Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Longest arena season ever and Starcraft course

We're still doing 5v5 arena matches for what I call the longest arena season evah! This season 8 started on February 2. While arena seasons typically run about 5 months, this one is nearing 7 months, and I'm wondering if this will just run until Cataclysm.

We had a really bad week a couple of weeks ago where we met up against a ton of 2000+ rated teams, but it's been half decent for us the last two weeks. We're sitting around 1660 team rating and I really think we can hit 1700. Unfortunately for me, there is nothing I really want with arena points until we hit 1950 rating (wrathful helm).

Last night we even won a couple of matches in our squish burn makeup, 3 priests (2 disc, 1 shadow), a frost mage, and me. I felt kind of bad for the teams we beat, because come on, its bad when you lose to such a squishy group. We're the little chicken here:

On another note, I came across this article about the University of Florida offering a new online course, EME2040 21st Century Skills in Starcraft. Yes friends, Starcraft.

This 3 credit class, 8 week online course is apparently designed for students who already have a knowledge of Starcraft and intended to use aspects of the gameplay to teach skills for real world situations. U of F seems to have taken down the link to the course description, but from another site:

"With society becoming increasingly technology-based and fast-paced, it is important for professionals to be highly proficient in skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, resource management, and adaptive decision making.

These skills are fundamental in Starcraft and therefore make the game a highly effective environment for students to analyze and take action in complex situations. Computer and video games of all types have become a major part of today's entertainment and technology worlds.

This course includes required weekly game play, viewing and analysis of recorded matches, written assignments which emphasize analysis and synthesis of real/game-world concepts, and collaboration with other students."

Real college credit for applying Starcraft to RL?!?!

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