4Kings.wc3 disbanding

the sad 4K news

the 4Kings warcraft team had always been close to my heart. i supported them even after i stopped playing wc3. by visiting their website every book-out. by trying to follow their results in every single warcraft league. by trying to understand each player’s flaws and strengths by watching their replays. even for the races that i don’t play.

how do i feel now?
imagine a diehard manchester united fan finding out man u is disbanding.
imagine a math nerd finding out that the math club is going bust.
imagine a student finding out that his favourite teacher is transferring to another school.

Well, Grubby, ToD, FoV, FuRy, Zeus[19], Creo and LiiLD.C will live on in our hearts.
cheers

an old flame

After seeing how most of my platoon-mates have got girlfriends to have dinner with after booking out during the 8-to-5 week, thus leaving me to take the mrt home alone with my sunken head which i put onto my pillow later while crying myself to sleep, I’ve gone back to look for one of my first loves.

Ah, yes. Whenever i think of my first love, I simply smile uncontrollably, so much so that people on the mrt train started looking at me with those “omg, is he some lunatic?” eyes and moved a few steps away from me. But oh, who cares? I have my first love, and that’s all that matters, ain’t it?

Well, so i got home after a one-and-a-half-hour journey, and there she was. Sleeping, i suppose. I wouldn’t know if she was dead or anything because she looked so peaceful and innocent when not awake. Ah, i stared at her for several seconds before taking off my shirt. I was tired, but i could always make time when i was with her. She cures me of my procrastination. I didn’t care if i was exhausted or famished — she was always first in my mind, the top priority. Seeing her asleep, I wasn’t contented. I wanted to interact with her. I wanted to wake her up. And so i did.

I put the Warcraft cd into her and she ran it without question. She is like the perfect girl — give her anything and she’ll do it without any reply or whining. Ah, my first love. Many other ‘couples’ joined us from their own homes, and all of us had a lot of fun that night

how my CAPL went

On Saturday, Daryl “R2V” and i “w00ty” represented RageFaction.wc3 to take part in the Compaq-AMD Pro-gaming League held at E2Max within Cineleisure. It was the Open Category, where new players could join the league, and the winners of the Open Category could later move on to the Premier League and also the Elite League, the latter being the realm of highest competition.

1st match was vs this guy called “Work”, one of Hakim’s friend. Hakim is the pro Night Elf player in my team, who owns people under the moniker of “girlyluck”, a rather feminine nick. Anyway, “work” told me he was a noob, but he was no noob. A “noob” doesn’t know how to play. If you even know the basics, you’re called a “newbie”. And this guy was one level ahead of newbie. The only problem was that he did not train his Crypt Fiend and Frost Armour-Death Coil micro well enough. The first game was the standard stuff with Grunts, Raiders, Wyverns and Headhunters vs Fiends, Statues and Destroyers. As for the second game, i tried going Tauren Chieftain first, and massing Mercenaries along with 4 Grunts and a few Headhunters. I rushed him at 50 food, towered him, and he just fell apart. I ended up winning the series 2-0.

2nd match was vs AxG-RiSkiN, also an Undead player. Actually, all 3 matches i played were vs Undeads, come to think of it, lol. I can only curse myself for watching too many Orc vs Night Elf replays the morning before CAPL. I didn’t even get to chat or talk to this guy before the match- i just sat down at a new computer and started playing vs him. The first game, i was winning almost the whole game, then i recklessly went into his base to fight him, hoping that he would quit the game earlier. That resulted in what the Chinese refer to as “quan2 jun1 fu4 mo4″, which literally means that my whole army died. I started to panic, but luckily i had an expansion already, so i was able to make enough units to fight his counterattack. His flaw was that he did not expand while i was weak, and he did not scout my expansion until quite late in the game when destroying my expansion would mean little to me. Yup, so i went on to win the first game. The second game, he went Fiends again, but this time he opted for a mass Frost Armour rush at Tier 2. Basically his Death Knight was level 3 (aka with level2 Death Coil for healing and attacking), and his Lich was level1 with Frost Armour. He Armour’ed every one of the 8 fiends he had, and rushed me. I town portal-ed in and lost a lot, but not after killing some of his fiends too. I managed to prevail when my Tauren Chieftain came out and Stomp-ed my way to a few Fiend kills. Soon the Raiders and Wyverns and Kodo Beasts came, and i started massing more units, expanded, and went on to fight him. I ended the series 2-0 once again.

