Over the past few weeks I have gradually leveled up the StarCraft 2 commander, Nova. I have always wanted to play StarCraft co-op but have never had a friend who was interested in playing which meant, uncharacteristically for me, I played with random people.
So far, I am happy to say, everyone I have played with has been fine. Most people don’t say anything at all which is almost like playing through a random dungeon with random players in World of Warcraft. Those who do say something, simply say hello at the start and GG (Good Game) at the end.
Having recently acquired new computer hardware, I have been able to recorded one of the games from start to finish without any difficulty.
StarCraft co-op is very different to the normal game of StarCraft. Instead of playing against each other, players must work together to complete objectives. Before the game, each player selects the commander they wish to control (in my case Nova) and use their unique abilities and armies to achieve victory. The better players will use their commanders in such a way that compliments their allies commander but there are settings to make it easy for new players. Playing games earn your chosen commander experience which will level them up to a maximum level of 15, unlocking abilities along the way. Once a commander is level 15 you will start to earn experience which will go towards mastery points, a similar system to that of paragon levels in Diablo III in that they don’t unlock new abilities, but make existing ones a little stronger.
Right now I have reached level 15 with Nova and have obtained 11 mastery levels. Considering how positive this experience has been for me, I may level one of the other commanders (there are 17 in total) or gain more mastery levels with Nova.
If anyone is interested in playing StarCraft co-op with me, feel free to get in touch. StarCraft is free to play and will include 3 commanders. The others are free to play up until level 5 and can be purchased individually if you’re having a good time.
I have not been posting much recently and in truth, I have not been gaming very much either. There are many reasons for this but the main one is because of the loss of Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, who died suddenly last weekend on the 20th July 2019 of some sort of pulmonary embolism / thrombosis / blood clot in one of his lungs.
Geoff and I never met, he did not know me and I did not know him. But in many ways over the years he has inspired me to be a better gamer and a better person through the beautiful game of StarCraft.
Anyone who knows me at all will know that I love StarCraft, a game I have played for the past 20 years as previously written here. Geoff was a professional player who started to get recognition after getting 1st place in WCG (World Cyber Games) USA back in 2007, securing himself a place in the finals. For the longest time WCG was the only tournament of note for StarCraft Brood War and I think Geoff was rightfully proud of this accomplishment before StarCraft II was released in 2010. From there Geoff played Starcraft II competitively and was team captain of Evil Geniuses. It was around this time I started to watch and support Geoff as more and more StarCraft tournaments were forming and players were able to live stream their practice sessions and interact with fans on a daily basis. A favourite piece of content was actually made by his wife, Anna.
Any readers may remember that not long ago I was inspired by iNcontroL to play and complete XCOM 2, if not, you can read about here and here. I will try to continue to use his legacy as a source of inspiration and will continue to try and be a better a gamer, a better son, a better friend, a better person.
It’s hard to describe how I feel about Geoff dying, aged just 33. I have tried to speak to a member of my family about how sad it makes me feel knowing that he is gone, that he is no longer going to produce content and make my life better, more bearable, during the dark times. But they just don’t understand this concept, they don’t understand that this guy who I never met actually means something to me. I have followed this guy for almost 10 years and shared this connection over StarCraft. He was best of friends with other StarCraft personalities who are utterly heartbroken over his death and in turn, I sort of feel their pain. StarCraft will never be the same without him, and that kind of scares me. I am not sure what I am writing makes sense, but I really don’t know how to express my feelings on the matter. I wanted to talk to my best friend about it, but I just don’t know how, I doubt he could possibly understand these things, I do not think anyone can. All I know is right now, I am hurting and I wish something would plug this empty void in my life.
I will miss you Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, I don’t know what, if anything, there is after life, but, if there is something, GL and more importantly, HF.
This is month one of the first Snooker Nation season between my friend Jason and I. Until January, I will keeping statistical data on games played, won, frames won, number of centuries and highest break. I hope that this will make my Snooker Nation posts more interesting but more importantly, I hope this will help enhance our enjoyment of the game.
