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This easter egg is referring to the game StarCraft 2 by Blizzard. There are three fractions in StarCraft 2: Protoss, Terran and Zerg. Imagine the Zerg like alie
by LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
This easter egg is referring to the game StarCraft 2 by Blizzard. There are three fractions in StarCraft 2: Protoss, Terran and Zerg. Imagine the Zerg like aliens. Zergs have a unit called "the Zergling" which is a small creature that usually attacks buildings and enemy units in groups. If you have a lot of Zerglings and run to your opponents fast this can be called "a Zergling rush". There are also custom maps that you can play that are called Zerg Rush: You are in the middle of the map and Zerlings are streaming to your bade from all sides. You have to defend it like in the easter egg.
- ehamberg 14y agoWell, I would say that it refers to the Starcraft series. I'm so old that I remember the first Starcraft game – and I'm quite sure it had Zerg. ;)
- doktrin 14y agoYeah, the 'zerg' meme originates from Starcraft. It's been commonly used (often pejoratively) in gaming circles to describe situations in which superior numbers dictated the outcome of an encounter. On an unrelated note, it's rather depressing to think of the original StarCraft game as being something 'old people' remember. I'm 29. Edit : I was kind of surprised to see this meme explicitly explained. I've always thought of it as being one of the most ubiquitous out there.
- DanBC 14y ago> On an unrelated note, it's rather depressing to think of the original StarCraft game as being something 'old people' remember. I'm 29. Do you remember a time before Google? Google was started the same year as Starcraft was released - 1998. (Weirdly Armageddon and Deep Impact were released in 1998) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_film) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998)
- wlesieutre 14y agoI think Lycos is the earliest search engine I remember using
- wiredfool 14y agoAltavista.digital.com, not to be confused with the poor sod who had altivista.com. But then, for some reason, I thought it was a Toy Story joke.
- doktrin 14y agoI remember Lycos, Altavista, Excite, Infoseek and Yahoo as being the search engines I used throughout middle school. I don't think I began using Google until 99 or so. However, I also remember using BBS systems. TradeWars 2002, anyone?
- ahsteele 14y agoDidn't play TradeWars 2002 but spent a fair amount of time with Legend of the Red Dragon.
- thenonsequitur 14y agoMetacrawler was awesome at this time.
- bitops 14y agoConsider that there are kids out there who are 10 years old, but weren't alive to experience 9/11.
- Suncho 14y agoThe term "Zerg Rush" is based on the term "Grunt Rush" from Warcraft II. A Grunt Rush is when you build your Barracks first before your Town Hall to start churning out Grunts as fast as possible. It's a degenerate strategy that's pretty much indefensible. The term was coined by a player named Tou in 1996. The Zerg race in StarCraft were particularly good at attacking with many units early in the game, so this term was coopted by StarCraft players and it became "Zerg Rush."
- iconfinder 14y ago"I'm so old that I remember the first Starcraft game" I remember when Dune 2 came out - the father of all RTS games.
- archangel_one 14y agoWhat about Herzog Zwei, you young whippersnapper ;-)
- binarysolo 14y agoWhat a great game on the Genesis.
- tallanvor 14y agoDune II was definitely influenced by Herzog Zwei, but not everyone had a Genesis, and I don't think Herzog Zwei really had a concept of base management or resource gathering, which have obviously become integral to the RTS games today.
- artmageddon 14y agoYou're right, it wasn't like most RTS games we know today. Herzog Zwei had little bases scattered through the map that could be thought of as territories, and you'd have to capture them with troops(both the player and AI would compete for these as it allowed further expansion, healing, etc.). You could order up defensive / offensive units as "credits" trickled in over time at a fixed rate(I don't think there was any way to speed it up), and the ultimate goal was to send your assisting units to attack the enemy's single fortress. I absolutely loved that game, though! I don't really recall it having any story, though.
- aGHz 14y agoThat sounds very much like the more modern DOS game Z: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(video_game). It eschewed the Dune 2 RTS mechanics that had already become dogma by then and I distinctly remember finding it refreshing. (I grew up on DOS so I didn't know anything about the Genesis).
