O hai everybody! We are here at the Suntec Singapore for the WCG Asian Championship 2009. Also, together with the regional tournament are WCG Singapore’09 Open Category and Compaq AMD Pro-Gaming League’09 Summer Season. We got one Team Fortress 2 teams and two DoTA teams competing in the tournament respectively.

Updates continues after the jump, and refresh periodically for the latest updates!

WCG Asian Championship 2009 - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums | Photo Gallery

8:30am: The bus to Suntec Singapore has just arrived at the players village. It is around 10 minutes from Suntec Singapore. Nearer to town, we likey.

12:14pm: Alrighty folks, Team Malaysia has just finished Guitar Hero World Tour group stage. Before the match started, we found out that both of our opponents - Indonesia and Bangladesh actually has a qualifier event for the game despite not being one of Xbox 360’s official country, just like us. Hmmm…

In the first match against Indonesia, our rep managed to won the first round but lost to the opponent in the second round. This lead to a tie-breaker where both players have to play the finger-cracking Satch Boogie by Joe Satriani. We lost once again but we still qualified to tomorrow’s elimination stage as we defeated Bangladesh in the next match with a straight 2 - 0 score.

Earlier on, our DoTA team also won their first group match against Bangladesh. Their opponent basically ditched the game at 32nd minute mark even though there are 4 of their players around compared to Malaysia who only have 3 players in the war, according INC.Excello’s manager - Benny. Team Malaysia next opponent should the toughest opponent in the group - Vietnam.

On other interesting news, our long time friend at Spotgamers - Si_Jali informed us that last year WCGAC champ - New Zealand got schooled by….*drum roll* Korea! Looks like all other DoTA giants got to be aware of them from now on.

Also, we received a news that the Internet connection in the hall already back online. More news coming soon, so stay tuned!

01:16pm: Team Malaysia is currently in the of their DoTA match against Vietnam. According to Benny and the National DoTA Ranking admin - Underminer, it is a very tough match even though our homeboys have better skills compared to their opponent. Vietnam styles suits the map very well said Underminer. Let’s hope Team Malaysia will be able to pull this one.

Meanwhile, Cybertime already won their first match (rather easily, they said) for today in CAPL’09 Summer Season which qualifies them to Top 16 stage. The team expected that their next opponent (TBC) will be a tough one. We haven’t got to meet the other team - Kingsurf, so we are not sure what are their status right now.

Last but not least, our Team Fortress 2 gang - are still waiting for their matches. According to one of their players - Zack, the gaming island having a lot of issues from broken Internet to broken CPUs. More delays are expected.

01:30pm: Good news! Team Malaysia managed to defeated Vietnam in DoTA! It is a huge relief for us here, phewh.

02:30pm: More good news for our camp. Team Malaysia storm through Sri Lanka in their last DoTA match which made them the 1st place team in the their group. This also means that our DoTA boys qualified to the elimination stage tomorrow. Wohoo!

Surprise surprise, we just found out that our room at the player’s village have Internet access. It is a indeed life-changing amenities as we couldn’t find any suitable place to continue our updates previously after the media room was closed at 7pm.

That being said, we don’t have much results to share apart from both Kingsurf and Cybertime won their Compag AMD Pro-Gaming League’09 (CAPL’09) Summer Season matches for today. We will post up more details about their win in tomorrow’s update.

As for now, we going to let a number of selected photos to do the talking, right after the jump.

WCG Asian Championship 2009 - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums | Photo Gallery

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the 1st day of WCGAC’09. First match for Team Malaysia will be at 10am whereby our DoTA team will meet their counterpart from Bangladesh. Laters!

Good day to everybody back in Malaysia! We, together with Team Malaysia for WCG Asian Championship 2009 has landed in Suntec Singapore for the event. The official launch ceremony has just ended but the action for WCGAC’09 squad and WCG Singapore Open Category layers will only start tomorrow with the exception of two local DoTA teams - Kingsurf and Cybertime whom already started their campaign in CAPL’09 Summer Season.

As the organizer is closing the media/business room for today, we are now trying to find another suitable place to continue our coverage. Don’t forget to tune back soon.

WCG Asian Championship 2009 - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums

Asiasoft has announced that their latest MMO - YulgangSEA, developed by KRG SOFT and MGAME Corporation of Korea, will move into Open Beta phase starting next week, on July 9th. The free-to-playgame was displayed publicly at Asiasoft Game Fest 2009 last month and has just finished its Closed Beta Test few days ago.

