Competitive Multiplayer Gaming in Sri Lanka

WCG 2009 Sri Lankan National Finals

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:12:00 +0000

This time around the WCG (World Cyber Games) will be held in Chengdu, China. They have officially announced the games that they will feature this year. They are as follows,

PC Games:

Counter Strike 1.6
Starcraft
Warcraft III :TFT
FIFA ‘09
Carom3D
Red Stone
TrackMania Nations Forever

Xbox 360:

Guitar Hero
Virtual Fighter 5

Mobile Games:

Asphalt 4
Wise Star 2

Promotional Game: Dungeon & Fighter

Grand Finals will be happening from November 11^th – 15^th. Countries who want to participate this year will have to hold the national finals with in the months of March till October.

Sri Lanka will also be looking forward to sending a Counter Strike 1.6 team and so Lanka E-Sports (LKES) will be the organizer of the Sri Lanka National Finals (Date: TBA)

In the national finals these games will be played.

Counter Strike 1.6
DOTA (Defence of the Ancients) - 5v5*
COD 4 (Call of Duty 4) - 5v5*
FIFA ‘09 - Individual*

* - Not official yet

So all Sri Lankan gamers, this is your chance to be crowned as the nation’s best player/team. So practice hard and make sure you are there for the WCG 2009 Sri Lankan National Finals.

Play Hard, Go Pro.

Go Vote for your favourite games for it be on the National Finals. You have the power to change.

Competitive COD 4 Gaming in Sri Lanka

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:35:00 +0000

Call of Duty 4 (COD 4) is relatively new to the multiplayer gaming scenario since it was only released in late 2007. Even though this game has taken over as one of the most played games in other countries and having many gaming tournaments Sri Lanka is still in the early stages of playing the game competitively. Sri Lankan gaming scene is still in the primitive stage but slowly but surely coming to the international standards. There are many up coming tournaments and one day Sri Lankan gamers will be ready to take on the best of players of other countries as well.

The first online COD 4 server in Sri Lanka was up and running thanks to LCGZ.lk. And it is still the only COD 4 server running 24/7 in Sri Lanka. Thanks to this server many talented COD 4 players emerged.

Sri Lankan gamers were exposed to some online gaming competitions for Counter Strike 1.6 but they had little chance of showing off their COD 4 talents because there weren’t any COD 4 tournaments being held. Few of the Sri Lankan clans had COD 4 teams namely Infinity Gamers (IG), Death Company (DC), nOOb Alliance (NA) but they didn’t have a tournament to play online. However Death Company COD 4 played some matches with an overseas COD 4 clan. Because of the lack of tournaments the leader of IG, Razeen aka DirkBlack thought of hosting a tournament with his own internet connection. It’s barely enough to hold 10 players on the server and that is all what is needed. So November of 2008 saw the first online COD 4 tournament in Sri Lanka with the mod PAM 4. This tournament was called “Call of Duty 4 Friendly Tournament”. Death Company Team Reds, calling themselves DC|Reds won this tournament. Runners up were the hosts, IG. The winning DC|Reds lineup was as follows

Shafrox - Leader
Madhatter
Exwife
Pirate
Psycho

Second season of “Call of Duty 4 Friendly Tournament” is currently on going on DirkBlack’s server. I had a little chat with Dirk and when asked who is the favourite to win the tournament he said that DC|Reds are the favourites to win (being modest). He went on to say that the new mod used for COD 4 matches couldn’t be used for this tournament because it required more bandwidth to hold 10 players.

He also gave a surprising bit of news. He will be leaving IG soon. But that is for a better cause. He will be joining the first Lanka COD 4 team managed by Thilina Pinto aka Cipher and the team name is “Team perks”. The team was announced on Gamer.lk today. The team is as follows. The team tag will be "Perks"

Shafrox
DirkBlack
Pirate
Madhatter
Exwife
Psycho

Best of luck, “Team Perks”, win many international matches. If there is COD 4 for next WCG this team might represent Sri Lanka. So all you readers keep your eyes on Sri Lanka and Team Perks.

Ciao.

GCCL (Gamer.lk Clans Counter Strike League) Season II

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Sri Lankan competitive Counter Strike playing has come a long way in just about a year or so. It’s just like yesterday that I remember playing in Gamer.lk gaming weekend with just 7 players on a server hosted through Hamachi. When the 8^th player comes the whole server lags. J That was the start. I’ve being playing online since those primitive days. Now there are 2 Sri Lankan 32 player public servers hosted one by Gamer.lk and one by LCGZ (Lanka Cyber Game Zone). Both of these sites were at first individual sites doing a common cause (Promoting gaming within Sri Lanka) now they have merged and working together. Also LCGZ have their own 1000FPS match server so that matches can be held without much latency.

