One of the great things about Starcraft (PC) is that you can play other people and friends online. In order to do so you must first have a connection to the Internet, and that it must be successfully connected before playing Starcraft. This saves time and frustration if there is a problem.
From the main Starcraft screen, choose Multiplayer and then Battle.net. It will then search for the fastest server...Then you can login. You can create a new user name, but if you already have one you can start right away. Once you successfully logged in, you will be put in one of many chatrooms. You'll notice on the left side of the screen there are 5 buttons. These buttons are Channel, Create, Join, Ladder, and Exit.
In Battle.net there are different channels. They are kind of like different chatrooms, but they are called Channels. You can make your own Channel if you desire, or you can join in another Channel. From there you can either Create or Join a game.
If you would like to make your own game for others to join...Click on the button that says Create. This will take you to a screen with a place for you to type the Game Name, Game Password (If desired), a Map, Game Type, and Game Speed. You can make any game name that you want but it can only be a certain number of characters. If you would like to have a private game you can make a password for the game...Be sure to tell the person you want to play with the game name and password though. After you made the Game Name and Game Password you can choose a Map that you would like to play on. You can choose all sorts of different maps from here, even ones that you have made. for more information about making your own map click here. After you choose a Map you then choose the Game Type. The different game types available are: Melee, Free for All, One on One, Capture the Flag, Greed, Slaughter, Sudden Death, Ladder, Use Map Settings, Team Melee, Team Free for All, Team Capture the Flag, PGL, and KBK. Finally you can choose the Game Speed of the Game. The different speeds are: Slowest, Slower, Slow, Normal, Fast, Faster, Fastest. Then after all this, you click OK and wait for people to join your game.
If you do not feel like making a game, and you wish to join a game you can click on Join. Once inside the Join Screen, you can type in a Game Name and/or a Game Password, or you can click/double click on one of the games listed on the left. Once you join a game you will get to a screen where you can choose what race you want to be. You can also choose Random if you don't care. If you are the host of the game you can ban players, add computers and what thier race is, or close slots. If not, all you can do is choose your race. From here you can also see everyone else's lag but yours. To help make your lag go down some you can type /refresh. Once the Host of the game decides to start there will be a countdown and then you will start playing the game.
Another button on the main screen is Ladder. If you click on that, it will take you to a listing of all the people playing ladder games, and thier ranking. If you would like to play a Ladder game, you either have to make a Ladder game, or join a Ladder game.
The last button on the main screen is exit, which exits Battle.net but doesn't exits Starcraft.
One last thing...If you want to know other command on Battle.net you can type /help and then in the chatroom it will say you can type either /help commands, /help aliases, or /help advanced. From there you can see other options.
One of the great things about Starcraft/Battle.net is that when you go on Battle.net and there is a new version of Starcraft, then you can update it for free right from Battle.net. In order to play games on Battle.net though you must have the latest version of Starcraft. For more information about Starcraft you can click here or if you want more information on Battle.net you can click here