Promotion to Silver League

Yesterday night, I got so lucky in Starcraft II. If you read my new post a few minutes ago about how I got into Bronze league, that actually happened to me two days ago on Monday, July 29, 2013. However, that post was so long and I had to go to bed, so I was going to finish it yesterday. However, I forgot about the post yesterday, so I finally uploaded that post just a half an hour ago.

Anyways, yesterday I somehow ended up playing a Platinum league guy on my fifth game of the day. I thought that I was screwed for sure, but my opponent left right after the game began. He probably saw that I was in Bronze league and knew he was going to win, so he quit before he would make me feel bad. After the match (was was only a few seconds long), I was suddenly promoted to Silver league. My opponent was so nice that he noticed and even congratulated me in chat.

Even though being in Silver league does feel nice, I'm afraid that I won't be able to win a single game because I lost more than half of my games (5 wins to 6 loses and I haven't even played today). I just hope I'll be able to find a way to counter Medivac drops and I hope that would allow me to win more games.

Proof that I'm in Silver League.

3M Dust Remover Warning

For the past few weeks, I've been using 3M Dust Remover spray a lot to clean my laptop and desk. Like everyone else, I used to think that 3M Dust Remover was simply compressed air or liquefied air. However, its not. Instead, 3M Dust Remover is almost completely filled with a chemical known as diflorasone and has a tiny bit (1% or less) of alcohol.

How do I know all of this about 3M Dust Remover? I've actually been doing a ton of research about it. After using the spray for a few days cleaning my ear buds and keypad, I kind of got scared of all of the warning signs on the can. I got really paranoid when I've used the spray on my skin thinking that it's only air. My paranoia worsened when I accidentally sprayed out liquid and tasted the bittering agent in my mouth. I wasn't not sure if I swallowed the liquid or simply inhaled some of the spray. I seriously got scared that I was going to die.

Fortunately, I learned that 3M Dust Remover can't accidentally kill you (it would be illegal if it could). But some people do die from constantly inhaling the spray because they want to get high from the tiny amount of alcohol in the spray. Other than inhaling, the air from the spray doesn't have any other negative consequences. However, the liquid is quite dangerous. Computer internals will be damaged if touched by the liquid in the spray. If the liquid gets into your eyes or skin, it could cause a lot of problems too. So far, I haven't read anything about swallowing small amounts of the liquid, so I hope it doesn't cause any problems.

Nevertheless, I promised myself never to use that spray again because of how easy it is to spray out dangerous liquid (you only have to tilt the bottle slightly).

Got Placed into Bronze League

Sigh. In my last post, I was so excited about maxing out my Versus AI bar and beating my first real player. No everything has started going downhill. First I played my first game without using Unit Preloader before, so I'm annoyed that I didn't follow my routine. Then I lost that game. I could have actually won because I had more units, but I left my main base undefended and my opponent dropped his whole army right in my main base using Medivacs (Yes he was playing Terran) and destroyed my main base. I got really angry and wanted to play another game.

Unfortunately, I lost the second game of the day as well. Placement matches chooses your opponents based on whether or not you won your last placement game. So because I won my first game yesterday, my first game today was against a Gold league player. After I lost that game, the computer lowered the league that I would play against to Bronze. Unfortunately, my opponent wasn't a normal Bronze player. He was one of those people who were actually very good, but they like bullying beginners, so they purposely lose all of their placement matches in order to play against beginners. This opponent was calling me a noob from the beginning, and even typed mean comments to me after I lost. How unfortunate.

I continued to win a few games well as lose a few more. Finally my mom came into my room really angrily because I've only been playing Starcraft II since after dinner. In total, I played five games today, with two wins and three loses. But just as my emotions about losing were just starting to cool down, my perfectionism kicked in. I felt that my Starcraft II account isn't perfect because of how many games I lost and because I shouldn't have played when I was so tired.

Eventually, I convinced myself that everything is still perfect. I might have accidentally played a game before using Unit Preloader, but my match history will eventually disappear and it wont matter anymore. As for losing so many games, I deserved to lose and losing doesn't equal imperfection. Even though I was really tired and could have played better, I still would have lost to those Medivac drops because I don't defend my main base even if I'm not tired. Even professional Starcraft II players have bad days and if I didn't lose two games to Medivac drops, I might have never learned my lesson.

Besides, my APM (actions per minute) is pretty good (currently at an average of 50), and I'll be able to make it into Gold, or at least Silver, next season simply by learning a few more tricks (such as defending against Medivac drops).

Even though my Starcraft II career has started out really bumpy, I will not allow this obstacle to stop me from getting better and better at the game I consider to be the very best.

NOTE: Everything that I mentioned in this post actually happened two days ago on Monday, July 29, 2013, but I didn't finish typing this post on that day and forgot about it yesterday, so that's why I uploaded it today. Sorry!

First Real Starcraft II Win!

By first real win, I mean my first win against a real player since last year. Actually, I might have never won a game against a real player last year at all, this this would be my very first real Starcraft II victory ever! I was so excited that I couldn't fall asleep until like 3:00 am (or maybe I just fell asleep and woke up). Anyhow, I feel so accomplished that I was able to defeat a real player.

The reason I am starting to play against real people is because I've reached the highest limit against AI in Matchmaking. Let me explain what I mean by highest limit. So in Versus AI, there is a bar showing you the difficulty of the AI that you will face. Every time you win a game against an AI, that bar increases. When then bar passes a certain point, you have to play against a more difficult AI. So even though I defeated my first AI Elite a few days ago, my bar didn't reach its maximum. I had to play a few more games against AI Elite. Luckily, I didn't lose a single game against AI Elite, so maxing out my bar didn't take too long.

When I created my new WZY account a month or two ago, I made it my goal to defeat AI Elite and max out my bar on Versus AI Matchmaking before I would start playing against real people. Now that I've actually accomplished that goal, I feel like I've improved tremendously. Now I feel like I'm finally ready to play ranked games against real people.

As I said before, I played my first ranked game since a long time yesterday and actually won. I still can't be too excited because I still have 4 more placement matches. In ranked games, players have to play 5 placement games in order to determine their league. The leagues include Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Grandmaster, with Bronze being the lowest and Grandmaster being the highest.

When I checked my opponent's profile, I found out that the highest league that he got into was Bronze, which makes me feel like I still suck because my opponent was pretty strong. Nevertheless, most people say that if you can beat AI Elite, you're probably in Gold league. I hope I will be able to make it to Platinum league, but I'll still be very satisfied with Gold league.