- stoolpigeon 14y agoremember Starcraft? I play it all the time. What's to remember? My home machine isn't set up for games and I own SC2 but it doesn't run well - and I enjoy the original more anyway.
- mkup 14y agoYes, I find original Starcraft more enjoying too, as there is no implicit or explicit time limit in most missions as in SC2, so player doesn't have to rush through all the game and has time to explore the map, try various units and strategies without load/save loop, enjoy the humour, music, look&feel of the units/buildings etc. This "war against the time" approach was my deal breaker for SC2. The general idea may be fine for training people to fight online, but for single player mode/campaign it's just inappropriate. Typical SC1 mission is "destroy all enemy bases when you like it and how you like it", typical SC2 mission is "disarm the ticking bomb in time". It's OK to have 1-2 such missions in the campaign, but when entire campaign is made of time-bomb missions, there is no satisfaction from the game.
- stoolpigeon 14y agoExactly. That was my feeling when I played also. I think it may be part of differentiating single player from pvp - but the problem is I don't have the time and energy to be competitive in pvp either. So I still play SC, single player a lot.
- krelian 14y agoI thought the SC2 missions were great and had a lot of variety. The missions were very original compared the usual you get from RTS campaigns. On the other hand, and I can't explain why, the atmosphere of the SC1 was a lot better. I don't know if it's the music or the graphics but it really had a great feeling of "you are alone in space and everything is hostile".
- ansgri 14y agoSame with Diablo II compared to more modern RPGs. It's just like low-resolution (yet masterful!) graphics and absence of effects for effects' sake make you think up the details of the game universe.
- ralfd 14y agoFinally the secret identity of "StarcraftJokeExplainer" is revealed!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- blyuher 14y agoAs to APM: "Actions per minute is the number of actions (such as selecting units or issuing an order) completed within a minute of gameplay in real time strategy games, most notably in Starcraft. High APM is often associated with skill, as it can indicate that a player both knows what to do in the game and has the manual dexterity to carry it out. Software has been developed to analyze players' APM in these games. Beginners often have low APM counts, typically below 50. Professional e-athletes in South Korea usually have average APM scores around 300, but often exceed the 400 mark during intense battle sequences. Notable gamers with over 400 average APM include Lee Young-Ho and Lee Jae-Dong. Park Sung-Joon is noted for the record APM of 818." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actions_per_minute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actions_per_minute
- hackermom 14y agoAPM trivia: there was a brief moment in-between two patches in Heroes of Newerth - a popular DoTA clone - in where moving your "hero" to a new location on the map counted as an action. Players simply stepping around rapidly right where they were standing would increase their APM indefinitely.
- wickedchicken 14y ago> hackermom 3 hours ago Best mom ever??
- slyn 14y agoI believe technically this would be considered APM in all games. In starcraft 1+2 even selecting a control group is considered an action, so simply hiting 1 2 3 4 5 in succession without building units or changing rallies or really doing anything would count as 5 actions. eAPM, or effective APM is a more advanced attempt to filter out spammy actions (as you describe) and was made up a bit after APM first came out as a statistic and people started gaming the APM stat to try and inflate their egos. In SC2 there is a bug on the live patch where the APM tab in replays or live games shows the eAPM stat, and the eAPM tab shows the APM stat due to some silly mixup that made it past QA.
- hackermom 14y agoI think it's also referring to the phenomenon as it exists today in every single online multi-player game that features open PVP as well as closed battleground type PVP, not just StarCraft. The "zerg", as it was commonly known to all players, presented itself to me in the beginning of 2002 in a well-known and still active MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_age_of_camelot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_age_of_camelot). DAoC-players refer to a mass of ungrouped, uncoordinated players joining in on the large battles between the realms of the game as a "zerg", and to individual players making up the "zerg" as "randoms" (random players; ungrouped) and sometimes as "zergers". The term certainly sprung from the first StarCraft game, but the phenomenon is today embodied not just by NPC units in this or that game, but by actual groups of players, and is seen in practically every MMORPG with PVP.
- leeoniya 14y ago"factions"