The Marketing Director of Asiasoft Online - Ng Kok Khwang is very pleased with the game’s arrival to our country:

“Yulgang Online is a worldwide hit with over 100 million players worldwide and is the crown jewel in our stable of games in Thailand. We are pleased to bring Yulgang Online to gamers here in Singapore and Malaysia and are confident of the game’s success in this region!”

Based on a very popular Korean comic series called “Yul Hyul Gang Ho“, the game features manga-styled characters roaming around mystical world in the usual fantasy MMO style. To further enchanced the experience, Game Masters (GM) in the game will be named after the comic’s main characters plus several other well known martial arts characters, which players will be able to interact with through in-game activities.

So, if cutey characters are your flavor, the game’s client is already available at their official website, to keep your download queue busy before the game’s Open Beta starts.

YulgangSEA - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums

Last weekend, the DoTA spot for Team Malaysia to WCG Asian Championship’09 has finally sorted out through a qualifier held at Cybertime, OUG, KL. While the number of the teams that signed up might be small, it is rather a high caliber event as a number of local DoTA scene superstars came to bid for a spot in our national team.

As expected, the top 4 contender to represent our country - Kingsurf.my, INC.Excello, 8mski.tbun and Cybertime, went through through group stages easily. In the finals - using a league points system, Cybertime went down as the last team out of the final 4 after losing all their matches against other teams. As for 8mski, after losing the 2nd match to Excello, their manager decided to forfeit the rest of their matches, cited fatigue as the reason behind the decision.

With that forfeit, the advantage was with the crowd favorite - Kingsurf, especially when they didn’t have to go through any more matches, while their nearest rival - Excello still have one match to go before their league schedule is completed. As these two teams has fought earlier with a draw results together with equal number of wins, one single final match was held to determine the winner of this qualifier.

Despite being highly exhausted from all the continuous matches, Excello still managed to deny Kingsurf 2nd continuous appearance at WCGAC, by beating them fair and square in last finals match. Check out the summary by Gamosphere.com for a more detailed view on the event.

Congrats to INC.Excello for such a fine performance and we are looking forward to see them in action at Singapore this coming weekend!

WCG Asian Championship 2009 - Official Website | Team Malaysia DoTA Qualifiers @ Lowyat.NET Forums

Last week, Blizzard invited a number of Starcraft fansites to their HQ for a sneak preview of Starcraft II’s latest multiplayer build. While the overall reports stated that the game are doing great, one tiny bummer for network multiplayer folks out there - the game will have no LAN support, as stated in an interview by IncGamers with the game’s developers and was also confirmed by Team Liquid.

This piece of news however has been rumored for quite a while - since March this year. With that confirmation, Battle.net - which will contain a number of new features that Blizzard was not able to discuss yet, is the only multiplayer mode available for SCII later on.

Meanwhile, in the same interview with IncGamers, Blizzard’s Vice President of Game Design Rob Pardo also mentioned that SCII will not appear on consoles. “Zero percent” - said the Blizzard rep. The given reason was:

We have tried in the past, we actually tried the original StarCraft on Nintendo 64. It works, it’s playable, it’s just such a different playability gameplay experience than on PC and we really don’t want to have it be that different.

Sorry consoles folks, we got to agree with Pardo here.

[sauce: IncGamers.com via WCG Official Website]

Starcraft II - Lowyat.NET Forums

Woah, the zombies are going on tour! Starting on July 11 till August 7th, Online e-Club - under their Asian Cyber Games (not to be mistaken with WCG Asian Championship) banner will be on tour to organize Left 4 Dead VS Mode Tournament qualifiers. They are going to stop by at a number of cybercafes in Kedah, Penang, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Klang Valley throughout the period.

Here are the venues:

11-12 July: EC Internet Cafe, Sungai Petani, Kedah
13-14 July: FUFU Internet Cafe – Ultimate, Penang
15-16 July: Q Zone Internet Cafe, Penang
18-19 July: FTZ Internet Paradise, Penang
21-22 July: IMAX Gunung Rapat, Ipoh, Perak
23-24 July: Rock Internet Cafe, Bandar Sunway, Selangor
25-26 July: FTZ Asia.net, SS15, Subang Jaya, Selangor
27–28 July: Blitzone, Damansara Jaya, Selangor
01-02 August: WCG Infinity, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur
06-07 August: Cronos Media Internet, Bandar Baru Nilai, Negeri Sembilan

As for prizes, there will be around RM 1800 of total cash prizes, Steel Series products and L4D mousepads for top 3 teams of each venue. That’s like a grand total of RM 18000 just for cash prizes alone!