Perfectionism Problem #2

With not much going on during the summer, my perfectionism is really bothering me. Even though I said that I solved my previous perfectionism problem with my nickname showing up in the order history on my battle.net (for Starcraft II) account, I actually didn't completely solve the problem.

Recently, I've been feeling like my dreams.wzy2013@gmail.com email, which is the one I use for this blog and my WZY Starcraft II account isn't perfect anymore. Along with Starcraft II, I also use that email for my Runescape, Battlefield Heroes, and Elsword accounts. I've decided to quit all of those games in order to focus on Starcraft II (I'll still review Battlefield Heroes and Elsword, but I won't post updates for the games I don't play).

On top of that problem, using two emails, one for my real name (used for video games and blog) and one for my casual name (used for everything else), is really annoying. I'm pretty certain that I'm going to create a new email that merges my two "identities" so I don't have to deal with two emails. Unfortunately, I still need to figure out whether I should use my real name or my nickname. With all of this thinking about my name again, the previous problem of my nickname showing up on my battle.net (for Starcraft II) account has popped up again.

The worst part of this problem is that my mind is constantly forcing me to think about it, which causes me to not be able to focus on my other work.

New Microphone Has Arrived

Almost a week ago, I told you guys I would purchase a new microphone, as I did. Now, that microphone has arrived! Funny story, when it was delivered, my mom was sitting in the kitchen, where she would be able to see me carry in the box, so I tried to hide the box on the front porch. I thought I would bring the package inside once my mom left, but I forgot. Eventually, my dad came home and saw the box. I think he thought that it was drugs or something because he seemed a little nervous and told me to open the box immediately. I thought that since I'm already caught, I might as well not seem suspicious, so I tried to casually open the box. Then my dad saw my Nintendo DS charger that I bought a year or two ago (when the original charger broke) and started questioning me about that too. So now my dad thinks that I've just been buying a ton of stuff online.

Anyways, I don't really care what my dad thinks because what's done is done. I've decided to place the microphone right behind my keyboard so it doesn't get in the way of my typing. The laptop and keyboard that you see above are the actual ones that I use to type up all of these blog posts and play Starcraft II.

Personally, I think the microphone is amazing for its cost of $20. The sound quality is pretty good and I don't have to lean into my computer and record sound (my laptop mic is next to the webcam). Plus I've tried recording sound from about a foot away from the microphone and it still picks up the sound really clearly. On top of everything, it looks very slick and I don't regret buying it at all (so far).

Here is a link to the page where I bought this microphone on www.bestbuy.com:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/USB+Microphone/6084114.p;jsessionid=71FAB2F214C931FC1E73AB43EC959869.bbolsp-app04-136?id=1218719519973&skuId=6084114&st=dynex%20microphone&cp=1&lp=1

Starcraft II Third Birthday

Just a few months ago, Blizzard (the company that makes Starcraft) celebrated the 15th anniversary of the original Starcraft game. Now, Blizzard is once again celebrating the third anniversary of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. As you can see from the numbers under the Starcraft II logo in the picture above, Wings of Liberty was released on July 27 of 2010. The exact date of the anniversary was actually yesterday, but the celebration is still continuing. Unfortunately, this celebration isn't as big as the 15th anniversary celebration (for obvious reasons). Players only gain a temporary 25% xp boost and Starter Edition players can play as all three races for a short time (Starter Edition players usually can only play as Terran). Nevertheless, a game that has lasted so long and still being played is definitely worth celebrating.

New Parental Controls

In my "Home Internet Fixed" post, I said that I haven't found any websites that my dad has blocked via the internet modem's parental controls. It turns out that at the time, my dad actually didn't set up the parental controls yet. My dad just set up the parental controls yesterday, allowing him to automatically block all gaming websites, similar to the internet filter for school computers. He can also control what time I would be able to use the internet. But this time control shouldn't be a problem because once school starts, I'll have to use my internet all the time. So far, the only blocked website that is actually important to me is YouTube. This means that I won't be able to upload Starcrafts and Broken Quest videos unless I go to the public library.

Getting past this barrier is much trickier than previous parental controls, because I can't control the internet modem since I don't pay for it. The only way that I know of to bypass my dad's parental controls is to purchase my own internet, which can get very costly. Luckily, I'm not affected much by the new parental controls and I can still play all of my games.

Defeated Starcraft II AI Elite!

Right now is a great moment for me in Starcraft II. I have just won my very first game against the AI Elite, which is the absolute hardest AI (that's not cheating) in the entire game. I feel so accomplished to be able to defeat the hardest AI because I still remember a few weeks ago (maybe a few months ago), when I just started my WZY account, I had trouble defeating the AI Medium (which is embarrassing to say now). Before creating WZY, I mostly played arcade games, so I didn't really improve at all until the beginning of this summer. After I feel more confident with playing agaisnt AI Elite, I'm going to try and play real ranked games against real people, something that I haven't done since last year (when I got into Bronze League, the worst league, with my old account). For some reason, my APM (actions per minute) jumped from my average of 40 to 49 this game. I guess it's very true when people say that your APM will naturally increase as you get better and face stronger opponents.

Broken Quest Released

Like all Starcraft II fans, I love watching HuskyStarcraft's (Mike Lamond) commentaries on pro Starcraft II games on YouTube. Unlike other YouTubers, Husky releases videos almost every single day. In fact, he has so many new Starcraft II commentaries that I decided that I couldn't keep up with uploading his videos to this blog. Nevertheless, his channel is one of my favorite and you guys should definitely watch his pro commentaries at www.youtube.com/user/huskystarcraft if you play Starcraft II.

However, this post isn't simply about Husky, this post is actually about his new video series, Broken Quest. The first two episodes of Broken Quest were just live streamed today at 2:00 pm CST. Unfortunately, I missed the live stream, but I still found the first two episodes on YouTube and I will post them below.

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

As you guys could see in the beginning of episode 1, the cast members are Mike Lamond (Husky) as the main hero, Rosanna Pansino, Dodger Leigh, Jesse Cox, and Michael Davis from the Warp Zone. Husky says that they have been working on this for a year and a half, but I'm disappointed that the episodes are so short. Nevertheless, each episode is pretty funny and Husky says that there are going to be a total of 13 or so episodes. I'll try to post future episodes as soon as they are released.

Runescape 3 Now Live!

On July 22, 2013, a new era started for Runescape! Runescape 3 has been released, and a lot of major updates and changes came with the release. The most important thing to note is that Runescape 3 isn't another "new" game. Instead, Runescape 3 is still apart of Runescape, so players still use the same characters. I'll briefly talk about all of the new changes that I know about.

