gamer.pk

Pakistan has to be one country that is really behind it’s neighbors in terms of gaming popularity. India, Iran, China all have good representations in all international tournaments and events. We here however are going to change that. In fact China is now considered a superpower in gaming with Iran and India rising up really fast.

We are going to start of by interviewing a few fellow gamers and how they game these days, what they game, and why they do it? Apart from that there will be a lot of question revealing more about the lives of these gamers in Pakistan.

I have come in contact with a few üGX 2007 organizers and they say the registration date for the event had been extended to 28th October, and all late registrations are being entertained. Anyone being left behind should contact them personally if they have any problems at either end.

I beg to be reporting so late yet again, but there was some matter that need my attention and I couldn’t post here in the last few days. But here I am.

Today I decide to talk about the latest set of questions and answers that the Blizzard Development team has released. This was number 19, and they have answered a question that has sent waves of confusion amongst the pious StarCraft fans.

SC2Blog.com reports on a question, that seems dumb at first, but has a lot of mater underneath. Starcraftcz.com asked,

“What do the Protoss eat? (where do they get energy and mass?)”

That IS a really good question since it has remained unanswered through out the last game and expansion. The dev team had this to say,

Protoss gain nutrition from sunlight, or at a pinch, moonlight (which is just reflected sunlight anyway) by absorbing through their skins. They can go for extended periods without absorbing sunlight. What little moisture they need is also absorbed through their skin.

SC2Blog argues that these are plants since organism that need sunlight to convert gases like CO2 into sugar are hence Autotrophs. Or they could be fairies, or ethereal or magical? I however believe that the sunlight cannot carry so much heat energy across space and the reflected light from the moon isn’t that hot either. What they do rely on probably are the radiations from the celestial objects and use them to generate electrical energy (just like in a solar cell) or Psi. A lot of people on other blogs and forums believe them to be more plant like. Which is hard to believe since no plant like creature has had been known to sustain intelligence, grow limbs, or be psychic communicators. Hence they are some sort of humanoids crossing over into mechanicals machines or robots.

Blizzard needs to clarify more on this subject, and perhaps they need a detailed storyline to this series too, like the one they had for the WarCraft Universe. Check out other discussion between developers, fans and followers here with your own SC/Battle.net cd-key.

Cheers, till I get around to extracting the essence of the entire set of questions all the previous batches.

Lately I have been on the prowl for some good hosting service and I haven’t really hit upon a really good one with the least strings attached.

It seems there are technological limitations that disallow the hosting party for being a totally magnanimous service as they should be. It’s the Internet for crying out loud, how hard is it to have an IP address over the Internet for a computer?

Having looked over a few outside and inside Pakistan, there is a stark difference between the two, both being expensive and pricey none the less. The ones outside of Pakistan however seem reasonably priced with competitive packaging. Registering a .com in Pakistan is a Rs. 1500/year deal plus you need to buy a hosting plan to boot Where as this can be done with $ 6/month or less with some added services provided I sign up for at least a year meaning in total I would be spending something around a Rs. 4 grand/year mark, a little expensive for a person like me.

For a start, have a look at these:

• Bluehost (decent)
• Fast Domain (decent)
• 1and1 (OK)
• Yahoo! Small Business (never bothered to go further)
• Serverbeach (professional and big enterprise shit)
• GoDaddy (good for most purposes)
• Micronet Webhosting Services (in Pakistan, very limited)
• Hostndomain (looks good for Pakistan)

Here is where you can register a .pk or a .xyz.pk domain, again for $8/month and a lot of strings attached. Why is it so expensive still? I found some other sites like this one too, but they are also way over the top expensive. Domain name reselling… hmmm, a business worth doing?

Anyway, to say the least, the pricing is still a little expensive and I will be looking into the matter, further. Need to host some goodies for the community soon!

A big yes to both!

In recent times we have seen gaming, blogging and online journalism explode to new dimensions. Blogging is the most cool and accessible way talking to a lot of people about a lot of things, at the same time maintaining a safe distance in terms of personal information and details.

4Kings’ star WarCraft 3 Orc player has recently been caught online blogging about himself, his girlfriend and his games. What was surprising was to see him be very candid about his relationship with his girlfriend, Cassandra! And she blogs too! Grubby has a huge fan following in Europe and else where, and is regarded as one of the best European players. He has been in and out of controversies and fights, yet has maintained an matched level of performance for 5 to 6 years, winning numerous online and offline tournaments. Don’t think I am a huge fan[boy] of his, I hate him by virtue of his game race, the Orc, and mine being the Humans.

Hence allow me to mention that he prefers to listen to Linkin Park too. And is still hooked on to their song, ‘In The End.’ From a musical point of view and artistic too, Linkin Park are really poor. They were OK when you were a teenager or when you never had anything else to listen to, but for a person his age, in this time and age should be listening to something more sinister and darker. Something in the doom, thrash, death genre. Would suit his personality a lot!

The 4Kings however are facing a poor run of form as they were knocked out of the WarCraft 3 Champion’s League for place in the Offline Finals and it was made a huge fuss off in the community.

Over a year ago, Lahore witnessed a new kind of gaming cafe. An x360 cafe, which was pretty much not publicized at all, in defence had around 12 consoles LAN’d together. Each player had a headset, wireless controller and his own 19″ LCD screen. Though it was too good to be true, due to insufficient investment the whole thing just ended. To make things worse, last summer’s “national power crisis” pwned most of the consoles’ power supply unit. And as I check right now, seems their website has died a silent death too.

