It was only yesterday that I brought you the sad news about Gamerlobby’s demise but it appears that all is not lost as we already have rumours of Gamerlobby being revived and I also received 2 emails from other websites who can help out if you are looking for some offline multiplayer gaming or PC gaming.
www.langames.co.za is your local pitstop for any offline lanning that you have the urge to do. I remember when I was a little younger and a whole lot more energetic I used to lug my gaming machine all over the country to lans and while it was a pain in the ass it was some of the most enjoyable times I had… especially the after parties we used to somehow always end up at.
Next up we also have Twilight Gaming who I may forgive for being Twilight if they live up to their promise of being the largest online PC community in the country with an average of 1000 players online per night.
So while the console gamers are still high and dry at least there are some decent places to get your local multiplayer gaming fix.
If you know of any others please do let us know in the comments.
Last Updated: January 27, 2010
heyyou
January 27, 2010 at 16:58
Pssst, Twilight is an illegal Battle.net replica server.
Why not write about the dozens of private WoW servers next, and while your at it, lets give the pirate CoD4 servers some airtime.
Im just teasing. But serisously, do these guys deserve a place in the local gaming media? I mean, it’s not even possible to play on there was a legit copy of Warcraft 3…
Nick de Bruyne
January 27, 2010 at 17:53
hmmm, we will have to look into it then. thanks
LazySAGamer
January 27, 2010 at 21:17
I have asked them for a comment and we will look into it now.
Dean
January 27, 2010 at 21:35
A PvPGN server is far from illegal. Blizzard knows about all of the PvPGN Servers around. The European Server Net sees thousands and thousands of players and they run similar software.
The software is an emulation.
The only time a PvPGN server ever found trouble was when someone created a company around Battle.Net claiming to be similar.
You can use a legit copy of Warcraft 3 to play, in fact, we promote legal copies.
Unfortunately, Blizzard does not allow us to connect to their authentication servers, and they have no interest in adding local servers therefore we cannot check if CD keys are valid. This essentially means that players /can/ use a copied version of the game.
We are not Blizzard, we are not Battle.net. We do not promote piracy. We’re simply a medium for players to play locally as Blizzard does not support our country.
The community is literally the largest in the country for online play.
Many people are uninformed about the service, and we only have rumours to blame for this. Players, or those interested should first do their own research before believing everything they hear.
If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.
WhySoUninformed
January 27, 2010 at 23:15
Twilight has 1000’s of players which is pretty spectacular given broadband penetration in SA. Without the local server, those 1000’s of players _would_not_be_able_to_play because of high international latencies.
So some people have illegal copies. So what. For those who have legit copies, this is a service which actually lets you get the online experience out of your paid-for game.
Stop being so close minded. Any online service with 1000+ users is doing pretty fantastic in terms of the SA market.
LazySAGamer
January 28, 2010 at 00:19
It’s not okay that some people have illegal copies and if it is being passively accepted then I would be very worried about the organisation.
It’s not the organisations job to patrol the members but at the same time if they are aware of any illegal activity it becomes their responsibility to stamp it out or report it.
uberutang
January 28, 2010 at 10:19
Do they glitter in sunlight?
StillSoUninformed
January 28, 2010 at 11:40
Yawn. Life isn’t perfect. We can’t all live in peace and harmony. As Dean said, Twilight don’t promote piracy and they have tried to work with Blizzard to stamp it out. Fact remains that we can’t use international servers because of latencies. Fact remains there is no other option.
Logically, there is as good (or better) a chance that somebody would buy W3 purely because of Twilight’s existence versus them not buying the game because of Twilight’s existence. I paid my R100 a while back just cus of them.
My original response wasn’t about piracy. Hence the “so what”. Dean already covered that Twilight has put effort into working against pirates. This is about the uninformed comments of heyyou saying “it’s not newsworthy” and “not even possible to play on there was a legit copy of Warcraft 3” – both of which are just plain wrong.