The biggest update is that Runescape is switching from using Java to HTML5. Jagex (the company that makes Runescape) says that HTML5 allows better visuals and more color choices, which is very true because the landscape is much more colorful and detailed.

My favorite update is that music will be streamed on its own server, separate from the game itself. This means that even if your game is loading or lagging, the music will still keep going. Most, if not all, music were recorded by the professional Slovak Symphonic Orchestra, so the sound quality is better than any other game that I've played.

Runescape also now has a customizable interface, meaning players can put their mini-map, chat box, inventory, abilities, anywhere on the screen. For perfectionists like myself, you can even choose to reset all of the customizations to their default spots.

Other than system changes, Runescape's storyline is also beginning to enter a new age. At the end of one of the most recent members-only quests, the god Guthix was slain. Guthix used to prevent other gods from interfering with mortals. Now that Guthix is dead, the gods are able to return and interact with the mortal world. Jagex is saying that they want players to choose which god they want to support and create future game content based on which God most people chose to support.

Lastly, a new skill known as divination will be arriving in a few weeks. Jagex has released almost no information about divination, other than the fact that it will involve using the power of the gods.

Home Internet Fixed

So I found out that our internet stopped working not because it was malfunctioning, but that my dad was having trouble setting up some parental controls through the modem or something. Yep, the war to prevent me from playing games which I explained in the "Parents and Video Games" post still continues. Fortunately, this time, the internet modem's parental controls don't seem to really have an effect on me. My dad claims that he is able to limit which websites I can go on and what time I'll be able to use the internet, but so far I can access all websites.

For some reason, his parental controls also blocked out my grandma's bbTV, so my dad spend around an hour yesterday trying to fix it. I still haven't tried to see if the phones are working again, but at least I have internet. Internet has always been the number one most important thing in my life. I can still remember myself going to the library almost everyday two summers ago just to use the internet because my dad blocked me out. You can say that I'm addicted to the internet, but so is everyone else my age. I can finally get working on my blog again, so I will try to make up all of the posts that I missed in the next few days.

No Internet at Home

If you guys have been wondering why I haven't posted for the past few days, I can tell you that I actually have a good reason. Since last Saturday night, our internet has been down. This mess was all caused by my dad moving the internet modem into his bedroom in the basement. The internet modem was originally in his basement bedroom, but he moved it into the basement secondary living room (yes our basement actually has two living rooms) a few weeks ago when he decided to live upstairs. Recently, he decided to live in the basement again and moved the modem back into his basement bedroom.

Living without internet has been a major pain in the ass. I'm actually typing this blog post while at the library. I have a serious suspicion that my dad simply doesn't want the internet to be on because he seems happy that I can't use the internet. On the other hand, I've tried rewiring the modem and changing a few settings, but nothing seems to work, so maybe my dad actually isn't able to fix the internet. My mom and grandma on the other hand, are just as annoyed as I am. My mom is often on her Chinese websites, and my grandma likes to watch Chinese TV using bbTV (which uses the internet to stream videos from China).

Anyways, a lot actually has happened during the time that I didn't have internet, including the launch of Runescape 3 and the celebration of Starcraft II's third birthday. I've also watched the recent Pacific Rim and Despicable Me 2, as well as Hayao Miyazaki's KiKi's Delivery Service. I can't stay in the library and write about all of those things, so I'll have to wait until I get internet at home before I'll be able to make up for the events and reviews that I've missed.

Starcrafts Season 2 Episode 11

The new addition of the Protoss Archon is pretty epic...until the end. I'm still not fully understanding the ending, where the Ghost is able to take down the Archon,but I'm pretty certain its a joke about how little health archons have (they have 350 shield, but only 10 health).

Rest of the Summer Plans

There is less than a month before 10th grade starts for me, so I've got to plan out everything that I do. I still have a 40 something page Spanish packet that I haven't even started on, as well as reading an entire book English. I also have a statewide piano audition coming up soon, so I'm supposed to practice 2-3 hours per day (I practice 0 to 1.5 hours daily). Along with all of those other things, I still have this blog to take care of! So for the remainder of the summer, I'll be sharing the story of my life one post at a time so that not only I don't forget about my childhood, but also for you readers to enjoy and learn from.

In a previous post, I also talked about my plans of creating an animated movie and buying a desktop microphone. I've decided that I will attempt to make the animated movie, as well as buy the desktop microphone. In fact, I'll purchase the microphone right after I upload this post!

Starcraft II Arcade Review #1: Unit Preloader

As I mentioned in my review of Starcraft II, I am going to be review the mini-games in the Starcraft II arcade that are made by Starcraft II fans. Just recently, I've decided to use an arcade game called "Unit Preloader" for my WZY account.

After purchasing both Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm for my WZY account, I've been very picky about what I play. On my old account, all that you could see was a bunch of arcade games because I played arcade games on my old account so much. With this new account, I actually care about playing real Starcraft II games, so I didn't want to have tons of arcade games show up in my match history. I decided not to play any arcade game son my new WZY account for this reason.

Loading screen for "Unit Preloader."

But after I found "Unit Preloader," I decided that it's worth having it show up on my match history. Since I'll start using it tomorrow, why not review it?

Unfortunately, "Unit Preloader" isn't actually a game. Instead, it is a program that takes a minute or two to load all units and animations that exist. When you actually go to play a real Starcraft II game, you get less lagging since you already loaded all of the units and animations. Along with loading all units and animations, the program displays everything that it's loading in a really awesome looking fashion. "Unit Preloader" is also currently the third highest ranked arcade game!

After doing some research, I discovered that even some of the best Starcraft II players in the world, such as DeMusliM, use "Unit Preloader." The best part of all is that in your match history, "Unit Preloader" always shows up as a win. Most other arcade games show up as loss in the match history (even if you win), making you look as if you suck at Starcraft II. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to launch "Unit Preloader" before I play do anything else once per day.

Fading Idealism

For my entire life, I've been much more of an idealist than a pragmatist. By my definition, idealists are people who believe that they have the ability to change the world for the better, while pragmatists are people who know they can't change the world, so they worry about their own lives and contribute what they can to society. Idealists are basically all activists in the world and some innovators, while pragmatists are everyone else who goes to work everyday.

I've always been an idealist. I've always wanted to change the world, leave behind my legacy, even create an utopian society. However, I feel like my sense of idealism is slowly fading recently. Adults have always said that idealism is only for the youth and disappears with age. I never wanted to believe them, because I loved having my own idealistic purpose for living.