The next match was vs a well-known player called TiTans.WIND. I lost to him, but i also learnt a lot in the process. I seldom fight against Ghoul users. You see, Undead players can either go Fiends or Ghouls. Fiends are better at creeping but will lose the fight against Grunts and Raiders without Frost Armour and Statues. Ghouls, however, require a much higher level of micromanagement, but they are much more devastating than Fiends to an Orc. However, some Undeads still prefer going for Fiends. WIND went Ghouls, and i don’t really know how to beat Ghoul users. I just lost to him like a bloody noob. Indeed, i think i played like a total noob vs him, aiming the wrong units, not dealing well with his harass, and giving him quite a few free kills. I always lose when he gets 3 Fiends solely for Web, against the Wyverns and Bat Riders. Maybe i should have gotten a few Kodo Beasts to eat those Fiends to end their life prematurely. Hmm. Still trying to figure out how to beat Ghouls nowadays.

I admit i was pretty cocky about the whole competition though, what with my playing DOTA and not even caring about playing solo during those few days before the actual competition. And arrogance never prevails. I want to stop playing DOTA for a while these few days, and make sure i get back to my old form in Warcraft. I could really feel that my skill level had dropped. Plunged into the depths of… noobishness? But i’m gonna work hard from now on! I downloaded a few Grubby vs Sweet ( a pro undead player who uses Ghouls vs Orc) replays, and i’m gonna go analyse them later. Hopefully i can get a few insights from them. Off to the gym now!

exams and dota

these two things have very much in common

you enter a game.
you wish you don’t get a lane with 2 stunners.
or it might throw you off balance.
depending a lot on Lady Luck, you embark on one of the 3 available paths.

if your lane has just 1 stunner, and you get stunned once, you’re lucky you can still run away
especially if you’ve expected such a thing to happen to you, and bought your bracers or mekanism

if your lane has the dreaded 2 stunners, and you get stunned once, it’s almost assured that you die right on the spot.
but the worst thing is still 2 pushers with deadly AOE damage.

what can you do now to prevent yourself from dying?
by skilfully keeping your health high enough, just high enough so they won’t be able to get the kill, and just low enough so you’re still getting a nice kill:deny ratio.

then it all boils down to
practice, practice, practice.

the moral of the story is, computer games are good because you learn life lessons from them.
Practice makes perfect. Simple as that.

world cyber games singapore 2006

there’s so much to talk about, and so little time. I’ll write some stuff, and just keep the other stuff in my heart lah.

i participated in the wcg of 2006 for warcraft. The best thing now is that we have sponsors (Asteroids Cyber Cafe @ Katong!), so we could play for free. Naturally we had to do some intensive training before the event, so the sponsors won’t have to secretly say, “sponsoring clan DiSc was the single worst decision of our lan shop’s history.” No need for that, man.

in the end i still got kicked out at the group stages.
ChOBo and i (w00ty) both got knocked out after getting 2wins 1loss only, as contrasted with the top in each of our groups who each got 3win 0loss. Could see that ChOBo was pretty sad. Well, “pretty sad” is a huge understatement, but i shall just leave it at that lah. He. Was. Sad.
GirlyLuck went past the group stages, but got knocked out soon after. His first major tournament, and i could see he was rather disappointed, just like most of us were.

Anyway we had good news too! extremely elated that jovi won!
His online moniker is TruE.DiSc*AsT_TeamSG
yup yup, he’s officially part of team singapore right now! He even has the prestigious white-and-red jacket that has the words “Team Singapore” behind!

And so he won the WCG Qualifiers for Warcraft for Singapore.
And he went on to get 3rd in the Asian Championships 2006, winning Kowi from New Zealand, a brilliant gamer who used to thrash me upside down online, repeatedly.
And he’s going to Italy, Monza soon to represent Singapore in WCG for this year.
And he has his ‘O’ Levels to take too…

Well i just wish him all the best!
Clan DiSconnect for the win

The one about warcraft commentating

I just received a confirmation email from one of the personnel from Rapture Gaming, a company dealing with the Singaporean gaming scene, notifying me that i did not qualify to become a commentator for warcraft tournaments in Singapore.

And i don’t really know why, but i didn’t feel that much dejection at the rejection. Even though i thought that i did pretty well for the interview. Even though i knew i put up an enthusiastic front while going through the test-drive for the shoutcasting. Even though i thought that i had the job all in my hand already. But, alas, no. Of course i wasn’t looking for a lugubrious feeling, but at least some ennui and despondency?

No, my heart seemed to have hardened.