Champions for each venue will then qualify to the Grand Finals event in Klang Valley, expected to be held in the coming August or September. There are no registration fee (on other word, it’s FREE) for the qualifiers event and registration can be done at each qualifiers venue.

ACG Left 4 Dead VS Tournament - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums

Rapture Gaming yesterday held a live group drawing for next week’s WCG Asian Championship 2009. This is how it looked like for all three official games:

DoTA

• Group A: India, Singapore, Korea, New Zealand
• Group B: Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam
• Group C: Philippines, Chinese Taipei, China
• Group D: Australia, Indonesia, Japan

FIFA’09

• Group A: Malaysia, India, New Zealand, Chinese Taipei
• Group B: Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Korea
• Group C: Philippines, China, Singapore
• Group D: Japan, Australia, Bangladash

Guitar Hero: World Tour

• Group A: Japan, Korea, China, India
• Group B: Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines
• Group C: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia
• Group D: Chinese Taipei, Vietnam, Sri Lanka

Looks like the draws went pretty well for our (eventual) DoTA rep as the biggest threat in Group B should only be Vietnam. As for GHWT, they are not much information available about the other two countries but we still expect our plastic guitar slinger (still TBC as well) will able to go to elimination stage.

As for FIFA’09, we predict that India and Chinese Taipei will provide significant challenges to our national rep - [T2.W|nDs]Lo0n4tic. But as always, we also optimistic that he will be able to proceed to the elimination stage and defend last year’s title, won by Si_Jali.

How many medals do you think Team Malaysia will won at Suntec next weekend? Post your predictions in our comment box!

WCG Asian Championship 2009 - Official Website | WCGAC’09 DoTA Qualifier @ Lowyat.NET Forums
WCG Malaysia Official Website

In a recent interview with Times Online, CEO of Activision Blizzard - Bobby Kotick expressed his concerns on Sony PlayStation 3 high cost of game development and low return of investment. A direct quote from the article said:

The PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.

They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates [the number of games each console owner buys] are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony.

When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP [portable] too.

Man, we don’t know what happened between the two companies but we surely do know there must be something rather bad going on there. Sony did actually commented back to the story … let’s just say, it’s rather a no-comment kinda response that is not really worthy of your time.

While we personally wouldn’t comment on Sony’s current pricing of the console (and the rest of PlayStation related items such as games, etc.), we definitely agree that price cutting would do good for Sony. But then, can they afford it?

[sauce: Gizmodo]

Sony PlayStation @ Lowyat.NET Forums

Last week, PLAY Interactive announced that they has signed a Asia Pacific-wide distribution deal with Black Bean Games, a game publisher from Italy. The Italian company is known for their European-based racing games such as Evolution GT, SCAR and also their official game series for Superbike World Championship called SBK.

PLAY Interactive has already started administering Black Bean Games entry into Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong market, starting with the company’s latest lineup which include SBK’09 Superbike World Championship and Superstar V8 Racing. Expect these games to pop up under PLAY Interactive badge at your local stores soon.

PLAY Interactive Official Website
Black Bean Games Official Website

Two wacky guys from Fly FM - Basil and Hafiz would like to invite mad gamers out there for the Playa Got Game?, a 24 hours game battle alongside them. The 24 hours madness will take place at Centre Atrium, e@Curve (formerly Cineleisure Mutiara Damansara), PJ starting from 12pm of Saturday, 27th June until 12pm of Sunday, 28th June.

Complete details about this event are still scarce at the moment but we did knew that they are going to give away around RM 10,000 worth of cash and prizes for lucky draws and games during the event. To register, all you got to do is filled up the form at the radio station’s official website and just wait for them to contact you if you got selected to game at the event.

Are we going to see appearances by the 40 hours world record holders? This should be a piece of cake for them. Trust me, I’m part of them too. >:)

Fly FM Playa Got Game? - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums

Get ready for her royal cuteness! The world famous Hello Kitty is coming to you gaming world with a free-to-play game called Hello Kitty Online (HKO), developed by Sanrio Digital,. The game is set to be launched locally next month by Oriented Games at their game portal - gloot.net.

HKO takes place in a world called Sanrio Land whereby, it focuses more on resource collecting and crafting instead of the common MMO battle system. The game will also feature social networking functions since it is tied up to SanrioTown which would enable players to access the site’s video sharing, email and blogs services.

Oriented Games are planning to release a number of HKO limited edition premiums such as starter packs, game sets and collectible time cards in conjunction with the launch. So, for fans of Hello Kitty and friend, make sure you are in the loop by checking out HKO’s official website periodically.

