The GAMING Community.

Hi, I just finished some work, and suddenly wanted to talk about the gaming community.

You see, gamers are not exactly anti-social people who just sit behind a keyboard and... that's it. NO. Gamers have a life, and us gamers form a community.

Be it whatever game we indulge in, the gaming community is always a key source of information, and also to let you know that you are not alone in this game. Perhaps, it's the only thing that keeps you playing the game.

We've got hundreds of gaming community. One of the most well known one would be, of course Garena. Garena started out as 'GG-Client', which is a platform where gamers of all different games come together, and to play on this VPN platform called 'GGC'. I was one of the first few users I think, or not. But I remember the time where there is no players on 'GGC' at all. My first time using it was with Jayexa, playing a game of War3 standard.

But today, Garena is a platform for pretty much most of the well known games. DotA, WC3, CS:S, CS1.6, AoE, SC:BW (Not Starcraft II of course). Yea. Let's talk about these communities first.

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DotA

The good old days:

The load screen for the first few version:

Nice eh? Simple concept. Two sides of the map: Sentinel and Scourge. 5 players on each side. Purpose of the game is to destroy the Tree of Life/Frozen Throne. Before everybody started to find out more about this map, DotA was just another small mini-game on War3. Not really mini-game, but it's a custom map. Sidetracking from what War3 was made for, the Standard RTS game. Guinsoo did it. DotA came out, and soon it was IceFrog. Nobody had a clue what was last hit, all just started to play by auto-attacking, dying and auto-attacking again. Not much strategies. Though there were builds which totally dominates (It was pretty imbalanaced). BUT, as the game progresses, it went viral. Many people knew about it and today, this is how it looks like:

Sweet huh? The community, yes I'm going into it. If you are a DotA player, you would understand how the DotA community is like right now. (In Singapore particularly) I'm generalizing, but since I'm always playing 5v pubs with my friends, I'd say the number of people who play to win are increasing drastically. What do I mean? 5 minutes into the game you see a message:

Tatster has pwned n00b for 250 gold.

Tatster has drawn FIRST BLOOD! (+250 gold)

Familiar? Then next thing you see...

n00b(Lanaya) has left the game.

Yea! Celebrate. Then soon you will see...

n00b2(Mirana) has left the game.

THEN you will see...

n00b3 (Techies): Switch?

Nobody switches...

n00b3(Techies) has left the game.

And there we have it, a spoilt game. This is the DotA community. Self-explanatory. K next. (I'm skipping a lot, straight up to CS, then last one will end off with SC2)

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Counter-strike! 

Another great game that was frequently seen in LAN parties. It's unquestionable. CS 1.6 is the best FPS ever made. What could be better than killing off people with guns? (Isn't that what FPS is about ._.) Most of all, CS 1.6's community is very... very... very... I'm not sure how to describe it. Mostly filled with impatient people.

The mic function in CS made communication during the game so easy. But on the other hand people start cussing their ass off whenever they got blocked or AWP-ed straight in the face. It's okay to rage, but please know when to stop. The CS community is of course, one of those with the most skilled players. (Duh, FPS just requires so much practice to be good at it.)

Yada yada yada. I shall stop talking about CS 1.6. 

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Starcraft 2. The most recent game that I bought, (well which of those above did I even buy. LOL) and actually enjoyed playing it for quite a while. It's a well S$89.99, but I do think it's worth every cent of your money. 

Of course, I shall skip the part about gameplay, let's talk about the community. 

During the SCBW days, most people are extremely obsessed with SC, some people are classified as Starcraft 'nerds'. Well that's true, there was this guide book which came out with SCBW battle chest, it was called... I forgot what was it called. But it had almost all the strategies and counters to all sorts of gameplay in the game. Well, here's the overview of the community. (I'm only going to say one, and only one thing.)

Friendly players. Very friendly.

They are not those of "FUCK YOU WHY DID YOU WIN ME" or "YOUR MUM HAS A P3N1S". No, people who play Starcraft 2 are very well mannered. Often games end with a 'GG' or just a 'Lol :( gg'. Very rare occasions that you see people cussing while leaving the game. 

Kudos to Blizzard for developing the Battle.Net 2.0. And of course the hefty price of S$89.99. (Really, I doubt kids will buy it) Explains everything. ;)

Once I met this player who actually told me after I won him. "Well, gg. At least I learnt smth new today ;)"

Don't you love that warmth and pleasure gaming experience? I don't know, I'm not some hardcore gamer who sits in front of the computer all day long and grind on it. I'm just a casual gamer. 

Yea! I mean, look around you at the gaming communities, how many of those do you actually really know? I don't know all either, I'm just giving my point of view of these 3 gaming communities. It's really very saddening to know that some people stereotype gamers are 'nerds who sit behind the computer 24-7' or 'keyboard warriors'. 

We have a life, we have social skills (online and offline). Most of all, we have a vibrant gaming community to support what we want, and what we need. To all gamers out there, have fun! :D