Two days ago (sorry I didn't post anything since then, I've been doing a lot of thinking...and practicing Starcraft II), I decided to research how I could possibly of creating my own country. I always knew that the possibility was slim, but my idealistic thoughts "blinded" me from thinking about how slim that possibility really was. After research, I discovered that not only was all land is already owned by a government, but also no country would have any reason to sell land away. Some of you readers may think I was silly to even have thought that I could buy land in the first place, but as I said, my idealism blinded me.

My only option would be to build a man-made island. This is not only very expensive, but also convincing people to live on my island would be extremely difficult. I would have to stay out of water borders of every current country, meaning it would be difficult for me to get supplies. Lastly, if the UN ever hated me, they could destroy my expensive island and I wouldn't even be able to argue.

Of course, this single research didn't suddenly change my idealistic thoughts. Instead, it forced me to rethink about all of my idealistic dreams. Here are some of my new thoughts:

I am only one man. I will probably never be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Without money, changing the world is pretty much impossible. Plus, society is already slowly becoming better and better, with rebellions and new laws. Even nature isn't perfect. If the theory of evolution is real, then nature would never stop evolving and would never stop getting closer and closer to being perfect. But nature would never actually reach perfection, otherwise evolution would have to have a way to stop itself.

My thoughts slowly led me away from idealism, causing me think that I couldn't and don't have to really change the world. I only have to contribute what I can, follow my passions, and simply enjoy my life while I'm still alive. On the other hand, I still really scared that by the time I die, I won't feel satisfied that I didn't leave behind a legacy.

My mind is still constantly arguing with itself, but at least now I'm less blinded by idealism than before and know that I have to work my hardest in school for 10th grade. Idealism might have even caused me to slack off a bit in 9th grade and end up with a few A- and one B+. Back then, I thought I didn't have to get straight As in order to change the world. I guess being more pragmatic isn't so bad, but I still believe that I should have a little bit of idealism guiding my life, but not enough to blind me from my schoolwork.

Planning a New Project

For the past few weeks, I've been watching a lot of the old anime movies by Hayao Miyazaki including Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro. Basically I watched most of his best movies. I had already watched Spirited Away many years ago and loved that movie. I think I even cried in that movie, as well as at the end of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Yep, that's how awesome Hayao Miyazaki's movies are.

After watching so many good anime movies, I've kind of been inspired to do what he did. I've always loved drawing and watching movies, even creating my own music. Creating animated movies would be able to combine all of those passions. However, I'm still uncertain and want try out animated movie making. I'm planning out a animation project where I draw every frame of the short video or movie, create background music for it, get some friends to to help me with voice acting, and then put it all together on a very basic program such as Windows Live Movie Maker.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I want to spend the time and effort doing this project. Getting friends to do voice acting will be difficult (I've never been good at talking to girls). Once I solve this uncertainty, I still need some basic equipment such as a microphone. I was actually about to buy a $20 microphone from Best Buy when I realized that I probably shouldn't buy anything on impulse again, so I've decided to spend the next few days reconsidering my project. Plus I need to come up with a good story before I start and I have no idea where to start thinking.

Anyways, I will definitely be reviewing all of the anime movies that I've watched.

My New Favorite Starcraft II Artwork

With the new release of the Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm in China, Blizzard (the company that makes Starcraft) has also released this awesome Chinese style artwork. I never thought that Starcraft would ever use this thousand-year-old style of Chinese painting for their high-definition CGI (computer generated imagery) characters. Being Chinese, this painting is my favorite piece Starcraft art. I've even set it as my background image and changed the Windows 7 color theme to violet in order to match the Heart of the Swarm color.

Completed Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Campaign

Proof that I completed the Heart of the Swarm campaign, complete with the rewarded profile picture.

After spending many hours for the past few days (I purchased Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm only four days ago), I have finally completed the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Last night, I stayed up past 4:00 am playing because the story was so fun. There are about 20 missions in the Heart of the Swarm campaign and each mission takes an average of 20 minutes to complete.

The general story is that the main character, Sarah Kerrigan, was been transformed back into a Terran from Zerg (see my previous review of Starcraft II). She first sets out to escape from the lab, where she is being tested, with the main character of the first campaign, Jim Raynor. However, Jim and Sarah separate and Sarah escapes alone. She tries to find Jim as well as destroy her archenemy, Arcturus Mengsk, by building up her Zerg army. The first few missions are basically tutorials about playing as Zerg, but they are very short.

Everything about this second campaign is better than the first Wings of Liberty campaign. The graphics are improved, the story is more romantic, and the ending is much more satisfying. I feel like every single mission is very unique, with a special element or twist along with gameplay. I've only completed the campaign on Normal, but I've already gotten most achievements and could probably complete the campaign on hard. So if you guys have any questions about the Wings of Liberty or Heart of the Swarm campaign in Starcraft II, just email me or leave a comment!

Video Game Review #2: Runescape

The new logo for a massive Runescape update coming on July 22, 2013

Since my recent posts for the previous week have been mostly about my name crisis on Paypal and bathroom remodeling, I think it's about time I added in another review now that my name crisis is solved and the bathroom remodeling is done.

The game for my second review is Runescape. Yep, I know that this is the same game that almost everyone in the world has heard of. I also know that a lot of people who hate this game or think that it's boring. Nevertheless, I am still going to try to convince everyone to play. I have been playing off and on since elementary school. At times, I've been addicted to the game and other times I've hated the game, so I know all of the mixed feelings about the game.

First, I'll start my telling people who have never played the game how the game works and then I'll add in some of of my feelings about the game.

Character creation with a ton of choices.

This game is in the MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) category. Not just any MMORPG, but Runescape is the largest free-to-play MMORPG in the entire world. Each player creates their own character with gender, hair, clothing, and colors. There are hundreds of different colors for hair and clothing, dozens of colors for skin color, dozens of hair styles, facial styles, and clothing choices. Of all the games I've played, Runescape has one of the most character choices. Unlike World of Warcraft, there are no classes in Runescape. Everyone can use all weapons and armor and spells, but most people choose to focus on one of three combat groups: melee (swords, shields, heavy armor), mage (light armor, ranged spells), and range (medium armor, bows and arrows).

All skills icon with levels (not my account).