Many Counter Strike Clans have emerged after these two servers were hosted and this tournament will be a very good opportunity to show their talents to the whole Sri Lankan gaming community.

The first GCCL season was a great success. And this season will be a whole lot better.This is a knockout tournement so better get ready to deliver your best from th first match itself. HLTV will be made available so that the whole gaming community will be able to view the matches live.

The tournament will be starting on the first week of February 2009. Come register your clan now.

Note: Registrations will be closed on the 31^st January 2009.

Death Company LAN Party – L6

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:05:00 +0000

Death Company [DC] the first and only clan to host large scale LAN parties for the Sri Lankan gamers will be bringing you the third public LAN party in the month of December. They haven’t publicized the exact date as of yet, but they will be doing it in the near future.

The Organizing team says that this time it’ll be bigger and better. So Gamers in Sri Lanka get ready to have a fantabulous 36 hours of pure non-stop gaming fun.

As usual this will be an overnight event where gamers from all around the country will get together in Colombo to have the best 36 hours their lives gaming non-stop, meeting new people, and most of all having fun by playing multiplayer games.

Gamers play everyday on online servers hosted in Sri Lanka itself but this will be a whole new experience since you get to actually meet the people who you play against each day on the servers.

A LAN party is one of the best places for gamers to socialize with their gaming peers. Tournaments can also be a good place to get to know new gamers but since of the competitive nature of the event you never get to see the lively personalities of the people that you meet. But since this environment is very different gamers can have the maximum fun with their friends.

So come join us have the time of your life while playing your favorite game. Remember the month of December will bring you the biggest and the best LAN party in whole of Sri Lanka. Don’t miss it or you will regret it until L7.

See the countdown to L6 by logging to www.december.deathcompany.org. Hope to see you at L6.

Caio.

poster by: [DC] Daelin

Sri Lanka’s Online Game Ladders

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:24:00 +0000

Sri Lanka's gaming scene in has risen up another notch. Recently two of the gaming websites have thought of conducting game ladders. LCGZ (Lanka Cyber Game Zone) has already opened up their game ladder site called gameladders.lk and opened up registrations for COD4 (Call of duty 4). The other site that is preparing to open up a gaming ladder is lankagamer.com. According to sources they will also open up registrations very soon and says that it’ll be better than the rival game ladder.

Wikipedia states that “A game ladder is a series of ranking levels used to measure playing skill in competitive games.” It goes on to say that, “Game ladders are an integral part of the playing experience for many games.”

So what these guys are doing will undoubtedly increase the gaming experience of our novice Sri Lankan gamers.

LCGZ.lk is planning to hold gaming ladders for

Counter Strike - 5v5
DotA (Defense of the Ancients) - 5v5
COD 4 - 5v5 – Can go register your clan/team @ www.gameladders.lk

My 2 cents:

Sri Lankan Gaming community is really small as at now and it is limited to the Colombo region and some are from the Kandy region. Having 2 gaming ladders for the same games might be too much for the gamers. Many might opt to go to just one gaming ladder because of the time constrains and for other reasons. Thereby the whole point of having a gaming ladder (To rank the all of the current teams/clans) will be going out of the window, since no ONE ladder will consists all the clans/teams in Sri Lanka as at now.

Therefore might I suggest if any of the organizers looking at this blog post to come together and host one gaming ladder for one game. Thereby the whole purpose holding a gaming ladder will be persevered.

Thanks for Reading. Await a post on the outcome of the GCDL Season 1.

WCG Sri Lankan National Finals

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:10:00 +0000

WCG Sri Lankan National Finals came to an end on the 4^th October 2008 at the BMICH committee room B after two days of heavy battling. After the preliminaries, only 4 out of 20 teams remained in the contention for the national championship.

The teams were: - Xfire, Contrabanded, FFB (Funky Funny Blades), and Team Liquid.

At the semi finals Contrabanded had to face Team Liquid and Xfire had face FFB. And Team Liquid and FFB came out victorious from their respective semi final matches to become the finalists.

There was also a matchup to find the third place and in that Contrabanded were able to beat Xfire.

The final was best of 3 maps. The maps were de_tuscan (This map was declared an official WCG map this year), de_train and de_dust2.

First map of the finals was de_tuscan. The 2 teams were neck and neck up until the 6^th round but after that all the things went in favour of Team Liquid and they managed to keep the FFB under control. They went on to win that map 16 – 3.

Next up was the map de_train. After a couple of winning rounds there was no holding back the “Team Liquid” as they cruised their way to a 16 – 0 victory. It was sad to see that the finals was so one sided.

Presentation ceremony began after a short break. Dean of the IT faculty of the Moratuwa University Prof. Dileeka Dias graced the occasion as the chief guest. She gave a very inspiring speech for all the gamers who were there at the presentation ceremony.