I realised that, actually, i didn’t really want the job that bad. Maybe i did, but not yet. These days i have been contemplating whether to accept or to decline the job, since i THOUGHT i had it all in my palms already. I thought of my ‘A’ Levels. I thought of my clanmates who would be out slogging on the online battlefield, while i would be, to them, minding my own business, doing my own job, which would forge an even greater wall in between us. I thought about my future exhaustion and fatigue, coming home from the NS camp. And i thought, do i really want this job?

Maybe this rejection a silver lining of this seeming dark cloud.

But whatever happens, i’m gonna have the resilience and spirit of the people in Never Say Die or Singapore Idol. That’s the only trait i want to replicate from them though. I wouldn’t want some of their voices, their acting “talents” or their overly high self esteem. I’ll still want to be a commentator, or at least contribute in some way or another to the gaming scene in Singapore. Gaming has really given me a lot of joy in the first years of my life, and i believe it has, in one way or another, made me a much more intelligent, alert and quick-thinking individual. It has made me a better person, to put it simply.

But for now, my current life beckons. My dream has to wait, then, and remain as a dream until the day it finally becomes a reality.

The one about going back

Hmm, my first post on Warcraft in a while.

I’ve been thinking about going back to playing warcraft for my clan again. It’s not something i’ve left out of my mind totally since the start of the year. The stuff that is stopping me is the fact that table tennis training, i.nnovation projects, physical training (so i can pass the bloody napfa), the bucking up of my schoolwork et cetera everything, would take up a lot of time and leave me with no time to train for warcraft and still have time to do things i like (eg. playing warcraft. no lah, reading funny books and magazines etc.), as well as finish my homework.

The ‘A’ levels are the most important to me now. I want my 4 A’s. Some may think it’s too proud to aim so high, but i think it’s only right that we all aim for the maximum amount of A’s and put in enough effort lah. No point coming to jc and getting some BCC or some other kind of crappy results and being selected to go to some weird uni course like Philosophy if you don’t want it, right?

But it seems like i have SOME time right now to start training a little and go back to playing The clan is joining this WarcraftSingapore Clan League which we’ve participated in since the first season, and we’re not stopping just because some of the better players had gone. A new batch of players with good potential but lack of experience have joined us to help us play in the league, and i’m not sure at all whether they’re up to the challenge.

Hmm.. playing again.. it sounds tempting.. ^^

but i guess i’ll not do it lah.

so at the end of the post,
i shall sign off and say,
“you’ve wasted 2 minutes of your time reading this!”

Nono, you’ve not wasted 2 minutes.

I shall declare and promise myself that i’ll only go back to competitive gaming for the clan if i get AAA for the coming tests and A2 for GP.

So that’s effectively saying, cheehow, you’re never going back to gaming for your clan until after the ‘a’ levels

anyways, i went to youtube on impulse to search for my Warcraft idol, 4K.Grubby’s videos, and miraculously, i found some! What the crap, i remember taking like 2hours to download one of these videos, and now they’re all simply spread out here for our viewing pleasure.

Grrr.
And now that i think of it, the thought of Grubby rejecting my request for his signature makes me even more angry.
Grr Grr.

anyway, here is one.
4K.Grubby vs WE.IGE.Sweet

this guy’s another one of my favourite orc players because he was the first player in the cookie cutter of Far Seer (a hero) users to use a Blademaster, sort of an unorthodox hero at that time. He was the guy who popularised it. Now every good orc player must know how to use both for them to be considered a true orc pro!
NIP-FarSeer vs WE.IGE.SoJu

and now for a starcraft one.. SlayerS_`Boxer`, known as the Terran Emperor!
Boxer vs some unknown pro

These are what i’ll present to you for now. Watch how fast they move their hands and how they click and micro manage every single thing. Now look at how you play your computer games and compare. Fascinated? ^^

Now let’s see how you go back to playing “The Sims” and how exciting you find that game to be.

The one about the sponsorship

Hoe (Alkaiser.DiSc) just messaged me today that the sponsorship by I.R.C. cyber cafe would be more or less settled after all the paperwork that he is doing is done.

I’m really, really, really glad that everything worked out fine. Worked out quite well actually. Everyone’s starting to play again, to mingle around like in the past.

It’s a new era of Clan DiSconnect and i’m looking forward to leading it! But it just so happens that i will be having to take my ‘A’ levels this year. Maybe i’ll only enjoy the sponsorship props after that. I’m finding a possible successor now, mwahhaha!