At the beginning, players will be first sent to the tutorial. It teaches you about all 25 skills. These skills include attack, defense, magic, range, hunter, thieving, mining, smithing, fishing, woodcutting, fire-making, cooking, prayer, agility, and many more. All skills start from level 1 (except constitution, also called health, starts at level 10) and can be leveled up to level 99 (except dungeoneering can level up to 120). After a recent update, free-to-play players can now level up members skills to level 5.

Members are players who pay a monthly fee to access more game content. The cost is about $8 per month. Memberships unlocks all members skills, hundreds of members-only quests, and triples the size of the map you can explore. Members also are able to participate in dozens of mini-games that are unavailable to free-to-play players. If you decide to play Runescape everyday or every few days have have high levels, you should definitely buy a membership because the game is much more fun with membership.

A few months ago, the Evolution of Combat update was added to Runescape, creating more weapons, especially ranged weapons, and improving combat. Before, players simply clicked on a monster to attack it and waited for the monster to die. Luckily now, abilities, similar to the ones in World of Warcraft, are added so that combat was more enjoyable. You can use abilities to deal extra damage or stun your opponents during battle. The wilderness is another popular aspect of Runescape. The wilderness is the PvP area in Runescape and it is open to free-to-play players.

Player interface with mini-map, chat box, and inventory.

The best part of the game is that it requires absolutely no downloads. You simply play the entire game in your browser (Google Chrome recommended). You can even go play the game on public library computers. Unlike Starcraft, this game requires no player skills. Time is the only thing that you need in order to get to a higher level. Unfortunately for free-to-play, the game can get boring very fast. Free-to-play players only have two dozen or so quests, so you can't rely on quests to help you level up. Instead, you end up having to repeat boring tasks such as cutting a tree or mining an ore hundreds of times before you level up.

The most beautiful graphics without any download.

Even though I am currently not a member, I'm still enjoying the game. I believe that you should never focus all of your time and energy on Runescape, or else the game becomes boring very fast. What I do is make Runescape one of my secondary games, meaning I'll play it only when I get tired of Starcraft II. This way, repeating tasks isn't as boring. Starcraft II is a very fast paced game, so having a slow paced game like Runescape is helpful when I'm simply not in the mood.

I hope you enjoyed reading this review and look out for future posts about Runescape!

Starcrafts Season 2 Episode 10

Sorry for not posting anything for the past 2 days. I'm very busy on all Saturdays preparing for my 2 hour writing lesson, so I'll probably never get the chance to post on Saturday (unless I stop procrastinating).

Anyways, here is the newest Starcrafts video for this week. This time I am finally posting this on the day it came out. I really feel like these Starcrafts videos are becoming funnier and funnier as the guy who makes them gets better and better at animation and storytelling (very, very short storytelling).

Perfectionism Solution (For Now)

After an entire day and night of constant thinking about the issue dealing with the Paypal name that I described in the previous post, I have finally been able to convince myself that the mistake of having my nickname on my Paypal account is acceptable.

For a life-long perfectionist like myself, getting rid of perfectionism is almost impossible. I seriously believe perfectionism is determined by genetics. So when something goes wrong, instead of forcing yourself to get rid of perfectionism, the best solution that I use in order to "bypass" my perfectionism is either to convince myself that the mistake is too minor to care about (which is very rare) or to use reasoning in order to trick my own mind into believing the mistake was either not a mistake.

I know all of this sounds very confusing, but let me explain by telling you guys how I solved this crisis. First, I tried to tell my brain that simply having my nickname show up in my game account is so minor that no one in the world would find out and even I had a hard time finding where it showed my name. Unfortunately, my brain was unconvinced, arguing that my nickname would forever show up on my favorite game of all time (I use my real name on video games because my real name abbreviates to WZY).

Since the first strategy didn't work, I slowly thought about how I could turn the mistake into something that wasn't a mistake. Eventually, I convinced my brain that my Paypal name should be my nickname because when I first started communicating with Xplorer (see the post Spending Money on Games), I hadn't come up with WZY and thus I used to prefer my nickname more. Also because I had to communicate with Xplorer, using my real name would have been awkward.

My brain was still slightly unconvinced, so I continued by creating a brand new email using my nickname in order to "perfect" my casual email, and my Paypal account. What I mean by "perfect" is check every setting and option and carefully select the exact choices that I want so that everything is perfectly the way I want it to be. I used to have too much junk mail in my old casual email that keeping the old email made perfection impossible. I changed my email Paypal to my new casual email. I also convinced my brain that my Paypal account is simply casual and used for personal purchases or trading between friends or other unofficial online exchange of money, including me buying Starcraft II and items in Runescape (see the post Spending Money on Games). This way, my friends and people that I know can find my Paypal account easier since they know my nickname instead of my real name.

At long last, my brain is now finally convinced (for now) that everything is still perfect and I don't have to make a new account on Starcraft II. I'm also permanently ditching my old casual email, adding all of my friends to my new casual email, and redirect all important emails to my new email. Like I said before, being a perfectionist isn't easy, but that feeling that everything is perfect is one of the best feelings in the world.

Perfectionism Problem

In the previous post, I talked about buying both Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Well, soon after I published that post, I realized that the Paypal account that I used to buy the games used my nickname instead of my real name. I'm not a big fan of my nickname, but I live with it because having people calling my real name in Chinese is worse. However, for on the internet, I like to use my real Chinese name because it abbreviates to WZY. I only use my nickname for websites that I don't care about. Unfortunately, I don't even remember creating a Paypal account, and probably created it thinking that I would never use it again. However, after the $144 I talked about in the previous post was added to my account, I accidentally used my account to pay for my games.

Even worse, I'm am a perfection. Especially when it comes to the internet and games, I can become obsessively perfectionist. One example is my old Starcraft II account. It was named TaK, which was derived from a Japanese name I gave myself when I used to love Japan for their video games, manga, and all of their other stuff. For TaK, I bought Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty for $40. However, After I resolved that being Chinese isn't bad, I came up with WZY. I decided to throw away TaK and those $40 I spent in order to create the WZY Starcraft account that I am using now.

Now, after I've just spent $60 on WZY, I'm starting to reconsider creating a new account just because my nickname showed up on my account. Unfortunately, not only do I not want to throw away $60, I don't want to throw away the records of the dozens of awesome practice games that I played on my account. I have no idea what I should do right now. I've already asked Paypal though email if changing my name on my Paypal would change my name on my previous purchases, but they haven't responded yet. I doubt it will, so I'm going to have to find another way of dealing with this problem.

One way would be finding a good reason to convince myself that having my nickname isn't so bad. I've been trying to think about making all my future payments under the my nickname, but that's probably not going to work because when I get older, I'll be forced to use my real name in official payments and taxes and stuff.

