Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide
Jul 17th
If you have been looking around for a Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide, look no further. This page is easily the best Starcraft 2 strategy guide I have seen around and is sure to increase your rankings significantly.
Starcraft 2 will release on July 27th and is the next blockbuster hit coming down the pipe as released by Blizzard Entertainment. If you do not know who Blizzard is, they are the creators of World of Warcraft (here is a good World of Warcraft Strategy Guide if you are looking).
In Starcraft 2, players will once again have to choose between the Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, and will be able to engage in competitive play. If you preordered the game, you were given bonus access to the beta test.
Regardless, players will be able to play on the 27th and will continue to play from then on out. Note that 11 million copies of the original Starcraft were sold. As a result, Starcraft 2 is sure to be a runaway success and there may even be more Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide players than there are World of Warcraft Strategy Guide players.
The reason for this is that unlike WoW, there is no monthly fee for Starcraft 2. The major difference though is that Starcraft 2 doesn’t have the same sort of “sticking power” as WoW; players using a World of Warcraft Strategy guide end up leveling really fast and get attached to their characters. Each time they play and progress online they feel as if they have done something in real life. This feeling of satisfaction is powerful and keeps players hooked on WoW for years on end.
Starcraft 2 is more casual-friendly. You can easily hop on Starcraft 2 at any time of the day and pick up a game. You can grab a Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide and then immediately log on and test out your new strategies. With a good guide, players learn quickly and the game becomes more competitive at a frightening rate.
The great thing though is that when you play a game of Starcraft 2, you will spend 5-20 minutes (unless you have an unusually long game) in each game. You can either choose to play another or log off and do something in real life (gasp!) if you desire to. You can go a week without playing and your character’s rankings will not suffer too mucfh.
For this reason, I believe a lot of gamers will play World of Warcraft in the long term, but I figure most WoW players will also pick up Starcraft 2 to play casually. For this reason I do not think there will be an “exodus” from WoW to SC2.
The Daily Pulse: 01-08-10
Jan 9th
What’s going on in your favorite games? You’re about to find out!
Cafe World
Stardust Stew – Two new recipes are available along with a variety of new decor as part of an alien-themed Cafe World update.
FarmVille
FarmVille Barn Raising – You can now increase the storage capacity of your FarmVille buildings for free via a new feature dubbed Barn Raising. Dairy Farms and Chicken Coops will be able to take advantage of this feature soon!
Mafia Wars
Mafia Wars Bangkok Beta – Beta is described as being “soon” for the highly anticipated Mafia Wars Bangkok expansion.
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The Daily Pulse is a daily column aggregating the best content from social gaming bloggers around the web all in one place. If you have a story to add, contact us!
The Daily Pulse
Jan 6th
What’s going on in your favorite games? You’re about to find out!
Cafe World
V.I.P. Dinner – For the rest of today and tomorrow, you can cook a free dish in Cafe World that pays out twice as much as any other dish.
FarmVille
In spite of tons of server issues tonight, quite a few new features were added:
Chicken Feed – You can now feed your neighbors chickens for a chance to win mystery eggs… for your friends that is! You find them but then ultimately have to share them. I’m vaguely reminded me of that banking commercial with the two girls and one of the girls gets a play pony and the other gets a real pony.
New Flower – A new flower, the Morning Glory, was added to the game late last night as well. This flower is on a 12 hour timer which will make getting the Flower Power ribbons much easier for those that still need them.
Around the Web
Life After Facebook Changes – How have your favorite game companies responded to the recent Facebook policy changes? Maybe all the free giveaways were just to keep us interested while developers came up with new ideas?
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The Daily Pulse is a daily column aggregating the best content from social gaming bloggers around the web all in one place. If you have a story to add, contact us!
The Daily Pulse: 01-04-10
Jan 4th
What’s going on in your favorite games? You’re about to find out!
FarmVille
Free Fuel Week – You can now give and receive free fuel on Facebook’s FarmVille. Zynga appears to be taking a page out of big oil’s book, giving us tons of fuel until we become dependant on it, then they will pull the rug out and raise the prices, no doubt!
Cafe World
VIP Players – On the Cafe World fan page, the official poster referred to (I’m assuming) Cafe World Players are “VIP” – just insinuating that all the players are important. However, people seemed to take it as an insult, and panic has ensued.
Mafia Wars
Loot Rewards – Yes, you get 10% bonus to loot drops from mastering a job tier all three times. Yes, this applies on all three cities. And yes, this has always been the case, it is not a new feature!
Dante’s Inferno
Picking a Class – Thinking about jumping into the new Facebook app? Read this first so you know what class you should pick. Once you pick, it is permanent, so choose carefully!
