gamer.pk

It might seem I am singing a lot of GosuGamers.net songs but it not how it seems. I wanted to bring to your notice that they are having this regular weekly tournament on every Sunday called the GosuCup (#4). It’s for both StarCraft and WarCraft 3. It provides a great opportunity for people to hone their skills against online competitors especially while playing from Pakistan local gamers can get a taste of foreign skill levels and help improve their game.

The general tournament information is,

Tournament administrator(s): [Sweden] Genie
Status: Open
Format: Single Elimination
Players: 0 (confirmed) 45 (registered) 256 (maximum)
Start time: 25th November 2007 15:00
Confirmation time: 30 minutes_before_start

From the looks of it, it really seems an easy tournament, albeit with no prize money.

Anyways, the rules for WarCraft 3 are as very simple;

GosuCup #4, Sunday, November 25th

Have fun, play fair, and don’t forget to report your loss

Time and date: Sunday, 25th November, 15:00 CET
Structure: Single Elimination
Best of: Best of 1 (one), Semifinals – Best Of 3, Grand final – Best of 5
Server: Northrend @ Battle.Net
Channel: GosuGamers, GosuGamers-2, GosuGamers-3 etc.

The player the lowest in the bracket tree will first remove one map out of the map pool, and then the highest player in the bracket tree with remove two maps, and lowest player in the bracket removes one last. Last map left is being played.

In the semifinals, there will be best of 3 (three), which means lowest player in the bracket removes one map, and higher player removes one, followed by the higher player picking map to start with. Loser picks next.

# Twisted Meadows
# Echo Isles
# Terenas Stand
# Turtle Rock
# Secret Valley

General

Competition Method: 1 vs. 1
Match Winner: The player who completely destroys the opponent or if the opponent surrenders.
Admins may install third party program and/or join as an observer for tournament operations purposes, such as verifying match results or gathering match data.

Game Settings

Race Selection: Free Choice, Random is allowed. (Players must notify their race selection to the referee before the start of the match. If a player changes the race without referee’s permission, the player may be given a warning or lose by default at the referee’s sole discretion.)
Game Speed: Fastest
Maps: Terenas Stand, Twisted Meadow, Turtle Rock, Echo Isle, Secret Valley
(* Each map may be modified by the admins. Players will be informed before the tournament of any such modifications)

After the match is over, the players must allow the referee to check the match results and save the replay file. If the replay file is not saved, the player may be given a warning or lose by default at the referee’s sole discretion.

Disconnections

Disconnection: Any disconnection of the connection between match players due to System, Network, PC, and/or Power problems/issues
Intentional Disconnection: Upon judgment by the referee, any offending player will be charged with a loss by forfeit

When any disconnection occurs:

1) If disconnection occurs within 3 minutes of start of match: match restart
2) If disconnection occurs after 3 minutes of start of match:
- If both players agree to a match restart, the match will be restarted.
- If the players cannot reach an agreement, the winner will be determined by a referee after the analysis of the match replay file.
- If the winner can not be decided by analyzing the match replay file, the players must agree to a match restart or forfeit the match.
Intentional Use of Game/Program Bugs: A warning at the minimum or loss by default
Intentional use of any program bugs will result in a warning at the minimum or loss by default for the offending player.

Penalty for Unfair Play

Unfair Play
1) Use of any map hack program
2) Intentional disconnection
3) Use of any settings exceeding standard and permitted settings
4) Any unnecessary chatting during the match.
5) If referee decides that external conditions (Press, Team Leader, Player, Spectator, etc) give unfair advantage to a player, the player may be given a warning or lose by default at the referee’s sole discretion.

Upon discovery of any player committing any violations regarded as unfair play, that player will be disqualified from the tournament.
During the course of any match, the operations staff and/or referee may determine other actions to be unfair play at any time. [Link]

The list of registered entrants is here, with a registration form following it up. I wonder where the StarCraft registration is?

Recently the city of Karachi hosted a massive gaming event organized by Fariya Extreme Gaming and GreenFrag. I am a little late in reporting this, but I guess better late then never.

A detailed news post on the Daily Times by Ali Akhtarzada explains to us about the tournament.