All of this has led me to another conflict. When should I use my real name and my nickname? Does it matter if I am using my name for anything unrelated to the government? Being a perfectionist can be really hard sometimes. Even the smallest of problems can trip me up. I've researched ways to deal with perfectionism, but just like depression, it's much easier said than done.

Spending Money on Games

Many months ago (as in mid January), I became obsessed with Nerf. I especially loved the Longstrike CS-6. I loved that gun so much that I actually bought the limited White-Out edition that wasn't sold anymore. Luckily, I found one on eBay for only $50 (other offers costed over $200) and actually was able to convince my dad to buy it for me as a Christmas present.

Unfortunately, many people disliked the gun for its short range (even though its supposed to be a sniper rifle). So I became overly determined to prove everyone wrong (for some reason) by purchasing the most advanced custom internals for the gun. At first I tried buying the Massacre kit from Orange Mod Works. I still felt the ranges of my Longstrike wasn't far enough. Finally, I found a website called Xplorer that had the best and most expensive Nerf mods. I bought their Longstrike kit along with a custom priming bolt, bolt sled, and custom darts. I did all of this just to make sure that my Longstrike would be the best of the best. Along with the insane shipping fee of around $50 (the company was in Singapore), my total cost was exactly $214. Without even thinking, I made the purchase by buying a Visa gift card and using the gift card on the website.

More than three months later, I still didn't receive my package. Eventually I got a notice and realized that the package required my signature when it reached my address. I had no way to stay home all day everyday and wait for my package to arrive at my house again, so I was eventually forced to return it. The money used for shipping wasn't refunded and Paypal took off a few dollars, leaving me with around $144.

That refund finally got to my Paypal account just yesterday, so I've been spending the money and my games. I've already purchased Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm (I used to play on Starter Edition), as well as buy the Greater Demonflesh armor and Zaroian teleport from Solomon's General Store in Runescape (I will review this game later). I've been playing both of these games for a few years, so I'm certain that I won't regret spending the money.

What I want you guys to learn from this is don't buy anything on impulse. Even though everyone knows not to do this, you might not realize it when it happens to you. Especially for games, play them for at least a year and thoroughly research them before you spend money so that you won't regret.

Proof that I have Starcraft II : Heart of the Swarm

Visiting Washington University in St.Louis

Just yesterday, my mom and I went to visit Washington University in St.Louis on one of their visiting days. Washington University in St.Louis is one of the few colleges that we don't have to ride an airplane to get to, but I don't think that that means we have to visit during the summer before my sophomore year! Most people choose to visit during the summer before their junior year and even the summer before their senior year. Then again, my parents are Asian and they love to overdo everything when it comes to college.

Nevertheless, I actually think that visiting my first college actually helped me a little. Before, I didn't really think that much about college. I simply tried to do my best and hope for the best. Now however, I'm thinking a lot more about college. I know many high school graduates who say don't worry too much about high school, but I already know that my life could still be good even with a bad college (like Steve Jobs). Even so, getting into a good college would really make life easier.

Anyways, we went visiting on their academic exploration day, where we learn about the different careers and schools (arts and sciences, engineering, business, and art and architecture). Simply put, it was a day for people who had no idea what they wanted to do in the future.

After learning a ton about the five different schools, I realized how little I knew about what I was going to do in the future. My parents are both into medicine and are pushing me in that direction, but I really don't want to. I've always hating all of the information doctors have to memorize and how much gross stuff they had to do. The only (non-video game) thing that I'm really passionate about is drawing. Yet finding a career in art is really hard. So I've been thinking about architecture. My parents disagree with both careers, and I'm not completely sure I want to do architecture either. Basically, I'm really stuck.

I've always envy my friends who have known what career they wanted since they were young. I wish my life was that simple. But unfortunately, my main goal in life is not simply to make money or have a good career. I want to leave behind a legacy and maybe even change the world. I know that sounds very idealistic, but that has been my dream since middle school. That dream is also so vague that I simply don't know where to start in order to reach it. I've thought about drawing inspirational comics, or making really good movies like Hayao Miyazaki. I've always loved writing stories as well. Yet still, I'm not sure I'd be satisfied by going in that direction.

For my sophomore year of high school, I've quit orchestra (to focus on piano) and will be taking principles of engineering instead. I hope I'll be able to have a better picture of what I want to do in the future. I simply want to tell all of you readers who aren't in college yet to really start thinking about your future because you will be at a disadvantage if you go to college not having a clue about what you want to do.

Starcrafts Season 2 Episode 9

Sorry guys I didn't post the newest video of Starcrafts earlier when it came out on Saturday. As I said before, my internet was blocked at the time. Anyways, this new video is very good. It incorporates Dark Templars, Overseers, and Warp Prisms that didn't exist before.

Bathroom Remodeling Part 3

The remodeling of my bathrooms are almost done. The picture above is a different bathroom than the ones I showed in the previous posts about my bathroom remodeling. As I said before, this bathroom's color theme is blue along with white tiles. To the left you can see the brand new toilet, which feels lighter than our previous one. I'm pretty sure this toilet is made from plastic and our previous one, from glass. The toilet seat isn't the most comfortable because of how much it curves into the toilet bowl (almost feels like I'm going to fall in).

Along with the new toilet, you can also the new sink to the right of the picture. The brown and tan colors would have looked good in other bathrooms, but here I think it looks terrible. The color is opposite of the white and light blue surroundings, plus it's a lot bigger than our old one and takes up more space. At least this sink doesn't have the problem of water being clogged like it did in our old sink.

I'm pretty sure this will be the last bathroom remodeling post since all that's left is replacing a few boring doors. I hope you guys enjoyed reading and maybe even learned something (such as the importance of colors). I for one will definitely have fun looking back at this when I'm older.

Parents and Video Games

Sorry guys for not posting anything for the past two days, but you can't really blame me. First of all, I was really busy on Saturday. Like most other people, I procrastinate. I had to spend the whole day preparing for my private writing lesson. Normally, I would have had enough time to post, but this time I was supposed to read five articles from BBC per day and then write a short summary of each. This assignment was supposed to take an hour a day, but of course I had to cram it all in to Saturday. Luckily, I was smart enough to have been going on bbc.com/news everyday last week to find the five most popular articles. If I didn't do that, I wouldn't even have been able to find enough articles for each day of the week.