Dunno what’s the point of this entry also, ha ha. I’m just really proud of being able to help the clan achieve so much up till today, and now that the new era has come, it’s time for me to leave with my heart settled and peaceful.

Or maybe i’m just boasting!
Which is more probable, if you know me.
Hehe

Coming WarCraft events! (just a personal reminder)

1.
30 nov , 1 dec
10am – 8pm
WarCraft 1v1 Invitational Tournament!

The one about 4K^Grubby incident

This prick

His name really makes me angry now.
GRRRR
And it’s not because his name is GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUBBY! that makes me say the “grrr” sound.

Okay let me tell you how loyal a fan i am of him.

That day at the chalet at Costa Sands Pasir Ris, my friends all pangseh’ed me, leaving me to sleep alone with my family at the chalet. Ha ha, heartless creatures! But that’s not the point. At least it gave me time to go find for those progamers living there, and also to do my Chemistry homework. so that’s actually not the worst part of the day (or few days) yet.

10.30pm – 11.30pm
I walked around the chalet like a bloddy stalker. Note i used “bloddy”, because that’s how the British says that word. Singaporeans pronounce it as “blaaaaaaaaaaaaaardy”. But since it came from the British i should give them due respect to say bloddy. Now, after walking around a bit, actually not really jsut a bit, because i walked around the whole damn chalet from blocks A to like Q or something. Yeah, that’s what stalkers do. They have to be thorough in order to find their desired victim.
And in my mind i was thinking,
“GRUBBY MY VICTIM, SHOW MY YOUR GOSU ORC NOW PLSPSLPSLSPLSPLSLS!”

Oh yeah, and i called Herman, who referred me to this Thomas guy who was in charge of lodging and accommodation. It was a godsend reference, seriously. Cos stalkers always want to find where their victims live, and then start setting up a camp or tent outside their chalets, waiting silently for their prey to come out, and that’s the time when they pounce!

And so i called this guy, and sms-ed him until he finally decides to reply me. But he wasn’t very useful cos everything was confidential.

*update later*

YEAh, he didn’t really tell me where they were. Actually, come to think of it, i actually have some disdain for him now. Because of 2 reasons.

1. He didn’t tell me those pros were living at Costa Sands Downtown East instead of Costa Sands Pasir Ris
HA! I bet you didn’t know that too. There are two Costa Sands’s in Pasir Ris area. And side by side too, how logical and smart man. What’s the bloody, sorry, bloddy point!? I mean, Downtown East is already an established resort centre, why add one more Costa Sands resort within it?
GRRR!

2. (i’ll say later)

Okay so my sister and i went to the information counter and she aided my stalking my helping me ask the counter guy about the pros’ whereabouts. This is clever of me, because if anyone ever charges me for stalking, i can say my sister helped me to ask, so she would in turn be my accomplice, and she would go to jail with me. And i will of course be happier when someone follows me to jail Although it might somehow backfire some day. There are various examples how it would backfire and deal me great harm, but i shall refrain from listing any here cos she visits this blog. HA!

But ah, the counter person told us that the pros were living in Downtown East,
and that was when my face was :O and T.T

When all hope was lost and i was stoning at the counter chairs while my sister was trying to read her notes (act only), i received an sms from Thomas again.
“tmr 7am”, a reply from my 150-letter sms. But it was sufficient and i was clearly elated. The only thing stopping me was the Chemistry lecture i had the next day. AT 8am, at nyjc.
I knew i had to fly there if i wanted a picture with Grubby and an early arrival at school.

Anyway, why is nyjc holding lectures during the holidays?! Don’t they know what holidays are. omg, but another topic for another day.

Happily went to sleep.
Woke up at 6am
Reached Downtown East by 6.50am, and found the big glaring sign which shows the irritating words “COSTA SANDS, DOWNTOWN EAST. Enjoy your stay here.”

I camped outside the entrance from 7 to 7.30, and i finally plucked up enough courage to walk into the Gamers’ Lounge, where the progamers are supposedly having breakfast at “tmr 7am”. I chatted a bit with the doormen to sneak my way in Ah, i’m good at that, lol!

But the sad thing is, there was no Grubby in there.
And that’s when it hit me why i couldn’t see Grubby there.
The door lady told me,
“Breakfast is not at 7am. It starts at 7am, and gamers are supposed to come anytime from 7 to 8.45am”
Again, my face went :O and T.T
I looked through the player list, of gamers who had had or are having their breakfast, and no Manuel