I widely unfamiliar note about the gaming industry around the world is about it’s size in commerce. I hadn’t known the exact figures, but Ali explains how gamers are making money around the world playing and winning simple games,

No, this is not an excerpt from a script for a horror flick; it has nothing to do with the multi-billion dollar movie industry, but, you’re quite close – it’s a typical situation from the 35-billion dollar videogame industry and many countries are trying to get a slice of the pie. Pakistan, currently, doesn’t even have a crumb.

Things seem to be changing though. Most of the money in the video game pie is from the world of game development, but quite a bit is made from playing games. It may not sound like much of a career, but, the fact of the matter is that a professional video game player can make over $200,000 a year! And these are real jobs; it’s not a one-month-on then one-month-off job. You can actually get hired as a professional video game player. Make sure your parents read this.

I’ll just stop yapping let the article do justice to the event and the industry in Pakistan, a good read,

The league didn’t start at the Expo Centre. There were qualifier matches in different gaming zones throughout Karachi. The league consisted of four videogames: Counter Strike 1.6 (CS), Need for Speed – Most Wanted (NFS), FIFA 07 and Warcraft III – Defense of the Ancients (Dota).

The most popular videogame in Pakistan currently is CS and the same was true for the KGL. There were 80 teams from Karachi and 16 of them made it to the league yesterday. For Dota, there were 32 in total and 12 made it to the finals. As for FIFA and NFS, all the players participated on the same day, there were no qualifier matches held before hand – 32 teams for FIFA and 20 for NFS.

At the end of the day there was a lot of cash to be won: Rs 50,000 went to the first place in CS and Rs 25,000 went to the runner-up. The Dota winners got Rs 30,000 and the runner-up got Rs 15,000. The winners for NFS and FIFA got Rs 10,000 each (there were no runner-up prizes for those games).

At the forefront of this push into the gaming market were two companies: Fariya and Green Frag. While Fariya organized the entire event, Green Frag was providing coverage and instant updates on their website.

Fariya and their plans: The organizers are not going to stop with KGL, next in line is the Pakistan Gaming League (PGL) which will include teams from Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, Hyderabad and all the other major cities in Pakistan.

Kamran, head of Fariya, said that the main goal is to provide a platform for serious gaming, as the demand for gaming increases in Karachi. The company wants to provide young and growing teams with the opportunity to compete nation-wide.

Teams will be able to participate in zonal qualifiers after which, if they are successful, they will be bumped up to higher-stage matches. Any team can participate, he said.

The gaming news agency? Green Frag is a new and upcoming company that has its stakes in the game playing market as well. At the event on Sunday, their personnel were all over the place making videos and gathering performance data, as well as making sure that all went smoothly. Their website is currently in the beta phase and a full release is expected by November 30.

Green Frag CEO Akbar Shah Khan told Daily Times that they have a lot of plans for the future, the most important of which is introducing gaming regulations in Pakistan and staying at the forefront of the market.

“All the homework has been done and we are just waiting for the site to be launched,” he said. The rules and regulations are expected within the next six months. These rules and regulations are necessary to create a standard for the gaming market in Pakistan. It will prevent cheating in gaming cafes and favouritism when it comes to serious matches.

Green Frag also plans to provide training to “gaming referees.” For example in CS, when you are playing a multiplayer game, you are not allowed to crouch with the middle mouse button. Due to a bug in the software, using the middle mouse button makes it hard for other players to shoot you, which gives you an unfair advantage. Green Frag would train the people that watch over these matches to catch things like this.

So basically what they are trying to do is to make this a yearly event in Karachi with a starting base of gamers from Karachi and expand it to a greater level, with online or national being more appropriate goals. What that would do is create an economy in that city where sponsors show-off their gear and hardware to potential buyers and gamers come in to win those prizes. Come on, honestly, the gaming industry apart from animation are the only high end accelerated graphics PC users in the world. Other than that everyone uses a specialized PC or station built to their company needs and requirements. The growth potential is immense.

I too intend to start a series of tournaments in Islamabad with some help from here and there, and get a critical mass of gamers in Islamabad playing tournaments for cash and money which would potentially generate revenue for it’s self growth. It is highly encouraging to see the Ministry of Sports taking active part in promoting smaller sports’ industries like ours.

