South Korean Superstar

The release of Starcraft II signals a new dawn for computer gamers all over the world. The first Starcraft is one of the best RTS strategy games ever made and is the one which all others are compared against. The sequel does it's predecessor proud.

Just as a note before I discuss the game, in South Korea the top players are like movie stars. They play in packed stadiums where they are watched by adoring fans who follow on massive jumbotron like projectors. While the game is not quite on that level here in the states it is one of the best games available on the computer. The following will be a general overview of the game and will not go into strategy which will be discussed in a different article.

For those of you that don't know starcraft features three different races. The first are the terran who draw a similar comparison to the mobile infantry from Starship Troopers or the Imperial Guard for are warhammer followers. The second group are the zerg. This ailen race is pretty much a carbon copy of the bugs from Starship Troopers, and again for are Warhammer 40k followers they would be the Tyranids. The final group are the Protoss. They are a psionic wielding race who do not have a Starship Troopers reference, but they are similar to the Eldar in Warhammer 40k.

First, the greatest thing about starcraft is that there is no monthly fee, which annoys me with games like WOW or Eve. The game is played on Blizzards Battlenet server which always has over 1 million players on which makes it nice and easy to get a match. Now a big improvement over the first Starcraft is that now you are matched against players of the same skill level. The server is broken up into 5 different player levels ranging from bronze up to platinum. This makes for a much mor enjoyable gaming experience which allows new players to learn the game while not getting brutally masacred within the first 10 mins of the game.

The University of Florida is currently offering Starcraft as an honors level course. Who said college was no fun. The point of the course is to teach students about resource management. This is an interesting concept but seems more like it should be a club and not an honors level course.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25626/

-Mikey H