Day[9]

For the last few months, I've been playing a lot of StarCraft II and trying to get better. This led me to do a bit of exploring around the SC community, which then led me to Day[9]. Sean "Day[9]" Plott is a professional StarCraft II caster who also runs the Day[9] Daily: a live, online StarCraft and StarCraft II show. Aside from the usual casting and commentary on professional games, his show also features "Funday Mondays", "Newbie Tuesdays", and the occasional "Friendday Wendsday" which keep the show entertaining for more casual viewers.

Not only is Day[9] insightful and good at what he does, but I think he's absolutely hilarious and fun to watch. If you're into StarCraft, I would most definitely recommend checking him out. Odds are, you will benefit from it in some way or another. You can watch him live, Sundays through Thursdays at 9 PM CST or view his videos on YouTube.

Day[9]'s other pages:

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[ATG] Addiction to Gaming

Last week, I sent out fifteen Team Fortress 2-themed holiday cards. They did not go out to family or old friends as one might expect. Instead, I sent the cards to fifteen of my fellow ATG members--only a few of whom I've met in real life. I became a part of the community/clan known as "Addiction to Gaming" or "ATG"--founded in 2009 by [ATG] Newman, [ATG] Stephen, and [ATG] Joe--back in August. I discovered the community through its TF2 servers--the 24/7 Badwater one, to be more specific. After playing there a few times, I found the overall attitude of the server and its regulars to be lots of fun, so I decided to stick around. Enticed by the all-talk key config that ATG offered on their forums, I made up my mind to introduce myself and begin posting regularly to further get to know the many, uh, interesting personalities that I had become familiar with in-game.

It wasn't long before I began to feel very much at home with everyone at Addiction to Gaming. I was welcomed quite graciously and discovered that there were many people there who had similar interests to me, even outside of Team Fortress 2 and other games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Starcraft II. After some time, ATG's self-appointed "recruitment officer", [ATG] Steak House asked me to where the clan tag in my screen name. At first, I was reluctant, as I've always been put-off by the idea of clans. But after I did, a sense of pride came over me. Not only did my playing stats improve (as is the case with most members), but I genuinely felt that I had become part of a very cool community--one that wasn't fueled by the ego-mania and bullying that I had observed of so many other clans, but rather, a simple desire to play well and have fun doing it.

Since I became active several months ago, I have met several people from ATG in real life. In November, Steak House took me and my boyfriend, who is also part of ATG (he's known as "Geoth" online), out for dinner. A couple weeks later, Steak had a bunch of us stay at his company's lodge in Michigan for a weekend. There were seven of us, total...as pictured above, left to right: [ATG] Stephen (in our hearts, anyway), Fluffy Harmless Kitten, [ATG] wisoka, Mala, Magus, [ATG] Geoth, me ([ATG] Tobuoi or "T"), and [ATG] Steak House. And yes, we did almost exclusively address each other by our screen names. The weekend was filled with movies, Texas Hold 'Em, video games, and much more, which I will refrain from writing about for the sake of a few ATG members' dignity. Regardless, we had a lot of fun. Upon meeting everyone there, I felt as if I was simply getting together with a bunch of old friends--no feelings of awkwardness in the slightest. In fact, I even enjoyed the company of a few people better than I thought I would.

While Addiction to Gaming is largely a Team Fortress 2 clan, we play all sorts of games together and discuss all sorts of things, from movies to technology and everything in between. If you're into gaming and looking for a bunch of awesome people to share the experience with, I suggest you check us out: Addiction to Gaming. We're always looking for new members. You'll find me there as [ATG] Tobuoi.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty: game review/thoughts

Nearly two months after its release, StarCraft II fever is still running high. Finally, after forcing fans of the first StarCraft to wait over ten years for a sequel, Blizzard released StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty on the PC back on July 27th, and it's not ready to settle down just yet. Two expansion packs—Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void—are still to be released in the future. These expansions are meant to further explore the backgrounds and storylines of the Zerg and Protoss races, whereas Wings of Liberty mostly focuses on the Terran.

I, personally, have never played the first Starcraft, so I wasn't as psyched for SCII's release as, say, my boyfriend or half of my other friends. Before I get ahead of myself, though, I want to say right of the bat that I advise you take this review with a grain of salt, as I haven't really been able to play the game enough to completely stand behind my thoughts of it. With that being said, I think it's safe to say that I have mixed feelings about the game, though most of them are positive. In general, real-time strategy games and their ilk usually don't appeal to me all that much. However, with StarCraft II, I found that once I got into the swing of things and figured out what I was doing, the game genuinely took hold of me.

For the first couple of weeks playing online against other players, I was totally mesmerized by it. Even when I wasn't playing, my head was still busy with thoughts of all the methods and strategies to implement. However, after those first weeks, I found myself somewhat burnt out on the game. This was largely because--from what I can tell--the game has certain imbalances that still need to be worked out.

After having gotten a little tired of the online play, I decided to try out the campaign. I know that a lot of fans of the first StarCraft game had good things to say about it, but personally, after a few missions, I was straight-up bored with it. Granted, as I've already stated, I haven't played the first one and am only somewhat familiar with its storyline. However, I will say that the history behind the character Kerrigan (yay, Tricia Helfer) is rather fascinating, if not momentous enough to carry the rest of the game's storyline to the point of making it legitimately captivating for players like me.

Despite all this, StarCraft II really does have a lot of good things going in its favor. The ranking system alone is largely innovative and impressive, which, given StarCraft's status in the competitive gaming world, is a key component to its acclaim. Overall, a lot of care and effort went into the game, and I think it shows. I'm also fairly confident that a lot of its less favorables aspects will be addressed in the expansions and future patches. As far as RTS games go, this one is probably (one of) the best that you could ask for. If you're new to real-time strategies, I would definitely recommend that you give SCII a shot because it is certainly worth trying.