For those of us who have played some bit of the StarCraft would understand that this person is mimicking the unit response sound from the StarCraft game. It’s kinda awesome the amount of dedication these people have put into gaming and StarCraft especially.

Are you the greatest fan?

^_^

I’m a frequent visitor at starcraft2.com to see whats new. The game was announced over 6 months ago and isn’t going to be released until mid 2008 or at least when Blizzard “thinks its ready”. So far they’ve talked about units and buildings – old and new – possessed by 2 races, the Protoss and Terrans. Just recently, Blizzard has a new section! The storyline of StarCraft and Brood War has been summarized into a dozen paragraphs just to help gamers freshen their memories and help acquaint those new to the StarCraft franchise.

Part one of the section: “The story so far” is about StarCraft. Part two (unpublished yet) would be about Brood War. Happy reading.

üGX 2007 came to a successful end yesterday with a lot of rich gamers going home happy, chanting GIKI’s name thanks to ByteSense, and their generous contribution to the event in the form of tournament sponsorship prize money.

ByteSense is a company owned by young entrepreneurs Mohd. Nasrullah and Umar Farooq out of Lahore who gave NETRONiX Rs 100,000/- as the tournament purse.

The winners of the tournament were as follows:

DoTA – GIKI A – Rs. 35,000/-

Counter Strike – Lahore Grammar School – Rs. 45,000/-

Warcraft 3 1v1 – BMI Warlord – Rs. 5,000/-

ProEvo 6 – Rs. 5000/-

Quake 3 Arena 2v2 Team DM - FAST Islamabad BoB – Rs. 10,000/-

Congrats to all the winners and organizers for a successful event. Keep it up! This has now become the priciest tournament north of Lahore! And I hope NETRONiX gets ByteSense and other companies over to their party next year round.

Now can we have it open to all gamers? Please!

Team NETRONiX minus Sadat =)

Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) means massively in the World of Warcraft as Vivendi reported a 19% increase in their sales to to 216 million euros ($315.2 million) this quarter. This phenomenal growth of sales has been attributed to their recent releases, the expansion to original World of Warcraft (WOW) called The Burning Crusade, and a new Real-Time Action Strategy brand called the World in Conflict. It was a well known fact that WoW had 9 million users as Blizzard announced late July 2007 that it had reached the 9 million user mark.

Gamasutra says,

Vivendi has chalked up the increase not only to its WoW subscriber base, but the release of its The Burning Crusade expansion, which saw release in China in the latter part of the third quarter.

“Revenues also included initial sales of the highly rated action-strategy game World in Conflict from Sierra Entertainment, developed by their internal studio Massive Entertainment and released in the third quarter,” read the company’s statement.

The company also noted that its subscriber base has continued to grow from the 9 million mark it celebrated in July to more than 9.3 million, which it says is up more than one million subscribers since December 31 of last year.

Which basically means that come maturity of The Burning Crusade expansion pack there will be more players playing WoW, than some of the smaller countries in the world. And there will be more revenue generated than GDPs of some of the third world countries. What if a country I ruled owned a company like Vivendi?

Massively notes,

That means that WoW has grown by the size of one and a half EVE Onlines or two whole City of Heroeses in just a few months. Or put another way, the population of World of Warcraft is now greater than the population of Sweden. We think it’s safe to say that World of Warcraft will be the dominant title in the industry for a while longer.

Marty did the math and reports on the post on Joystiq.com,

Assuming everyone paid $15 a month (I think the hardcore players probably don’t do month-to-month, which brings their cost down to around $12 a month, but still…), that’s $139,000,000 a month to Blizzard. $1.67 billion a year. Just thinking about how much money they make is making me feel ill.

WoW in Pakistan is fairly popular for player that have access to high-speed internet. Not to mention it has also become a bane to the gaming community as more players tend to play WoW for it’s ability to engross you completely, and locked onto for hours. Just for $15/month Does this all mean we go buy ourselves a WoW CD? I don’t know, but it sure as hell means we go buy ourselves a Vivendi share!