It has been a good start for me this month, winning 4 frames to 2 in a best of 7. There were three century breaks this week, Jason got 100 in the 2nd frame and 105 in the 4th. I got 104 in the 5th frame which means Jason, for now, has the highest break.
My good start continues by winning 4 frames to 2 in another best of 7. This week there was just the one century break of 112 in the second frame belonging to Jason. It is interesting to note that of the 4 frames Jason has won so far this season, 3 of those have ended in a century.
Another best of 7 and another 4 frames to 2 victory for me. This time I scored the only century of 126 making it the new high score of the season.
Unfortunately for Jason, July hasn’t been a good month of Snooker Nation. I have won, yet again, 4 frames to 2 in a best of 7. There were two century breaks, Jason scored 104 in the 4th frame while I got a whopping 139 in the 6th which is the new high break of the season and I believe might be my highest break of all time. We will most certainly be hard pushed to beat it in the months ahead.
| Played | Won | Frames Won | Centuries | Highest Break | |
| Copper | 4 | 4 | 16 | 3 | 139 |
| Jason | 4 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 112 |
It has been another weekend of excellent Starcraft. I have had WCS Summer 2019 on my TV all weekend and have enjoyed every moment. I have been looking forward to this tournament since WCS Spring 2019 and have not been disappointed. While playing Diablo III or otherwise chilling, I have been watching some of the best Starcraft II players go head to head for a share of the $100,000 USD (United States Dollars) prize pool and 12,600 WCS points which are needed for the WCS finals at Blizzcon later in the year.
Once again it was great to see Croatian Leon “goblin” Vrhovec and Frenchman Clément “Clem” Desplanches but also 17 year old Italian Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti who won WCS Winter 2019. Knowing that young talent is still interested in Starcraft II makes me feel good about the future of Starcraft. It was also good to see one of my favourite players, Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn. Scarlett is one of the few professional female Starcraft players and currently competes in Korea and China which means I don’t often get to see her play because of time differences.
It was no surprise that the current world champion Joona “Serral” Sotala made it to the grand final but to see Reynor topple this consistent major tournament winner was something special to see. What this young man has achieved in just 1 year of Starcraft is phenomenal and I have a feeling I will be seeing a lot more of Reynor to come.
Once again the production team, hosts and commentators have outdone themselves in this tournament. The commentators included my favourites Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi, Benjamin “DeMusliM” Baker and Leigh “Maynarde” Mandalov but the hosts James “Kaelaris” Carrol, Sue “Smix” Lee and other commentators Ravi “feardragon” Pareek and Yoan “ToD” Merlo were amazing as well.
After more than 7 years, I have decided to invest some money in new computer hardware, costing me a total of £1538.33. The actual components for the machine cost £1,513.35 from UK Gaming Computers but I also bought a windows 10 pro licence from Software Geeks for £19.99. The other £4.99 was for a cheap flash drive I bought from Amazon in order to instal windows.
Here are the specifications for both machines. For both I have integrated sound and use ethernet networking.
While my old Intel machine does now have a 480GB SSD instead of the mechanical drive that came with it, there are still massive upgrades which I hope will not only allow me to play the latest games on the highest graphics settings but also allow me to more easily record game footage and possibly do some video editing for youtube and my blog.
I have replaced the old 2nd generation Intel i7 processor with the latest AMD Ryzen 8 core 16 thread processor. Doubled my RAM from 16GB to 32 which is also now DDR4 3000Mhz as opposed to DDR3 1600Mhz. My new graphics card isn’t exactly the best on the market right now but it’s certainly a beast compared to my ATI Radeon HD 7850 2GB, which, in all fairness, was pretty powerful 7 years ago. While I do have 3 times the storage capacity, this is something which could easily be upgraded in future, especially with the introduction of an internal PCIe SSD for my operating system and core programs.
