Starcraft
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Starcraft is an RTS (real-time strategy game) that is popular among the gamers on 3W. Each player selects one of three races, then proceeds in the way of all RTS's -- that is, gathering resources and killing people more effectively than they can kill you, sometimes with the help of a team. The most popular (English) forum for Starcraft discussion is teamliquid.
Charles has pulled a Starcraft ranking system out of his ass, and implemented it in Scheme.
Starcraft is now at least 10 years old. In terms of the awesome:age ratio for games, it is just about Super Mario 64, and probably about on par with Ocarina of Time.
In South Korea Starcraft has become an extremely popular televised sport. However, professional Brood War in Korea is likely to end in summer 2012 as the league transitions to Starcraft II. Brood War elitists such as Damien are still bitter about this, while other fans are sad but remain hopeful that Starcraft II can somehow fill its predecessor's shoes.
Starcraft is also the origin of some phrases heard on hall. (e.g. I'm in your blank, blanking your blanks)
Contents
Terran
Terran is the obligatory human-analogue race. Their conflict with the Zerg and Protoss comes, as all human conflicts do, with a healthy dose of xenophobia and greed. The pusillanimous nature of the Terran race is confirmed in the campaign, when the Garm Brood infests at least two of their high-ranking officers and pwns the Confederacy like the n00bs they are; non-infested officials in the Confederacy promptly throw an emo fit and kill themselves, or are otherwise marooned in space, which is as dark as the yawning blackness in the souls of et cetera.
The name of this race is pronounced with stress on the first syllable, not the last. It's just like "terraform," "Terrascope," "terrorist," and "terrafuckyoujustsayitrightalready."
Terran units in general require more micromanagement than corresponding Zerg and Protoss units, but when micro'd properly, countering Terran armies requires even more micro on part of the non-Terran defender.
The strength of Terran's powerful stationary AoE units leads players of the race to become turtles. This is completely contradictory to standard human tactics, as letting one's opponents control any territory at all is seen as a denial of one's manifest destiny, and usually requires the introduction of some kind of disease.
Zerg
Zerg is the embodiment of all our alien-related fears involving ooze and sphincters and generally disgusting-looking biotech. They are a species especially skilled in spontaneous biometamorphosis, where all organisms are simply extensions of a single organism, the Hivemind. The Hivemind controls several lieutenants, called Cerebrates, which act locally to enact the will of the swarm. No one knows how the fuck Zerg managed to travel through the vacuum of space, but we can only assume it's because they're fucking awesome.
Zerg is the species of the Garm Brood, which it should be noted, pwns n00bs.
The Zerg policy is to overwhelm its opponent by the sheer amount of random shit it can throw at once. It is the only race that can theoretically put an infinite number of units into existence without the aid of another race.
Protoss
Protoss is the embodiment of all our alien-related fears involving obscenely advanced technology. A description of the technical workings of Protoss structures and units involves subspace/temporal rifts, psionic blades, and plasma shields. Immediately before (or during) the Brood War, the two sides of the Protoss -- the archetypal High and Dark sides -- got over their own fucking egos and joined forces to kill shit together.
The Protoss policy is to exchange numbers for sheer strength of units. Where Zerg causes fucklots of damage by reaching a critical mass, Protoss causes fucklots of damage by simply existing.
