Starcraft II Beta, part 7

Sportsmanship.
I'll say it again; Sportsmanship.

Most of the players on Battle.net are now running to their parents and asking "mummy, what's that word mean?".

Recently, most of the people I go up against on Starcraft II don't have the decency to say something as utterly simple as "gg" before it's all over.

"gg" stands for "good game". Even if it wasn't, it's generally a decent thing to say before either crushing the other guy or being crushed yourself.

Of course, being Battle.net, most of the players online (certainly the ones I've faced) are at least teenagers. They're also under a alias, meaning there is no retaliation apart from verbal, and that's only before the match is over. Thus, most of them don't know what the first word of this post is.

It's funny how the defeated say "gg". Does it imply that they accept defeat? I think so. It's the case with me - the other guy was simply better.

It's also funny how the winners almost never. It's not as if they need to take their eyes off the battlefield for a second - they aren't going to lose. They already have a million Void Rays launched at your base; there's no way they can lose.

So why don't they say it? Maybe it's the sense of inflated self-worth. Perhaps their enemies they've just defeated are peseants in their eyes, and do not deserve the satisfaction of knowing that they will 'stoop to their level' and waste their time on something as trivial as that.

Perhaps they think that it wasn't a good game because (for example) there was little challange, and will not choose to comment. For people who do think this way, spare a thought for the poor bastard your Void Ray-ing to death.

But then there are the sore winners. These guys mock and, sometimes, insult you before they destroy you. They suck.

But usually there are sore losers. The same guys who don't say "gg" are the same here. They leave before you've even destroyed them, and I'm not talking about after you rip apart their economy or their biggest assault force.

A while ago, I played against some guy in 1v1. He was Protoss. I was Zerg.
He had Zealots. Quite a few, actually, and he had Photon Cannons to defend his base. He had the goddamn match.

I sent about 8 Zerglings his way. After shredding them up on his Zealot's Psi blades and Photon Cannons, I sent another 6. And another. While I was doing this, I was upgrading to a Lair and building Hydralisks. The Zerglings were to keep him on the defensive, and they were.

And it wasn't like they posed any sort of threat. He was just cutting them to ribbons and chewing them up afterwards.

I'm not sure what was going through his head that match, but after about the third wave of 6 Zerglings he left the match, giving me an un-earned and un-deserved win.

That's it. He just left. No "&%#$ this", no "I see where this is going", just rage-quit. And for no good reason, too.

But even worse than the above bastards are the sore losers who happen to be on your team in a 2v2.

Why, just a moment ago I was playing with someone who teched (that is, put all his resources into getting the best units) all the way to the top.

I, meanwhile, sent a force of Zerglings to the other player's base. Taken unaware, the other player was soon crippled by my attack. 16 Zerglings later, he was gone.
"nice", my ally said.

My rushes almost never work, so it wasn't just "nice" to me. But still, I took down an enemy all on my own, without any help from Mr. tech.

So, he got a few Overlords and sent them over to the other enemies base, where a Nydas Canal popped up in front of the player's workers and Ultralisks poured out.

And by poured I mean poured.

Unfortunately, I was too budy building Spires when my ally decided to attack. We were fighting two Protoss players, and we all know the Protoss's only strategy.

His Ultralisks were shredded by a thousand Void Rays. I had only built a few air units when he started yelling at me to build them. So I did, but there wern't nearly enough.

So, having had his ground forced ahnialated by predictable Protoss air units, he then started blaming me and only me (because god knows it wasn't even slightly his fault) for our inevitable failiure.

There are a few things wrong with his argument.
1. I had took out the other player single handedly, a fact he seemed to forget. And even if he didn't, it didn't matter now.
2. He used ground units that can't attack air against a race that I can gaurantee, with absolute certainty, to be a strong air race late in game.
3. He didn't warn me to be ready when he attacked, so it was impossible to be ready for such a retaliation.
4. He didn't have any air units of his own to protect himself from such a retaliation, despite having collected much more resources than me.

I even pointed out to him that if he had teched air, we would have easily won. Void Rays aren't, by any stretch of the word invincible, and against a swarm of collectors that are focusing their fire, they would have been shredded. And Brood Lords would have tore apart the enemies other base.

But no. It was my fault for "not being ready" and "not having any AA units", something that was very hard for me to do becuase of the aformentioned reasons.

Yeah, I probably should have made some air units. In fact, that would have helped quite a lot. But, I shift some of the blame onto my ally for why we lost.


Getting away from all that, there has been another thing that's really bugging me about multiplayer; the obsenity filter.

I don't know who did it, but they went way too far. Things that are completely reasonable words when used in certain contexts are bleeped out.

Things like "suck(s)", "damn", "prick(s)" and "bastard(s)" are all turned into a rnadom combonation of "$#@%&*^". So your words come out like "Aww man, that #$@%s" or "#@$%, those guys are tough" or "The $#@%s! I hate it when they rush" or even "#$@% [damn]!. Those &%*^&@#$ [bastards] really hit us hard."

But you the funny thing is? "Christ" isn't an obsenity. Nope. I would never dream of using that word out of religeous context or saying said name in vain. Pretty sure "God" isn't either.

So it's pretty obvious to me - the obsenity filter for Starcraft II was made by a bunch of christians.