An exhibition match was played between the finalists and the winner was chosen the first team to win 6 rounds in de_dust2 map, and in that match too Team Liquid was the first team to win 6 rounds giving only 2 rounds to the opposing team.

The schedule for the day went a bit off track when Team Liquid challenged a team from the audience for a friendly encounter. And the challenge was accepted by 5 fellow gamers that were in the audience.

This game was just as one sided just like the last map of the National Finals. The last score was 10 – 0 in favour of Team Liquid.

As the last item for the presentation ceremony, medals were given off for the winners of the competitions. Amidst all the cheers from the crowd the winning team “Team Liquid” received their medals. So did the second and the third place winners.

Here is a picture of winning team (Team Liquid) after receiving their well earned medals and the trophy.

From left to right :- Faiz “Blaze” Ariff, Thushan “Gladiator” Hettiarachchi, Shawn D. “intdr” Wijesundera, Amri “Crusade” Anver, Mohomed Rukhandeen “Rila” Rila

WCG Sri Lankan National Finals was thus concluded.

Here are some photos from the Preliminaries of Sri Lanka WCG Qualifiers. All photos displayed in this blog post are courtesy of Lanka eSports (hosts of the National Finals)

Above pic :- Officials explaining rules to the participants

Above pic (middle) : OMGitsRyan with an OMG look! :D

Above : The Death Company Team playing the first match of the preliminaries.

Above : Team Xfire on the second day of the preliminaries

I have a small request from my dear readers. The winning team is currently trying to find sponsors for them to go to WCG 2008 which is to be held at Cologne Germany. So please be kind enough to ask your company to sponsor our National Team for the Finals of WCG 2008. (Team Liquid Web site )

Here is a youtube video of the interview that was broadcasted onair via MTV Sri Lanka on the show "Planet Pulse". The captain of the Team Liquid, and Directors of Lanka eSports were interviewed in this show.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for updates on the GCDL tournament which is currently underway.

GCDL (Gamer.lk Clans DotA League) – Season 1

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:10:00 +0000

One of Sri Lanka’s leading gaming communities will be hosting the first ever online Defence of the Ancients (more commonly known as DotA) on the gaming VPN platform called ‘Ganera Portal’(commonly known as GG-client).

DotA is a famous custom scenario (mod) for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. And the objective of the game is to destroy the opponents “Ancient”. This is a role playing game where players control ‘Heroes’ and they are assisted by AI controlled units called ‘Creeps’. The players must level up their hero in the course of the game and outplay and outsmart the other team to destroy their ‘ancient’. Players get gold for every creep that they kill and it is used to buy items that make their hero more powerful.

This gaming tournament will be held in the entire month of October starting from the 4^thOctober 2008.

A number of clans have already registered their respective teams for this competition but still others clans can register their teams since they are not limiting the number of teams that can participate in the tournament clans therefore clans can put up several teams if they wish to, but more the teams the more hectic the match schedule is. Note that the registrations will be closed on the 29^th of September 2008.

Ganera will be sponsoring this event and they will be providing a room in their portal for this tournament and future tournaments as well. It could be found under 'Leagues' and it's called Gamer.lk DOTA Tournament room. How cool is that! :)

More information about the rules and regulations about this tournament can be found in the Gamer.lk site. Below is the link for the thread in the forums

http://gcdl.gamer.lk

Thanks for reading this post. Keeps tabs of this site of more of the very latest information on Sri Lanka’s Gaming Scene.

Sri Lankan WCG Qualifiers

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:10:00 +0000

I’m bringing this piece of news with great pleasure!

For the first time in the history of the gaming in Sri Lanka, there is going to be a WCG qualifying tournament to be held at BMICH. I never thought that I would hear this lovely piece of news while I’m still playing competitive gaming.

This tournament is held by a recently established company called ‘Lanka eSports’, and this company consists of Sri Lankan gamers.

Their vision is to spearhead a new frontier for eSports and Cyber Athletes in Sri Lanka by becoming the leading representative organization for Sri Lankan Cyber Athletes in International Events, enhancing the quality of Sri Lankan gaming for both competitive and recreational purposes and by providing organized game development within Sri Lanka.

Games to be played at this event:

Counter Strike 5v5 – Counter Strike is one of the multi-playing games that touched the gamers all around the world. This is one of the “ancient” games that is still been playing by many gamers. This game tests the player’s skills as well as the team co-ordination. At the moment many Sri Lankan players are playing this game online on recently created Sri Lankan counter strike servers.

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne 1v1 – A real time strategy game that is very popular among the gamers. This popularity increased when a mod called DotA (Defense of the Ancients) came into the gaming scenario. Currently DotA is also played at WCG.