Guess what! There’s good news for console gamers, but not here Our Indian gamers will gain access to an Indian Xbox Live starting from November 5. There’s a 12 month subscription to avail the service which would cost just Rs.2200! Thats equivalent to 2 months of my broadband internet expenses. Along with that they’ll be able to purchase 1500 Microsoft Points (which costs $20 in the USA) for around Rs.1000.

There are quite a few xbox gamers I know of in Pakistan but I doubt any company has considered taking the initiative to support console gamers here. Given piracy is prevalent even after a few anti-piracy raids claimed to be backed by Microsoft Pakistan, there isn’t anything positive being done to convince gamers not to mod their x360s and play genuine.

More reads on the Indian XBLA:

• Joystiq
• Gamasutra
• the ANGRY pixel
• GameGURU

cheerio!

I finally got my hands on a copy of Football Manager 2008 that was released on 19th October. Waiting for it to complete installing. I played the demo version of it and I really liked the game, with all it’s new features that help the player make faster decisions and substitutions, and an improved the interface. Will post more about this, later. Time to sign some new players for AC Milan, check out who the new kids are, and build tactics for a league me and our friends will start in a few hours time.

The FM series has really matured into a proper game product with the latest installment emphasizing more on user input to the game development. So its quite a chance that we might see some well deserved additions and changed that might have been suggested.

For those of you who do not have the game as yet, I’d rather visit FM08 for more details.

The other day I had the weirdest dream, and you will call me weird for this. I was looking at the Talent Build feature in the World of WarCraft for the Mage class. There are three major talent categories for them. Arcane, Fire and Frost.

It is a settled fact that both the Undead and the Human factions from the WarCraft 3 are masters of two different elements. Fire is for Humans or humanoids, and Frost is for the Undead. Arcane falls as a neutral set of skills that both these factions are a master of and those that abet their major spell specialization.

The Archmage however is a master of the Frost element! Blizzard, and Water Elementals are what is from the Frost talent’s tree.

The Undead Legion, also known as ‘The Scourge,’ in WarCraft 3 has a hero called the Lich. And the Lich are masters of the Frost talent. Spells like Frost Nova, Dark Ritual, Ice Shards, Frost Armor give the intelligent Lich Magi immense destructive power.

This master of the Frost is what is beginning to be the base of the next World of WarCraft installment ‘The Wrath of the Lich King.’ The Lich King is the great fallen Alliance hero, Arthus himself.

‘The Alliance,’ of which the Humans are a part, have another hero in WarCraft 3 that is from the nationless Blood Elves. The Blood Mages. These Blood Mages are a master of Arcane and Fire elements.

However, in view of all this discussion, we should remember there have been huge hints of usage of Fire at the Undead side, which leads one to think that there might be possible cross-over of skill amongst these two arch-enemies.

Which leads me to ask the Blizzard developers if they are hiding the fact that they have a plan of ultimately bringing the aloof man on the horse to the Undead?

I had a lot of time on my hands so I typed this out -.-

The excitement and anxiety of the release of the next installment in the StarCraft series, StarCraft 2, has had me and my friend on the edge of our seat for weeks. For a starter, I am reposting a short essay/post we did on another blog.

For the past 10 years if there is any game that has stood the test of time, and technology, it may be this game!

Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft was launched in 1998 as a new franchise to their already famed and proliferated WarCraft series.

StarCraft, like WarCraft is a real time strategy game (or RTS) that pits a player against another player (computer or human) on a map that has a testing terrain and limited resources. With the aid of balanced out races in the game’s storyline the player is able to select his strategies and tactics accordingly. StarCraft boasted three races/factions as a step-up from two races from the WarCraft series. An improved graphics’s engine, harder intelligence (AI), and a better suited game engine for mulitplayer support meant that this game was an instant hit.

StarCraft’s real elixir was not it’s innovative design, which was copied by every other game hence, it was it’s popularity amongst the gaming community all over the world. Blizzard’s free online player versus player match-up system, Battlenet, drove the online frenzy to dimensions unknown. With a further balanced race structure in it’s expansion pack, Broodwar, players from all over the world gobbled up bandwidth to play their toughest opponents and compete in tournaments. South Korea, Europe, North America and Brazil are countries that were major contributing parties to this party.

10 years from then Blizzard has announced StarCraft 2 only a few months back, which will be another step-up from the previous installment in terms of graphics (mainly), game play and storyline, units and races, and the overall gaming experience. Former SC players have already started posting their thoughts and recollections from their previous experiences in SC forums, and are dissecting hair strands about each and every unit announced to date. As the game development progresses, Blizzard is keeping the audiences tantalized with teasers and information every now and then. To get an idea about how deep-rooted this fan base for Blizzard is, check out their awesome fanart section.

Visit this for Wikipedia’s SC2 entry.

One of Pakistan’s premier pioneer gaming events is on the horizon. It is scheduled to be held at GIK Institute Campus from 16th to 18th November 2007. The registration is already closed on 13th October. And anyone NOT affiliated with an educational institute is NOT allowed to register for the tournament. Games like, Counter Strike, WarCraft 3 (2v2), Quake 3 Arena (2v2), Defense of the Ancients, ProEvolution Soccer 6 will be played.

Visit üGX 2007’s website for further details and contact. I myself will try to attend the event in any capacity I can.

So here I am with another blog in the middle of a cold October night starting what I hope to make a comprehensive and interesting blog about how and what I game. To begin with, I consider myself a huge (PC) games fan and enthusiast. I have played everything from Pong to Quake. I have played in several gaming competitions across the country and help setup a few in their infancy too. I hope to make this a one of kind reading experience for my Pakistani readers and educate them about gaming as we go along talking about the few games I play.