Yeah, just hop on and introduce yourself if there are people online. Middle of the night tapers off, though.

Once you get to the mid-game buy two, that way you'll always have one.

I know that many people don't feel comfortable on certain heroes, but what I'm saying is that this is the best environment to learn. Half the people in every inhouse will lose, so I try to advocate for focusing on what you as an individual learned from each match rather than the outcome, even if you did poorly. No one should back themselves into a corner by saying "I just can't play x, y, or z" because in all likelihood that's not true, it just needs a bit of practice.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bill-sweksis-super-fans/274185
If someone didn't know...

As people have said, orb walking is using things like Drow's Frost Arrows, or Huskar's Burning Spear to attack the enemy. Usually when you are next to (400 range) creeps and you attack, the enemy creeps will begin attacking you to defend their hero. With an orb walk, when you manually use the ability, it does not trigger the aggro from the creeps, allowing you some free harass.

Solo laning is tough. Basically you are only there to get some experience and a few last hits. Your goal is to survive, and that's about it. Get some harass in when you can, maybe some denies, and perhaps a few last hits. As soon as the support shows up and comes within range to attack you, you just back off. When he goes to do something else, you move in for denies and last hits. As soon as he comes back, you are out of there. If things go well for you, you will outlevel the opponents and can stand against them a bit longer at level 5-6, but otherwise you don't have much power to do anything. In pro matches the solo hard lane won't even get a single point of experience until 4-5 minutes into the game.

I wouldn't worry about animation cancelling. It doesn't really help until you've mastered your mouse control with last hitting and denying. It just allows you to get in about 1 more attack for every 5 attacks, generally. More often than not you'll find yourself cancelling your attack animation instead of the backswing animation. If you want to watch an example of someone who does animation cancelling well, watch draskyll's stream on twitch, but its really more of a high level skill that is less important than the core skills of harass/last hitting/denying.

Not sure how long I'm going to be sticking with it, but I'm starting my own Dwarf Fortress journey.

Using this set of guides: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo

So for anyone that wants to join me in the hardest civilization simulator in existence, send me a message and we can try to make sense of whatever the fuck this game is.

I think we can relate to this comic: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png

Also, this made me actually laugh out loud:

"If you are digging an up/down staircase in the upward direction, and you hit an aquifer from below, the aquifer tile will immediately start producing water in the stairwell, thus leading to a lot of Fun."

The word Fun links to : http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Fun

BS in Chemistry and Visual Art

Its how I'm getting through my night-shifts from now on.

And I have to do it without the help of a wiki because the wiki is blocked.

I'll give it some thought as to how much i think they are paying attention to my web traffic. Its not my own computer but a terminal a bunch of people use.

Unfortunately this is just always going to be the case in pubs. As hard as you try you can't actually get your teammates to play well if they either don't know how to, or aren't interested in doing so. Try to focus on your own play and improving with each match. You will get much less frustrated that way, and your play will improve. There are only a handful of matches that I've ever been able to get my teammates to change their habits. Take the role you are playing and stick to it. Playing your role well is just able the best thing you can do, and probably the only thing that's going to help you win the match.

For example, I was being yelled at by the entire team because I wasn't in teamfights at a very early stage of the game with Sven before I had ANY items. My lane was garbadge, so I needed time to farm. I knew that if I could just get an armlet I would be able to roll the enemy, but without it I would just die immediately. Long story short, despite constant whining from one particularly clueless player, I carried all subsequent teamfights and completely rolled the enemy. I knew this would work because 4v5 they were able to defend towers and we had plenty of map control, so there was no pressure to join the fight underfarmed. Just known your role and play it well. Don't worry about other people.

I always find this video hard to resist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11pAkHHAciM


Alv's video reminded me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMfGqRUyrWw

Can't go wrong with Gorillaz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw8PpYBiDsc

Holy shit check out what I dug up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=FC3y9llDXuM

I've actually always wanted to play a game like this since I first played Command and Conquer 1. If its implemented well I'll give it a shot. I've seen it implemented and not work, though, in Battlefield 2 (not Bad Company 2).

I think its a great idea. Hopefully now with more members it will be easier to gather people for two inhouse sessions per week, although we should probably keep the Sunday inhouses as our primary event with the Thursday ones being a bit more casual.

I'm starting a series of videos where I take a look at pro players in pub games and guide the viewer through how a very experienced player approaches their matches. Most of these videos will be 20-30 mins in length and will are geared towards players that already know the basics of a hero and are looking to improve their strategical approach to a match.

The first: Dendi plays Templar Assassin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UueWOMEP6vo

The only way to start casting is to start casting.

The goal isn't to go over every detail of the hero, as the video assumes you already know the basics, but to look at the more complicated decisions that a pro player makes. I fast forwarded through the laning stage because nothing interesting happened.

I think there is plenty of relevant information within that video that players can learn from. Its a pub, but that's what most of us play. Whether the goal of the match was for "fun" or not, his decisions were largely effective in winning the match.

These videos are not intended to train you for competitive play, just more effective pub play.

Online final fantasy is like DotA in that I can't actually recommend people try it unless its "their thing." The first release was abysmal, but they've remade the game to be released sometime early next year. They closed servers today and destroyed the entire original world.

The trailer for the new version is some of the best game cinematography I've ever seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=39j5v8jlndM

Just wanted to share a video that I was seriously impressed by.