There are however two potential regrets. One is that I saved some money by skimping on the motherboard. There are much better ones on the market but I have been reassured by a good friend of mine that it doesn’t really matter unless I wanted to overclock the processor, which I don’t. Another is the Game Max Abyss case with tempered glass. It looks really cool and I look forward to messing around the the RGB settings, but I am a little worried about the lack of airflow which is why I bought additional case fans. Again, I don’t want to overclock my processor so hopefully it will not get too hot in there!
Last weekend I treated myself and purchased StarCraft Remastered. StarCraft is actually free to play, but I wanted to benefit from the graphics and aspect ratio enhancements Blizzard made when they released the remastered edition back in 2017.
Playing the original StarCraft brings back a lot of memories, some of which I mentioned in my first StarCraft post. I played through the original Terran campaign, which was easy, followed by the Terran Brood War expansion campaign which was a little harder but not exactly difficult for a StarCraft veteran such as myself.
While playing, I am reminded just how good StarCraft is and especially was when first released. I can hardly believe that after all these years no one has, in my opinion, released an RTS (Real Time Strategy) game anywhere near as good. Blizzard intend to remaster (reforge) their other, somewhat less popular RTS game, Warcraft III. I never played Warcraft III as I was too busy enjoying StarCraft and Diablo II. Because of this, I am incredibly excited and can’t wait to experience Warcraft III for the first time.
I highly recommend that anyone who enjoys RTS games should try the original StarCraft, even if it’s just the original free to play version as opposed to the remastered edition. In my opinion, StarCraft multiplayer is the hardest game ever made, but if competitive play is not your thing, the campaign missions are great and offer new players a fun challenge.
Here is my first monthly Snooker Nation post containing the results for every match that Jason and I played in the month of June.
Jason continued his ridiculous win streak after we played a best of 7 which Jason won 4 frames to 2. There were also two century breaks, 127 in the first frame and 111 in the third frame, both belonging to Jason which highlights just how well he was playing this week.
At last, I broke my losing streak and won 5 frames to 1 in a best of 9. It’s a bit of a running joke that Jason never wins when we play a best of 9 but often wins when we play a best of 7. There were no century breaks but I honestly didn’t care. It was great to win a match after losing so many.
Another best of 9 which I won 5 frames to 2 and while I didn’t score a century, Jason got 109 in the second frame. A patch was released the previous day by the developer of Snooker Nation (Cherry Pop Games). Here are the patch notes:
Disappointingly we found no significant difference to the online game play. The delay between each shot was shockingly slow making the game dull and virtually unplayable. Once again, we reverted back to the 2016 version of the game and have given up hope for a new and improved (most importantly playable) Snooker Nation.
Why does Jason play best of 9 matches? I don’t remember if he has ever won one. I won 5 frames to 3, giving me a 3 week win streak. Unfortunately, no century breaks this time and, to be honest, we both played badly.
For the last match in June Jason and I played a best of 5 which Jason won 3 frames to 1. Once again, no century breaks this week. Unfortunately my three week win streak was broken but, to be honest, I don’t like it much when one of us keeps winning.
I really like how this Snooker Nation post has combined 5 matches and as such 5 posts into one. As I mentioned in my previous Snooker Nation post, next month will be the first in a 6 month Snooker Nation ‘season’. I will be keeping tabs on statistical data which I hope will make these posts a little more interesting.
My Diablo III season 17 continues to grow since my previous Diablo post. I am not sure why but I am enjoying season 17 far more than season 16. I have a feeling it could be because this time around I decided to play hardcore (where if my character dies it dies permanently), making the risk/reward more exciting and gratifying.
The first thing to note is that I have levelled another character to the maximum level of 70. This is the 4th character I have levelled this season, all of which have been hardcore. My new character is a crusader which I have not played much so far, to be honest I do not think it suits my style of play.
More excitingly I managed to complete a level 70 greater rift with my wizard. This was the primary goal I set myself in my previous Diablo post and I have to say, it feels really good to have come this far. From now on I believe it is at least possible that primal legendary items (the best items in the game) can be obtained through play.
