Apparently, I was wrong about that.  So I’ll go ahead and say that all new updates will be found at The-Ghetto.org.  I’ll go ahead and find a way to archive this installment.

Note for the obvious: All future updates will be located on the new web site.

Click the picture.  I promise it won’t bite.

I do have one question: How many of you will be conflicted if I take down this blog?  Every relevant thing I’ve written or created for this web site will make its way over, it’s just going to take some time.

In the meantime, here’s IdrA trying to play Starcraft II.  Taste the bold, crisp refreshment that can only come from his tears.

If you’re upset games are becoming more expensive because the industry is jerking to the joys of its own production values, fine.  That price points are being determined by suits instead of production costs?  Whatever.  This is addressed to the crowd that thinks Activision was behind it: You’re fucking idiots.

What can a July of 2002 GameSpot sales rundown teach us about Blizzard’s pricing history?

You mean what was then the most anticipated PC game of all-time was priced at sixty dollars?  And Activision had nothing to do with it?  Gamers have no fucking clue what they’re talking about it?  Unprecedented!

Gamers perplex me.  I’ve worked jobs where people couldn’t make ends meet because life’s necessities skeet on their checkbook.  “Necessities” such as getting their dog’s teeth cleaned, and eight-hundred-dollar rims.  So it’s amusing that ten dollars can prove such a breaking point for a medium prided on bang for the buck.

But if you’re that concerned about an impending price war, let me explain something to you: Why do athletes get paid so much? As an example, the National Football League and National Basketball Association employ revenue sharing as part Collective Bargaining Agreements with their players.  This ensures the athletes receive a percentage of all revenue (through television contracts, ticket sales, etc.) as part of their salaries.  In other words, the salaries fans bitch about are a reflection of what they spend on the product.

In other words, the sixty-dollar price tag you bitch about is a direct reflection of what you will end up spending.  If you want to be a defender of the free market, don’t buy the damn game.  And while you’re at it, you can man up and not play it at all.  But you already made up your mind on this one.  Let me know what name you’re using when Starcraft II comes out.

Addendum: Yeah, I didn’t write anything for a week.  I was sick.  Sue me.

Almost all of Starcraft II’s current balance problems can be pinpointed on the Roach.  The majority of gripes about Starcraft II balance and unit diversity more-or-less stem from this completely misguided unit.

The Roach’s role is screwed up.  It originally gained 15 health per second in its 2008 reveal.  It has now been nerfed to earning this regeneration when upgraded and burrowed.  Its initially-creative role has been nerfed out of existence.

They are now a unit that costs 75 minerals and 25 gas, but somehow do the most basic ranged damage per second in the entirety of the Tier 1 tech tree.  They have 145 health, the highest for its cost, and the highest period outside of the Protoss army.  They are also a ranged unit, although they cannot attack air.  They cost one supply.  I almost forgot, they start off with two armor points.  To make things even more absurd, they have upgrades to allow them to move at fast speeds, faster than any basic unit except Zerglings, and also regenerate their health when burrowed.  And they can move while burrowed with the upgrade.

That is absurd. If someone told me a unit like this would stand a chance at making it to retail before the finish of the Starcraft II beta, I would have told them they were insane.  On paper, the unit is simply absurd.

I am not complaining Roaches are overpowered, and that’s precisely what’s wrong with the game.  They should be overpowered.

In order to ensure the Roach is not overpowered, the Protoss and Terran received Marauders and Immortals.  Without these two units, Terran would lose every game against the Zerg, and the Protoss would be at a ridiculous disadvantage.

Blizzard ensured the Roach isn’t overpowered by creating an equally-overpowering counter.  An overpowered counter.   These counters are easily available.  Located at Tier 1.5 and for a price of 100 minerals and 25 gas, the Marauder does 13.5 damage per second against the Roach.  With Stim Packs, it deals 20 damage per second.

While most Tier 1 units do very good damage for their cost, they are usually balanced because they are easy to kill.  For cost, Marines will deal three times as much damage as Carriers, but Marines die easily to splash damage.  The Marauder does not.

Once again, in a vacuum, the Marauder is overpowered like the Roach, because of the Roach.  Specifically, they are overpowered against Roaches.  And as a result, against armor in general.

Finally, the Protoss have the Immortal.  The Immortal single-handedly makes Terran mechanical units nonviable.  Sure, Terrans can EMP, but it is not nearly as reliable as infantry builds, or more recently, massing Marauders.  The Immortal, by any measure, is an overpowered unit.  It is also the single largest “counter” in Starcraft, doing thirty extra damage versus Armored, and is the only unit to carry more than a 50 percent bonus.  Against Armored, they deal 35 damage per second.  With the exception of Battlecruisers, that is the single highest damage per second in either Starcraft or Starcraft II.

What we have is an arms race caused by the Roach.  Starcraft II damage is generally higher, but by a magnitude of 30 to 40 percent.  Not 200 percent.  The Marauder has too much health for both its damage potential and in relation to the theme of Terran play.  And the Immortal simply deals too much damage versus armored units.