I really come to appreciate how well GosuGamers.net have been covering the WC3L event. They have complete updates and tonnes of pictures with the help of Rakaka.se! Some of which are shared below. They event reporter Raistlin, blogs here about the event. He has uploaded some cool amounts of videos and pictures.

Moon’s gear

Lyn playing

ReMind playing, SK Watching

Luci’s hand and mouse

Rotterdam on right

ReMind, SoJu, SK!

Sweet!

These images were taken from Rakaka.se’s website. More pictures on GosuGamer’s page!

Enjoy and comment!

The official WC3L updates can be found here!

The results for the first round are in! SK defeat WE, and MYM defeat BET, to advance into the winner bracket as WE and BET played each other in the lose bracket, where WE defeated BET to progress in the loser bracket.

As SK’s roll continues, SK also defeated MYM throwing MYM in the lose bracket vs WE. Now WE vs MYM will be played for a berth into the winner bracket where SK are waiting for either of these teams for a final.

As mentioned earlier, the bracket updates can be found here. The match details are followed:

WB: SK > WE
WB: MYM > BET
WB: SK > MYM
LB: WE > BET
LB: MYM ? WE

Now WE’s match against MYM is a crunch match for both these great teams. Both of them have really good players, and ave a potential to coming out the winner.

WE boasts players like suhO (NE), Sky (HU), ReiGn (UD) who are tournament winners in their own rights. Sky has won two WCGs in a row, and was in the final for the third consecutive time this year. ReiGn is an accomplished player from the Korean Leagues, and has also left a huge mark on the European scene in online tournaments and leagues. suhO is somewhat similar to ReiGn in his popularity, but talented none the less. He has been able to pull the rabbit out of the hat against top players in crucial games, and these three players are what WE look up to, to deliver.

Their opponents, MYM, are rather stronger as a team, since they have been together for almost one and a half year now, and have made a strong contention in the WC3L against names like 4K, SK, mTw, and fnatic. MYM look upto great names that need no intro, like Moon (NE), FoCus (ORC), Susiria (UD), Storm (HU), EVE (NE/HU) and Lucifer (UD). All of them imbalanced in their own races are potentially the best 1v1 players in their races. All of them being Korean, they do get to hear a lot of music for not having good European players being a European clan.

My prediction for this match would be MYM wins 4-1 over WE, as WE’s recent run of form is poor and heavy reliance on Sky of the late has proven somewhat a lacked strategy. On an off day, you cannot rely on a single player. However I will give one win for Sky and the rest to MYM since MYM has been stronger on WC3L than WE. MYM also have the edge of mixing it up in the 2v2s and coming out with a win. Keep in mind I may be wrong too.

Follow the entire event galley here, it’s simply an amazing collection of pictures and photos!

Thanks to people at ESL-Europe for their media and links! Great Job, guys!

12th WarCraft 3 Champion’s League or easily known as WC3L XII kicks off tonight in Cologne, Germany, where Teams BET, SK (Schroet Kommando), MYM (Meet Your Makers), and WE (World Elite) are taking part in what can easily be termed as “The Mother-Lan of all Lans!”

The schedule for the tournament on Saturday is as follows:

12:00: WE vs. SK (Winner Bracket 1)
15:00: MYM vs. BET (Winner Bracket 1)
18:00: Loser Bracket 1

All times GMT.

The complete schedule can be found here, where they have listed all their slots and how they intend to hold the matches. There is a special time slot dedicated for photo opportunity and autograph session. This would be the 12th play-off for WC3L and all tournament progress can be followed here!

More coverage and details to follow soon, stay tuned!

Today was the first day of üGX ‘07 and a fairly well organized event at that. üGX brings to GIKI and the gaming community in general a lot excitement, since a good 70% of the student community that constitutes of gamers anxiously waits to see their top gamers play before their eyes. It makes for good topics of discussion and a great opportunity to learn a few new strategies and tactics that are doing the rounds in the gaming universe outside of the GIKI.