Once you complete a level 70 greater rift, you are automatically given a random primal legendary item. You can see from the screenshot below the red beam of light indicating the primal legendary which dropped for me. Unfortunately it wasn’t an item I want to use but I hope to find at least 1 more before the end of the season.
The last thing I want to mention is that my season 17 hardcore paragon level is now 668. Considering my total hardcore paragon level before season 17 is 120 and that my total soft core paragon level is 666, this is by far my greatest Diablo III season to date. I have seen many players hit well over 1000, even 2000 paragon levels in a single season and complete greater rifts over level 120. Regardless of this, I am happy with my achievements and look forward to improving my personal best.
I have no specific goals other than to carry on playing for as long as I find season 17 fun. I will write one more Diablo post to sum up my season 17 when the season ends or when I am done playing.
After speaking to my good friend Jason, I have decided to change how I post our Snooker Nation results.
I noticed that a large proportion of my blog posts are about my weekly Snooker Nation game with Jason. While I do enjoy Snooker Nation, I feel the frequency of which I make Snooker Nation posts is excessive and quickly over shadows posts about other games which I have, more often than not, put much more effort in playing and producing content.
Starting immediately, I have decided that my Snooker Nation posts will now be monthly and will contain the results of all matches Jason and I play in that given month. This has meant that I have deleted the post Snooker Nation Week 34 of which the content of will be used in a new post, Snooker Nation June 2019. This will be released either at the end of June or beginning of July.
Furthermore, from the beginning of July, I will be adding statistical data at the end of each monthly post. This means in July I will include a table for matches played, matches won, match points (3 points for winning), frames won, number of century breaks and highest break. After 6 months I will reset the data and will declare the season champion before starting a new season in January.
This will reduce the number of Snooker Nation posts from a potential of 4-5 a month to 1 a month. Each post should also be more interesting and content rich rather than just 1-2 paragraphs containing just a few sentences.
I feel like this is a good evolution for my blog and that it will even make the game more fun. I hope that other posts about my different gaming activities will be given more exposure as well.
Since starting Diablo III season 17 again after my newly max level demon hunter died after an hour or two of playing the end game content, I feel I have made some good progress.
At the time of writing this, my season 17 hardcore paragon level is 501 and my new demon hunter still lives with greater rift record of level 50 (torment XI). For those readers who have not played Diablo 3, or have but from before the launch of Reaper of Souls back in 2014, after your character reaches maximum level, in this case level 70, you start to gain account wide paragon levels. Paragon levels give you points to spend and make your character stronger. There is no limit to how high your paragon level can become, however if your paragon level is very high, it will take quite some effort and time to gain more. Greater rifts are big part of the end game content. The higher the greater rift level, the more rewards you can expect for completing them. Eventually greater rifts become so difficult that it is nearly impossible to complete them and will always offer a challenge to the most elite Diablo III players.
Surprisingly for me, I decided to level a second character, a wizard. While I have found the demon hunter more fun to play this season, my wizard seems to be much stronger and I have a greater rift record of level 57 (somewhere between torment XII and XIII).
The reason my wizard is so much more powerful is partly because I have traditionally played wizard as my favourite Diablo III class, but also because I have a good sense of direction as to what my build should be. In Diablo III it’s usually a good idea to find and use items which compliment specific spells, making them more and more powerful. It’s fine to change the way you want to play your character, but it usually involves finding a new set of items to make it highly effective.
Moving forward, I hope to make 4 or 5 improvements to my wizards set of gear which I hope I can use to get to greater rift level 70. I found out that you must complete a level 70 greater rift solo before any primal legendary items will drop (Primal legendary items are the best items you can find in the game and are very rare). Doing this on softcore was relatively easy, it didn’t matter if I died, just as long as I completed the rift on time. On hardcore however, it’s a completely different story.
I don’t know why but I am enjoying Diablo III season 17 even more than I enjoyed season 16. It’s nice to play something so passionately again. I really hope this continues.