Hello Kitty Online - Malaysia’s Official Website | HKO Official Blog | Lowyat.NET Forums

Apart from the WCG Asian Championship 2009 updates that we posted just now, we did also asked In2 Marketing & Consulting about the status of WCG Malaysia 2009.

According to them, WCG Malaysia 2009 is confirmed to take place in the near future. Apart from this confirmation, they currently doesn’t have any other confirmed details that can be shared with us. Quite a low key confirmation, but at least, we all now knew WCG Malaysia is still on.

WCG Malaysia - Offficial Website | Lowyat.NET Forums

One month after the details of WCG Asian Championship 2009 (WCGAC’09) started to appear online, the status of Malaysian contingent to the regional competition are still in doubt. So, we got in touch with WCG Malaysia National Organizer - In2 Marketing & Consulting , to gather official status of our national team.

We are relieved to say that DoTA and FIFA’09 representative status has been resolved.

Announced by MyGaming-Lim in our forums earlier today, the qualifier will take place on 27th June 2009 at Cybertime, OUG. Registration for each team is RM 100 but there are no mention of any prizes except for free accommodation to compete at WCGAC’09 in Singapore next month for the champion.

Next is FIFA’09 representative. Since there is no WCGAC’09 qualifier event as per last year, according to WCG Inc. regulations, the representative will be the last year’s national champion. In this case, that would be [T2.W|nDs]Vin but as WCGAC’09 clashed with FIFA Online 2 Asian Championship Qualifier, the honor goes to the 1st Runner Up winner instead which is [T2.W|nDs]Lo0n4tic.

Last but not least, Guitar Hero World Tour representative. As Xbox 360 is yet to be officially released here, the national organizer is not in position to organize a qualifier and also, the last year’s champion regulations doesn’t apply to our country since WCG Malaysia never had a Guitar Hero event before. That being said, the status for GHWT spot in Malaysian team will be made known very-very soon.

That’s all for now…but don’t run away first, we got one more WCG-related news for you guys. Stay tuned.

WCG Asian Championship 2009 - Official Website | WCGAC’09 DoTA Qualifier @ Lowyat.NET Forums
WCG Malaysia Official Website

Wowsies, we finally able to post this one. Three Saturdays ago, eighteen team came to Blitzone Damansara Jaya for the cyber cafe’s Sudden Attack tournament. Held just one week before Asiasoft Game Fest 2009, the RM 3600 worth of cash prizes’ competition proved to be a very good place for both new and veteran teams to warm up before the huge festival.

Check out pictures and tournament report right after the jump. More pictures available at our Flickr photo gallery.

Sudden Attack - Official Website | Lowyat.NET Forums | Multiplay Photo Gallery

K-Swiss1 have to battle two other teams before they can even make it into the actual tournament bracket.

Since 18 teams turned up with only 16 spots available, three teams have to battle with each other to filled in the last spot. Combined with the double elimination format from 2nd round onwards, this resulted in delays that pushed the actual tournament to around 12:30pm. Because of that, the tournament ended later than scheduled but it was smooth sailing apart from minor network hiccup due to the online nature of Sudden Attack.

Spectators flocked the window to see 30.4lady in action.

The tournament was held in a glassed area of the cyber cafe, which was also off-limits to spectators and teams in-waiting. Huge attention was given to the (almost - woops, our bad!) all-female team above - 30.4lady, as visible by the sheer number of spectators outside the tournament area. Too bad the team were eliminated very early in the first round.

Asiasoft Malaysia’s Country Manager, Keith Long checking out SJBZ.

One after another teams were then eliminated from the tournament by the competition’s top 4 teams: SJBZ, J.A.G, Chronos and [ESP]NAGA. SJBZ went down to lower bracket pretty early though, after being ran over by Chronos in the 2nd round. They were given another chance to avenge their defeat after Chronos also fell to lower bracket after losing to NAGA but nothing came out of it. SJBZ went home empty handed as the 4th place team.

One more win for J.A.G!

Chronos in deep focus.

After defeating SJBZ, Chronos continued their superb run by eliminating the last team to fell to the lower bracket - J.A.G. But then, NAGA who was fresh from their victory at The New Paper Cyber Challenge 2009 in Singapore, stopped Chronos from being the champion while keeping their clean sheet intact. The finals between these two fine teams was very intense though, where at one time, the score was tied 7 - 7 before NAGA finished Chronos off with a very small 10 - 8 margin.

[ESP]NAGA second consecutive titles. The next SA superstar, maybe?

Well, did the results of this tournament affected ASGF’09? Little did we knew that things actually went differently…more on ASGF’09 Sudden Attack tourney soon!