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The Daily Pulse is a daily column aggregating the best content from social gaming bloggers around the web all in one place. If you have a story to add, contact us!
Dante’s Inferno Guide Now Live!
Jan 3rd
No Daily Pulse today – sorry! I did manage to put together a new guide on Dante’s Inferno for you all today. I have been talking about it for the past two weeks, it is about time I put something together. Check it out!
Dante’s Inferno Facebook Guide
The Daily Pulse: 01-02-10
Jan 2nd
What’s going on in your favorite social games? You’re about to find out!
Mafia Wars
Mafia Wars SMS – Why Mafia Wars SMS updates are unlikely to be worth your time at any point in the distant future.
FarmVille
FarmVille Ball Drop – People not being able to get their FarmVille balls to drop is still by far the biggest focus of the FarmVille community. You’ve got one more day left to go find a faster computer!
FarmVille up for Best Social App in the 2009 Crunchies – Go vote! I’d like to say FarmVille will run away with the category in a landslide due to the sheer number of players, but who knows; most people don’t even vote for things that actually matter, let alone tech awards. Zynga is also up for the best startup of 2009, but they’re competing against Twitter, so I hope no one is holding their breath over that one.
Cafe World
New Decor – If decorating a virtual cafe seems your sort of weekend activity, now is your time to shine.
Around the Web
Mark Pincus on Charlie Rise:
While I enjoy Cafe World, I’m not sure how spamming your friends with inconsequential free gift offerings or tips is the equivalent of cooperative game play. Even the most dedicated players on the Cafe World forums have been complaining about this very thing.
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The Daily Pulse is a daily column aggregating the best content from social gaming bloggers around the web all in one place. If you have a story to add, contact us!
http://www.farmville-strategy.com/2010/01/farmville-new-years-eve-ball-dropping.html
The Daily Pulse: 01-01-10
Jan 1st
After some computer issues, the Daily Pulse is back. What’s going on in your favorite social games? You’re about to find out!
Mafia Wars
Top Stories of 2009 – Read about the top 5 most commented stories of 2009 on the Mafia Wars blog.
Bangkok Preperation – Mafia Wars Guide helps you get prepped for the imminent release of Mafia Wars Bangkok.
FarmVille
How to Get Your New Year’s Ball to Drop – This title never gets old. A lot of people just have not been able to get their New Year’s Ball to drop to collect their free level. Here’s how to fix it.
They of Mystery – One of the new FarmVille ribbons requires the player to purchase 30 ribbons for the top tier. Let’s just say a lot of players aren’t too happy about this. Check out the forum action!
Across the Web
Fugitive Caught Through World of Warcraft – I know that this isn’t the usual content, but I’m amazed by this one. A fugitive’s location was caught because he put his real information into his Blizzard account. Guess he never heard of a game card?
Games to Watch
From AppData.com
In Zynga tradition, PetVille has continued to rise over the week and is likely to eclipse it’s main competitor, Pet Society, within the week. The interesting thing is that Pet Society appears largely unaffected; just another indicator of how much room there is and how much growth social gaming will continue to enjoy throughout the new year.
Dante’s Inferno surged today, reaching over 2 million players in its third week. It looks like within a few weeks, Dante’s Inferno is likely to become Lolapps top application. I’ve been getting into this game a little bit myself; if there is any interest, I may just put up a strategy guide.
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The Daily Pulse is a daily column aggregating the best content from social gaming bloggers around the web all in one place. If you have a story to add, contact us!
Zynga to Sue the Developers of Mafia Wars Autoplayer
Dec 29th
Zynga to Sue Creators of Mafia Wars Autoplayer:
And it looks like Mafia Wars Autoplayer is backing down, even though it’s highly unlikely (in my unqualified opinion) that Zynga could win the case. I can’t blame the MWAP developers though; it’s just not worth the lawyer fees to save a free program.
As a society, business is becoing more and more service oriented, and while I enjoy Zynga games, they have a terrible reputation in the customer service department. What if the money and time Zynga has spent filing a case against Mafia Wars Autoplayer was instead spent on customer service reps? I’m sure Mafia Wars would be a better place. Not only that, I bet Zynga would see an increase in their bottom line (and ardent fans) by pursuing this option rather than bolstering their legal staff.
Look, I don’t endorse botting, but I also live in the real world. I’d rather have a fully-functioning, well-supported game and just accept the fact that sometimes people will cheat and bot. The real kicker with this whole situation is that I’m sure some coding geek(s) will pick up the torch sooner or later; it’s only a matter of time before another auto-bot script comes out. Millions of people play Mafia Wars, and over a half a million of those at some point had downloaded Mafia Wars Autoplayer off of userscripts.org, so there is clearly a demand for it.