Many gamers on the day were appreciating how the organizers actually knew what they were doing. There were a lot of technical hands on deck ready to fix any issue with the network, game or a PC on the spot. There are four separate spectator rooms with projector screens. Refreshments and beverages at a subsidized rate are also available. It is comforting to know that these gamers have always been at home in GIKI – away from their daily urban regimen, this is their complete gaming festival!

There are nearly 130 gamers from various reputed educational institutes of Pakistan. üGX is one great reason to go to school

The event has been made possible thanks to the cooperation of the Department of Student Affairs, the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, GIKI, and ByteSense (LHR) with dedicated hard work by the guys in NETRONiX. It is encouraging too see companies like ByteSense taking interest in this new and emerging industries/market like ours.

I took some vids and pics, which I am going to upload soon.

I just reviewed some of my frequently visited links and updated the link list on the blog. Some URLs were mistyped and needed fixing.

I came across some new links, like the 3rd Generation Gamer’s Pavilion, a gaming service run by a DSL company called Micronet Broadband in Pakistan. MBL offers three major games at the moment, Call of Duty 3 (COD3), Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MoHAA), Counter Strike 1.6 (CS 1.6), and Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004). All are team First Person Shooter games. Their rates are coming down gradually, too.

Dancom, their competitors in Islamabad, also have had their servers up and running since a while now. The great thing is these servers are run free of cost and charge for any user over the internet, unlike WorldCall’s servers that are only accessible by their clients.

It is encouraging to see companies stepping up to claim the gaming market which has a lot of potential for ISPs, especially broadband companies. I intend to do a complete survey for all major DSL providers in and around Islamabad, and their going rates.

üGX is 3 days away! :O

Today I read a really saddening news about the loss of family member of a friend. He was and is the greatest teacher I will ever have. He is a jolly person and very amicable. He taught me some crucial courses at my university and an avid gamer friend of ours, Umair Azfar. I would like to take this opportunity to send him my condolences on the death of his beloved Mother! May God give him strength and courage in this testing time. Amen! He is still the greatest teacher and great gamer!

ina lillah wa inna ilahe raajion.

GosuGamers.net are looking for people who can write, moderate, manage for them. Apply Here. I have already applied. Good luck!

About GosuGamers

GosuGamers is a computer game community with 10,000 visitors per day. The community, which has existed since 2002, focus on high quality eSport news and user created materials for the best-selling games by Blizzard Entertainment: StarCraft and WarCraft.

While the main office is in Uppsala, Sweden, the people, also known as the “GosuCrew”, who work with the website are from all over the world. The GosuCrew consists of more than 50 persons that moderate, publish and polish the contents of the site, making sure it’s up to day every day of the year.

We believe that in electronical gaming, as in any sport, fair-play, sportsmanship, respect, and good manners are important. Further establishing these values in the online gaming community is the vision of GosuGamers.

The website has grown from being a small scale hobby project to a company that cover all the largest international gaming events, offers advertisement spots that reaches thousands of gamers, offers official GosuGamers t-shirts and mousepads from the webshop and organize our own national and international events. [Link]

- GosuGamers.net

Me and some of my friends have arranged an online Brood Wars tourney on a group we called the ‘Holy Brooders’. The entire brood is participating with a lot of passion. But I have had my ass handed to me in all of my first games, in which I have won none. Let me tell you that these are really experienced players and they have been playing since the release of the game, so I have a very slim chance, considering I started playing this game online only last week, where I could only get 40 games in.

The experience however is very thrilling. I know I am not going to stick with this game forever or go competitive with it anytime. All this is for the heck of it! One thing to add here is that the DSL connection at my home has really changed it all. Othersie it was not possible to game on a slow pc, and a slow connection.

Next weekend, GIKI will be holding the üGX 2007 and I would be playing 2v2 Warcraft 3 with another mate of mine who plays with the Orc race. I have had no practice in since months and a few things are still rusty. But as they say, old habits die hard I hope get something out of this one, inshAllah!

Its like a ferrari of handhelds! Recently, Sony announced it’ll release the deep-red PSP limited ediiton around mid December. Two types coming out where one has the 1seg digital TV tuner and a 1GB memory stick. The other isn’t 1seg and has a meager 32MB memory. Check out the pics ^_^

More reads here and here.