usual multiplayer nicknames, as they were unaware of how the character names were being used. It’s important to us that everyone is represented by a name of their choosing in their multiplayer games, ladders, and on the forums and community site.

In addition, beyond this initial free name change, we’ll be launching a service similar to the one we offer for World of Warcraft which will allow additional character name changes for a fee. We’ll announce more details on how the free name change and additional paid character name changes will be implemented in the near future.

Blizzard Custom Map Contest

You’ve conquered the single-player campaign and climbed the multiplayer ladder — but do you have what it takes to be a StarCraft II custom map designer? In our first-ever StarCraft II Custom Map Contest, we’re challenging you to craft the most fun, creative, and polished custom map that the galaxy’s ever seen.

That should pretty much explain it! If you think you got what it takes and can map with the best of them in the Starcraft II Galaxy Editor then this one is for you! So what they are looking for is pretty much anything made in the Galaxy Editor. I guess you just gotta remember that ‘pretty much anything’ won’t necessarily win it for you. Entrants have till September 11 to submit their maps! You can find the full details of this competition over at the Official Blizzard Custom Map Contest Page.

Starcraft Arena Launches

HD and Husky Starcraft’s baby has finally hit the web! Starcraft Arena is now live and they claim that it is the new home of everything Starcraft II. Apparently the site has everything from replays to tutorials, casts to tournaments and even active forums with a community to support them! With those two behind the wheel I am sure this site will do nothing but succeed. Visit Starcraft Arena now!

HuK and Socke advance to the playoffs of the NVIDIA Starcraft II GosuCup

Protoss player HuK and fellow Protoss player Socke have both advanced to the playoffs after yesterday’s NVIDIA GosuCup qualifier. Apparently the final between Socke and HuK to determine the seeding position will be played at a later date. You can find the full results of the qualifier here and I’m sure we’re going to be hearing more about the play-offs soon!

DIMAGA Takes Go4SC2 Cup #29 and MorroW triumphant at ZOTAC #18

In an all-mTw final of Go4SC2-Cup #29 DIMAGA managed to best clanmate DeMusliM with a score of 3 to 2. Interestingly DIMAGA played as Terran in this tournament and still manged to take everyone in his path down. You can find the full results here and the full replay pack here.

The Swedish Terran-player MorroW took home the 100€ price-money from this past weekends Zotac-Cup #18. In the final Best of Five he beat the Terran Lucifron with a score of 3 to 0. You can find the full results here and the full replay pack here.

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GosuCup – Starcraft II Open Tournament

We are proud to announce the return of the GosuCups. This time we have a €1,500 prize pool sponsored by NVIDIA. The cups are open for all, and we will have four qualification rounds, two for the European and two for the American server.

That’s all sounding pretty good to me! Two European Cups, two American Cups and everyone can enter. I think this, if anything, is a great opportunity for the local guys to get in there and see what the big tournaments are like. Not that ours really seem to be that small anymore. If you were serious about getting somewhere by playing Starcraft II or maybe making a couple of bucks at a competition here and there, this is exactly the kind of thing you gotta jump at. You may not be able to win the  €900 first prize just yet but we all gotta start somewhere! You can see the schedule and get links to sign up below!

Schedule
August 14: +00:00 CET 18:00 EDT	US qualifier #1 (Top 2 advance)	» SIGN UP
August 15: 18:00 CET 12:00 EDT	EU qualifier #1 (Top 2 advance)	» SIGN UP
August 21: +00:00 CET 18:00 EDT	US qualifier #2 (Top 2 advance)	» SIGN UP
August 22: 18:00 CET 12:00 EDT	EU qualifier #2 (Top 2 advance)	» SIGN UP
August 27:	Quarter Final
August 28:	Semi Final
August 29:	Grand Final, Bronze Final

 

News via GosuGamers. Thanks for the great looking tourney guys!

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New Nvidia drivers, SC2 improvements!

I guess the guys over at Nvidia are well aware that Starcraft II will most likely be one of the bigger releases in 2010 and they want to keep its fans happy. This morning Nvidia released new GeForce beta drivers (197.25) that sport some fixes for some of the issues in the SC2 beta.

“This release adds compatibility fixes for the StarCraft II beta and for some DirectX 8 applications but is otherwise identical to version 197.13.”

If you have an Nvidia graphics card in your PC and want to maximize your SC2 experience I guess they are worth checking out!

Nvidia Homepage
Go to Download Drivers > Beta and Archived Drivers > Select your card and OS and you’re set!

*Update – Seems they only released the Windows 7 beta drivers so far.*

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