Even in an imaginary world where Zynga manages to suppress all resistance in the United States, a botting program will just be outsourced. Some enterprising programmer in a developing country will make a fully-functioning autoplayer and sell it for 5$ a download and will make a pretty penny.
It sounds ridiculous, but we’ve seen it happen with anything people want online that is suddenly made illegal, whether it is virtual currency or online gambling.
Now tell me, am I lyin’?
The Daily Pulse: 12/28/2009
Dec 28th
What’s going on in your favorite games? You’re about to find out!
FarmVille
FarmVille Completion Rankings: Think you’ve spent more time than anyone else on your FarmVille farm? Probably not, but you can always try! Check out the “Overall Completion Rankings” thread on the official FarmVille forums.
Unreleased Llama: A picture on FarmVille Freak of a farm with a Llama is one of the most commented stories of the day.
Hidden Ribbons: Unreleased FarmVille listed on FarmVille strategy are likely to be placed into the game in a post-New Year update.
Mafia Wars
The Last Score of 2009: Mafia Wars Guide takes you through the last piece of content for 2009. Check out the loot lists, pics, and strategy from this limited time job!
Egg Conundrum: Mafia Wars Guide ponders an existential void in the Faberge Egg universe.
Pretty boring day today – caught in between the Christmas and New Year’s events for most Facebook games!
Social Gaming Commentary:
Viral Tactics Post Facebook Changes – Inside Social Games shows you how developers are still going to spam you and your friends with gift requests and other notifications whether you like it or not.
The Daily Pulse is a daily column aggregating the best content from social gaming bloggers around the web all in one place. If you have a story to add, contact us!
Dante’s Inferno (Facebook) Review
Dec 27th
The Facebook version of EA’s Dante’s Inferno, adapted by lolapps, made a big splash over the holidays, jumping from 0 to nearly 1.5 million players in over the last 10 days. To see what it was all about, I decided to give it a try.
The Good
Content
Content, content, and more content! Compared to other games of the genre, Dante’s Inferno is massive. There are nine total acts of 5 chapters each, with 5 missions and a boss fight in each chapter. While I’m only on the third chapter now, if this trend continues (no reason to think it wouldn’t), there would be 175 different missions and 45 ‘boss fights’ in game. Each individual mission has some relevant flavor text, which adds a nice touch as well.
The art is also great. Each boss fight in each chapter has its own custom art work, tailored to the mission. Since Dante’s Inferno has a console title to build off of (and it was loosely based off the Divine Comedy), it definitely is way ahead of its contemporaries in terms of story and artwork (which some popular titles virtually ignore entirely). The only thing I want to know is: How does the guy (or girl) who drew the dead babies with sword arms introduce himself at parties?
Player vs. Player
Fighting scales! As you level up and as you choose more challenging opponents, you earn more experience points. Crazy, I know.
Loot is also well itemized. Progression has a natural feel to it; higher level items are progressively better and each upgrade is meaningful.
The Bad
Mechanics & Gameplay
While Dante’s Inferno does a lot of things right, at the end of the day it fails to meaningfully differentiate itself from other games in the genre.
If you’ve played Mafia Wars (or Mobsters, or Yakuza Lords, etc) before, you know how to play Dante’s Inferno. Same stat point system, same progression system, same job system, same combat system, same everything.
As a result, it has the same pitfalls, like energy accounts . I went from 1-50 in a few hours just by putting nearly every single stat point into energy, all the while still winning most of my fights because I had better loot. Also, you choose a class permanently before you even get to play the game. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea (it’s not) and why it keeps resurfacing in games. Picking classes in RPGs works when you get different skills and fill various niches in the game. Picking classes in text games where everyone follows the same path causes more harm than good.
Synopsis
4/5 Stars
It is not necessarily a bad thing from a player’s perspective that the developers drew so much from previous games in the same genre – it’s fun and it works. The developers also did a great job with the content and building a working, scaling combat and loot system.
The problem is that other games in the genre are well established; players have invested a lot of time and in some cases money into titles like Mafia Wars. More of the same is not what draws people to leave their current game to move to a new one.
As it stands, I think Dante’s Inferno will find itself a nice but small niche, and unless lolapps or EA wants to drop a lot of money on advertising, it’s likely to say that way.
Recommendation
Personally, it gives me something to do until Mafia Wars Bangkok comes out. If you like this style of game, I’d say it is definitely worth checking out. Play it here.
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