Halo 3 – A Microsoft game that was released on the Xbox, and has a huge fan base all around the world.

Tournament Schedule:

Preliminaries: 27^th and 28^th of September 2008 at BMICH Colombo.

Finals : 5^th October 2008 at BMICH Colombo.

For more information about WCG and Sri Lankan Qualifiers visit the following sites.

www.esports.lk – The official site for the WCG 2008 Sri Lanka

www.wcg.com - The official site of the World Cyber Games

Here is also a link to an article posted on Express News – Sri Lanka.

http://www.expressnews.lk/english/biz/Businessnews/results.asp?key_c=1026

Thanks to the above link I got to know about the event.

This is a huge step in Lankan Gaming Scene and I hope that this event will be a great success and hope that the next years’ qualifies will feature more of the games played in WCG (Like DotA which is very popular in the Asian countries.)

Finally I’d like to wish all the best for the participants of this Qualifying tournament. Still the registrations are open and you can go and register yourself and the team by going to the link below.

http://wcg.esports.lk/include/register.php

Hope to see you at Sri Lanka WCG qualifiers.

Thanks for reading this very lengthy post.

SLCG (Sri Lanka Cyber Games)

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:42:00 +0000

The first ever Cyber Games to be held in Sri Lanka.
This is going to a beginning of a new era for gaming in Sri Lanka. This may well be the platform for Sri Lankans to go and compete in the most prestigious event for gamers, WCG (World Cyber Games).
This event is being organized by Gamer.LK & Rotaract Club of the Faculty of Science, University of Colombo.

SLCG will be held on the 15th, 16th and 17th August 2008 at BMICH Committee Rooms D and E.

The games that being played are:-

Counter Strike 1.6 - 5v5
Call of Duty 4 - 5v5
DotA (Defense of the Ancients)- 5v5
Starcraft: Broodwar - 1v1
FIFA 08 - 1v1

Media Sponsors - Art TV, 101.7 TNL, The Sunday Times..

For more Information :- SLCG Official Website & Gamer.lk

Lankans playing Trackmania Nations Forever

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:48:00 +0000

Trackmania Nations Forever(TMNF) is a FREE game that lets the users go at mind blowing high speeds and race in spectacular tracks. This game can be played both solo and multi-player.
Thanks to gamer.lk now all Sri Lankans will have the chance of getting to together and playing this wonderful game for the first time. Here are some of the in-game pics of the game.

Gamer.lk has brought up this concept of gaming in the weekends and call it "Weekend Gaming". This is where all the Gamer.lk people(Almost all of them are Sri Lankans) come together on the weekends and play there favorite games together. At first it was Counter Strike played on Saturdays, and it was a big success. Now Sri Lanakan have there own low ping Counter Strike server to play on. I'll tell more of the Weekend gaming History in another post.
Even though Trackmania allows players to play uninterrupted play even though their ping is high, it doesn't bring all Sri Lankans together since there is no 24/7 online server in or near Sri Lanka.
Other countries have 24/7 online servers to all kinds of multi-player games, but we Sri Lankans don't have that pleasure. Most of the servers that we join have very high Latencies and that doesn't allow us to play a normal game. So that's why this Weekend Gaming is quite successful.
On June 7th Saturday at 3.00pm the first official Sri Lankan TMNF server will go online and it is hosted by a fellow gamer.lk memeber. I will post some screen shots of the TMNF weekend gaming by editing this post after it is finished!
If any Sri Lankans who are reading this post come join hands with Gamer.lk and experience the awesomeness of playing multi-player with low latencies.
Here is the link to the thread of Weekend gaming TMNF in gamer.lk
http://www.gamer.lk/index.php?topic=1894.new;topicseen

The objective of this Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Mayura Wijeyaratne) — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:12:00 +0000

Hi dear readers...
As you all know(if you'll know) Sri Lanka is a tiny island south of India. We gamers here are not that lucky as you guys who are in US or other countries which has at least one server for each and every game that is out on the market.
In this blog I will be posting all the Competitive Multiplayer Gaming happening in Sri Lanka. This is to make the world see how we gamers in Sri Lanka try to make use of what we have in order to play multiplayer gaming.
I hope that this blog will be seen by a reputed company and be inspired so that they'll raise their hand and say "I shall contribute in order to get Sri Lankan gamers into the international arena."
I myself is new to the multiplayer gaming scenario(I got a good internet connection like 1 year back and ever since that day I started to play multiplayer Counter Strike with my friends) and from what I have seen in that time is that their is a lot of talent when it some to gaming in Sri Lanka I just hope and pray that one day we can represent our country in WCG.
Well, that is it for this post, keep in touch on this blog for news from the gaming arena in Sri Lanka that I come across.
Bye.