Second of all, I didn't post yesterday is because my dad blocked the internet. Allow me to explain why he did so. But first, I have to start from way back in elementary school. Starting in second grade, I started playing Club Penguin and got addicted (which I still wonder how since Club Penguin is so boring). I would sneak onto my mom's computer and play almost every day after school. Her password was really easy to figure out (and she wasn't very good with technology). Eventually, my mom started hiding her laptop around the house (because she didn't know how to change the password). Of course, finding the computer wasn't hard for me. However, my dad eventually changed the password on my mom's computer.

A few years later, parents bought me my own computer for middle school. My dad used everything possible to control my computer such as Microsoft Content Adviser and parental controls. His techniques actually prevented me from playing games on my computer until the summer after eighth grade. A friend told me to try out Google Chrome. I told him I couldn't because of all of the websites that were blocked, but he taught me to download the files from another computer.

Luckily, Google Chrome actually worked. Because Microsoft Content Adviser doesn't work on Chrome, I was free to go on any website. Unfortunately, my dad found out and now he simply blocks my computer out of our home internet. I still haven't found a way to deal with this other than to sit next to the internet modem and hook my computer to the modem via wire (which is what I'm doing right now).

I know I didn't have to say that much, but I want this post to be mainly about parents and video games. I know so many parents out there who are so annoyed of their children playing video games all day, and I also know kids who are so annoyed of their parents telling them to stop playing all the time. For me, I find a purpose to video games. Starcraft II helps my typing speed and multi-tasking ability and other games help me with my creative story writing. If you can find a good purpose for playing video games and control your time, not only will games be more fulfilling, but your parent's hopefully also won't be so annoyed either.

Volunteering at the Library

Today is the first day of this year's entire summer that I went to our nearby public library to volunteer. I actually had done some volunteering last summer before I entered ninth grade. Unfortunately, this summer, with a family vacation to Houston for a week early in June and then me being too lazy to bike to the library, I don't have as much time to volunteer as last summer. I signed up for three two hour volunteer blocks for next week and will probably continue for the rest of the summer in order to get colleges to actually notice my volunteer hours.

I have mixed feelings about volunteering at the public library. There are many positive aspects such as all of the work is easy and even if you do minimum work (like shelve one book every five minutes), no one cares and you still get your volunteer hours.

On the other hand, my writing tutor, who has tutored tons of people into good colleges, says colleges look down on library volunteering. She even joked about how bad shelving books for four years would look on a high school transcript. I guess her logic is realistic. Library volunteering isn't nearly valuable as volunteering at a hospital or starting your own community project.

So after considering both sides of the coin, I've decided that even though library volunteering isn't the best option and definitely shouldn't be your only form of volunteer, an hour of volunteer is still an hour of volunteer and why not get easy hours whenever possible?

Bathroom Remodeling Part 2

A few days ago, I uploaded a post about the our bathroom just beginning to be remodeled. Yesterday, the construction guy worked on the bathroom again for almost the entire day. The guy says that he can't work after eating so he stayed until like 4:00 pm before leaving for lunch. Yet he drinks quite a lot of beer while working (he's Russian of course). I could have taken these pictures yesterday after the construction guy left, but the bathroom smelled so bad with the new paint stuff between the tiles that I didn't even want to get close to it yesterday.

So this first picture above is almost the entire bathtub. In my last post, I said that the bathtub was going to be replaced, but now I know that instead of replacing the bathtub, we simply replaced the old shower curtains with new sliding doors and they're probably going to replace the shower heads and handles as well. There is also a new line of small tan tiles going across, which I actually think looks better than our old pure white tiles. The design probably could look better, but at least it's better than before.

The picture above is another picture of the bathtub, except higher so that you can see the ceiling. As I said in the previous post, the top of the bathtub is completely filled with tiles instead of of having tiles up to the shower head, and then orange paint cover the top part of the walls. I've noticed that most of our rooms have a color theme, with this bathroom being orange, our other bathroom being blue and our kitchen being green. I actually liked the orange better than pure white tiles going up to the ceiling but this little change doesn't really matter.

Happy 4th of July 2013!

Happy 4th of July! For those who aren't big in history, the reason that the United States day of independence is set every year to July 4 is because that was the date that the Declaration of Independence was signed. Of course, the US had to wage a huge revolutionary war against England after the US supposedly gained independence.

Anyways, that's enough about history. I'm sure most people don't care about the history, and instead only care about the fact that most people get off work today. I actually don't like this. I probably will in the future when I start working, but for now, having parents stay home all day means no video games and a ton of work to do. Personally, I feel like I do more work when I'm not under pressure, so I'm can't even get enough work done even if I wanted to.

Nevertheless, today is a day that we can celebrate (I've learned that Americans always find reasons to celebrate for even the smallest of things) and maybe even see some fireworks. Two years ago, we went on vacation to the Ozarks (in Missouri) and was actually able to buy and set off fireworks. The funny thing about that trip is that we weren't sure if setting off fireworks was legal, but like everyone else, we did it anyways.

Now I don't want you guys to read this post all day, so happy 4th of July and I hope everyone has fun!

Like always, Google does a nice job.

Book Review #1: Rangers Apprentice Series

For the first book review of this blog, I'm going to be reviewing a series that I've been reading last summer (I know that sounds like a long time, but I barely had time to read during the school year).

First, I'll talk about the background of the series. Each book take place in the same fantasy medieval world where the main character, Will, gets chosen to be a ranger (archer/assassin/spy) after an older ranger, Halt, see's Will's skill at stealing food from the castle kitchen. I won't reveal too much, but as Halt trains Will to become a the best ranger throughout each book, they embark on dangerous and exciting adventures in order to clear out trouble in the kingdom and even save it.

My thoughts about  this series are mixed. Last summer, when I just started reading this series, I thought that the series was amazing. The first few books are not only well written, but the plot and action are intense and very thoroughly developed. Along with the awesome story line, the author John Flanagan includes a ton of humor in each and every book.

Unfortunately, like most other sequels, new books in this series aren't as good as the previous ones. By the last book in the series, The Emperor of Ninhonja, the entire book feels very dull. The plot has less complexity and less twists and turns compared to previous books. Luckily, I think Flanagan realized this and decided to end the series with The Emperor of Ninhonja.

Overall, I love this series, especially the first few books. The fantasy world that the characters live in is very creative and the plot in every book is very original. I personally feel like the last book in this series that is worth reading is book 8: The Kings of Conmel, but reading the last two couldn't hurt.

Walking Home in the Rain

Today, I had an interesting trip to the Orthodontist. Normally, this unimportant event, would only involve my mom driving me to the Orthodontist (or recently I've been driving her with my new permit) and then having her drive me back home.