Remove it, or drastically rework it.  Rebalance the game accordingly, and most of the current gameplay problems in Starcraft II will no longer exist.  Terran Mech will be viable.  Infantry play will be more diverse.  Protoss versus Zerg will be more dyanmic.  Templars will be able to be balanced correctly.  Zerg were not designed for a 145-health, two-armor, 16-damage, 75-mineral, 25-gas unit.  Starcraft is not designed around such a unit.

I’m all for a return to one of my childhood time sinks.  I just don’t know what audience Descent appeals to in 2010.

Certainly popular in its day, Descent was totally unapologetic about what audience it was appealing to. And when it now costs millions to make a video game for the shooter audience, who is going to buy in?

When older gamers claim newcomers have it easy, Descent is the archetype.  Any synopsis of the game is disclaimered with “once you figure out the controls”.  Yes, the game is too complicated for a mouse and keyboard.

The default controls, a.k.a. “wat”.

Let me put it this way: Know how real-time strategy players discussing what control groups they use?  Descent players discuss what control schemes they use. By the time Descent 3 rolled around, some combination of the keyboard and a premium joystick was the best way to go.  Descent is stuck in a bizarre void untouched by any other shooter in the history of the industry.

I’m going to assume there weren’t a lot of moms and dads who had their eyes on a Sidewinder joystick instead of a Nintendo 64.  So not only was the game built for an older audience, it was built for one patient enough to drop the change for the equipment and master the learning curve.

The surprising thing?  The twin thumbsticks on a controller are actually ideal for Descent.  Shooting required you to orient the nose of the ship on whatever you wanted to die, so the game has no twitch factor.  But there isn’t enough buttons to go around, nor is there a comfortable way to handle Descent’s third axis of movement, verified when the Playstation port of Descent proved inadequate.

And obviously, the economics bely producing the title for its proven audience.  We’re now eleven years removed from any brand recognition the game may have had.  And with shooters even more detached from Descent than they were in 1995, how are you going to sell Descent to the Call of Duty audience?  A game whose combat is best compared to a bullet hell shooter?

So you have one option to make Descent work: Create a really fucking good video game that appeals to a wide audience.  And while we never held it against the shooter, it never proved it could do that.

Teamliquid.net is “introducing” SC2ProMod: Because we already determined the public won’t watch Starcraft if players don’t play regional manager with their mineral line.  In a world oblivious to time zones and the concept of April Fool’s, where each part of the Earth operates on a different clock, people missed the fucking point:

As future reference for Starcraft III and the mind-control headset that will dumb down the game for noobs with slow fingers, it is important to remember why people would think this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.  Let’s travel back to 2007 and 2008, when the internet learned Starcraft would have a competent interface and the internet lost its fucking mind.

And since Blizzard put multiple building selection in their coffee, Starcraft II was ruined and the company was never heard from again.

Right?  Right?

See, Blizzard strategy games are what real-time strategy would be if it had originated in the arcades.  No other competitive games demand a skill set that twists hand-eye and mental dexterity into knots.  And  surprisingly enough, nobody’s taken their cue.  So I would like to thank Blizzard Entertainment: It is a guarantee that Starcraft II will ruin the next decade of my life by consuming it.

When I tore into Starcraft II, I did it because “this game has issues” is better criticism of a beta build than “I want to make love to you, Dustin Browder!”  Enough of that crap.  This is going to be one of the greatest games of all-time.  Not just “quality game that chewed our time” material, this game is a fucking statement, a gigantic middle finger to anyone who believed the company couldn’t create a legendary strategy game without the company’s founding fathers or a crappy, outdated interface.

I totally called it: Starcraft II would be Blizzard’s arcade-strategy style wrapped in a web of mindgames.  And so far, we’ve only seen smudges of potential, where David Kim rolls a Baneling amoeba into some bastard’s dignity, where Orb fulfills the wet dream of any Protoss-on-Zerg hate crime.

Really, has it dawned on people yet?  We’re discussing and embracing a beta build as though it has a rich history!  The “Who’s who?” of international Starcraft discovering that talent from all walks of the genre can match them blow for blow.  This divide’s proving close enough that Starcraft fans are resting hope on the Koreans still locked into KeSPA contracts.  Did you see Major League Gaming’s beta-cast between IdrA and CauthonLuck?

Where Randy Couture versus Brock Lesnar could embrace “world-class game-planner versus the most terrifying professional wrestler of the last twenty years”, you can now have “Premiere American Starcraft player discovering one of Warcraft III’s original superstars can hang with him”. Styles sell tickets, storylines sell tickets, and in Starcraft II, the storylines are the playstyles. Think this isn’t serious business?  I’ll be damned if gamers won’t look down upon each other for playing shitty games like Warcraft III, and tune in to watch competitive gaming prove the superiority of Starcraft above all else.

And it’s doing it with a balance build more playable than any Command and Conquer game ever was, more playable than Reign of Chaos ever was.  Just wait until Blizzard uses the next three years to tweak the finer things.  And then watch the superstars turn the game into clockwork, a game of Blitz chess with two-hundred-and-fifty pieces jockeying for position.

Yes.  This game is at least two months away from retail.  And it’s already that good.

Where was I those last couple of days?  You’d almost think I got a job on short notice.