This blog features the happenings in the gaming scene in Sri Lanka. I will try to cover every gaming tournament and the other gaming stuff that comes my way.
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 8th 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 31st January 2009.
WCG Sri Lankan National Finals came to an end on the 4th 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 6th 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 MoratuwaUniversityProf. Dileeka Diasgraced 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 CologneGermany. 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.
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 4th October 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 29th 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
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: 27th and 28th of September 2008 at BMICH Colombo.
Finals: 5th 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.
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.