However, today's trip was very different. My mom started working at her new job two days ago, so even though she could drive me to the Orthodontist in the morning, she couldn't pick me up later. Usually we schedule our visits for the weekend, but for some reason all of the weekend slots were taken. This kind of thing doesn't even happen during the school year when everyone schedules on weekends to avoid schooldays, but in the summer?!

Anyways, my entire family had to work together come up with a plan. So we decided that my mom would drop me, my little brother, and my grandma at the Orthodontist, and then have my grandma, my little brother and I walk for 30 to 60 minutes to get home. Under normal weather, this plan would have worked out perfectly. But unfortunately, rain began drizzling even before we left from the Orthodontist. We were smart enough to bring umbrellas, but avoiding water in our shoes was still impossible. The long walk was extremely miserable and uncomfortable.

At least not everything went bad today. I finally got my bottom braces removed and replaced with a clear retainer. Even though now I have to deal with wearing clear retainers on the top and bottom, at least I look better than wearing braces.

Starcrafts Season 2 Episode 8

Starcrafts (always with the "s" at the end) have been one of my favorite videos since the first video that Carbot Animations has made. Even though the one that you can watch above is actually three days old, my blog wasn't up and running at the time so I decided to post it now. I'll probably be uploading every new Starcrafts video when come out. Even though Starcrafts videos aren't always very funny, most of the time they are. On top of the Starcraft jokes, the animation style is very cute and creative, simplifying very detailed in-game units into just a few lines.

If you guys check out the Carbot Animations channel on YouTube, you'll also find a lot of basic tutorials about using Adobe Flash CS5 5 along with dozens of older Starcrafts videos that are funnier than this one.

Bathroom Remodeling Part 1

I know it's kind of weird for this blog about my life to not actually include anything about my life, so right now, I'll be writing the very first post that is actually about my life. Recently, my parents decided that the bathroom in the master bedroom on the first floor needed remodeling. I wouldn't disagree. Paint was peeling off of the wall everywhere and there was rust and dirt almost everywhere. Too bad I didn't take pictures of my old bathroom because I hadn't started this blog when my bathroom first started remodeling a few days ago. Luckily, I was able to take pictures yesterday of my bathroom before the construction guy finished it. Here is how it looks right now.

So this first picture above is only our old bathtub. You can see that the tiles are already placed on the wall, but the bathtub itself hasn't been removed yet. I'm not sure why my mom decided to place our own carpet and rug stuff in the bathtub since we're going to be throwing that bathtub away anyways.

Above you can see a picture of the bathroom just above the bathtub. The tiles aren't finished yet, so you can still see a lot of the new green drywall all the way up to the ceiling. Before, we had tiles that went around the bathtub until the shower head. Above the shower head, the wall was painted orange like the wall to the very right. The construction guy is probably going to place tiles all the way up to the ceiling, but I'm not sure if that'll look the best. While the construction guy tore out the walls in order to replace with new drywall, he actually found full newspapers stuffed inside of the walls that dated back to the 1980's. People back then must have been so poor that they couldn't even afford the proper wall materials.

Lastly, this is a picture of all of the materials and tools that the construction guy is using. You can kind of see that toilet to the right, which is also brand new. We got two new toilets installed in two of our bathrooms. What I find very strange is that the covers are able to fall very slowly, unlike our old ones. I've never realized how small this bathroom really is until after I took this picture. Strangely, it has managed to fulfill all of my parent's needs.

I'll continue posting the progress of our bathroom remodeling and hopefully everything will be finished soon.

Video Game Review #1: Starcraft II

Whoo! First review of this entire blog! Let's get started right away! As the title suggests, I'm going to be reviewing Starcraft II. So first I'll start by telling you guys about the background of the game, then gameplay, then I'll share my personal opinion of the game.

The game is set about 500 years in the future in a group of distant planets, known as the Koprulu Sector. Earth was running out of room for people (as it already is now), so Earth decided to send three huge spaceships full of prisoners and other unwanted people on Earth into space. These humans land on planets in the Koprulu Sector and are called Terrans. Along with the Terrans, two other species of aliens lived in the Koprulu Sector. They are called the Protoss and the Zerg. Both of these alien races were created by an extinct race of gods known as the Xel'Naga.

Terran base at the start of a game.

Moving on to gameplay, each player chooses one of the three races, Terran, Protoss, or Zerg, or random, and face against other players or computer players. At the beginning of each and every game, each player starts with a base and six workers (shown at the right).  No matter how much time you've spent on the game, everyone always starts with these same things. This is why, unlike other games where you are able to collect weapons or upgrades and use them at the start of a game, playing more Starcraft games doesn't give anyone an advantage. Winning require pure skill and strategy.

Protoss base with other structures for army production.
This also shows the actual in game interface with a mini-map.

The workers are used to collect minerals, (the blue rocks in the picture to the right) and those minerals can be used to build more workers and structures. Structures allow players to train an army in order to defeat the other player. I'm not going to get into the complex strategies of the game, but I'll just add a little about the differences between the races. Protoss and futuristic and tend to build strong units that are expensive, while Zerg looks primitive builds units that are cheap and weak. Terrans simply looked like advanced humans and are in the middle with cost and strength of units, but their specialty is adaptability, meaning all structure, even their base, are able to lift off and move. Because of those major difference between the races, Starcraft is better than any other RTS games out there.

Protoss defending against Zerg attack.

Starcraft II also has a campaign, but the campaign is more like a tutorial. The campaign takes way to much time (almost half and hour to an hour per mission for around 30 missions). However, the most important aspect is that the campaign lacks action and plot. I personally like the campaign, but only because the cut-scenes are very well done. Along with the campaign, the game also has an arcade, filled with mini-games created by players. I'll review individual arcade games later, but the arcade is definitely a good bonus to the game.

Now for my opinion of the game. This is my absolute favorite game (as you can tell from by profile picture). Even though the campaign isn't as good as it should be, the game makes up for it by having such good multiplayer games. All of the races are very balanced and are constantly being re-balanced. Multiplayer games are extremely intense and pack with action. Plus, every time you win, you know that it's not because you've spent a lot of time gathering upgrades for your character, but you won all because of your skill at the game. On top of all of this, most arcade games are fun enough to be actual games themselves and they are all free!

In later posts I'll be reviewing arcade games and strategies for winning. Hope you enjoyed this review! Please leave any suggestions for me in the comments so that I can improve.