Since when does legality factor into newsworthiness? If that was true, newspapers would be empty. Again, this isn’t about piracy, it’s about the idiotic statement which can never be true.
Why does having a legit copy of W3 prevent you playing on Twilight or any other pvpgn server? All you need is a very small loader file which does not in anyway alter your game nor does it break the AUP.
!@$# pirates. Ignore them. Pretend they don’t exist. Once you strip away that bullshit, you’re left with the largest online gaming organisation in SA and I think they’re doing a good job. Even “legitimate” services like SGS are full of pathetic bullshit where you can’t even swear (which is very much part of modern culture these days) in games rated 18+.
Any community which listens to the gamers (just go look on the forum for “what do you want” threads) is doing well in my opinion. I’m so tired of dictators who are either in it for the money (read: arena77) or just to dick around (read: MSSA). Even AGASA has it’s fair share of politics because of it’s funding.
dislekcia
January 28, 2010 at 12:15
The “we can’t use the B.net servers due to latencies” is a false argument: All the B.net servers do is act as a matchmaker and firewall tunneling agent for P2P Blizzard games. Neither War3, Starcraft or any of the Diablo games are hosted on the B.net servers, so whether you get the IPs of your fellow local players from a B.net or PvPGN server makes absolutely no difference: The game packets are still routed locally and still fast, that’s TCP/IP’s job.
People think that their “lag indication” to the server is the lag they will experience ingame. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the end, if all these SA people were playing on B.net or not, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They’d all be forced to buy legit copies of their games though… That’d suck, right? You wouldn’t be able to give your nub friend a pirated copy of the game along with the PvPGN launcher and rawl DotA all night, bru!
I don’t agree with Blizzard’s anti-emulation stance and I was peeved with them suing freeware groups that first emulated B.net. But that doesn’t change the fact that a local matchmaking server doesn’t do squat for your lag to local opponents. That should be obvious…
Fatbob
January 28, 2010 at 13:24
And how do you stop every Johnny foreigner from joining the game and lagging out then? And why waste the international bandwidth if you don’t have to? Plus twilight has way more to offer than the std b.net setup.
Why don’t we cover the real issue here. You’re jealous? Someone give dislekcia a hug because no one is reporting on the community because it’s not the biggest. Awwww z0z. :(~
P.S. Hi Wolly. :D~
OhSoClueless
January 28, 2010 at 17:31
Omfg dislekcia, please make a more retarded argument. If SA players join an intl server, they will have to spend so much time making sure they’re joining another SA player’s game (for lag) or if they’re hosting they have to check everybody in their game comes from SA.
It’s a matchmaking service for South Africans. Yep. Without it, SA people wouldn’t be able to make matches because Bnet has no support for restricting what games you can join or who can join your game. Even stuff like banlist doesn’t help because firewalls block pings.
Again, this was about saying Twilight isn’t newsworthy, which is just a idiotic statement. Next thing, garena won’t be newsworthy either because it also allows for illegal copies of the game. Fact is Blizzard doesn’t care about w3 compared to wow and as a result people have to write things like garena to fill in the gaps (spectating, reducing lag..). That’s a pretty great accomplishment, and should be recognised, not snobbed out just because you think it lets some people cheat R50.
The low down is that ANYTHING which improves my life is GOOD. Twilight gives me plenty of (mostly) lagless DotA. I’m not going to give that up just cus some cheapos don’t wanna pay their cash. Gaming is about gaming, not trying to moneywhore for already rediculously rich companies. The more people trying to make the gamer happier, the better. If Blizzard launched a Bnet server in SA I wouldn’t think twice about which server I’d play on. Twilight actually supports the DotA community, Blizzard doesn’t care about it. Any Bnet server is just full of DotA quitters because Blizzard don’t put the effort in that third parties like garena (level system), Twilight (level system) or banlist do to keep things improving.