THE time when I say Microsoft rocks is when I play Age of Empires 2 with my friends on LAN. For the third time, I am addicted to Age of Empires. What a game!!! A brief overview of my addictions.

First Time : Sem 1 and 2

Before coming to IIIT, I never played Age of Empires. When I saw people playing AOE here in first sem, my first reaction was “What a crap game? How can you play a game like this? A lot of people/resources to manage and blah blah..”. I used to play all race games because of ease of playing. Just concentrate on your car and done!!

As a lot of people used to play this game all the time, I couldn’t stop myself from giving it a shot. But I didn’t know how to play. One fine day Ankush was playing AOE on his PC. I took a chair and just observed what he was doing. Then the other day he taught me few more steps and tips-tricks. And then started my gaming carrier with AOE. The next day I missed my English Literature (the first English class I missed) class because I was playing AOE.

And then I never looked back and played it for several hours a day. We started playing it on LAN by the beginning of the 2nd semester. We got a bit too serious about the game and managed to miss/bunk a lot of lectures just to play the god damn game. Workspace used to sound like a fish market “Ghode bhej … archer bhej … hathi bhej … gold de bhai plz … ek castle to bana de … “. Some people used to beg for the PCs to play. Luckily I had full control over my machine. There was a time when 3-4 games (with 8 players each) used to run at the same time in workspace.

We used to write mid sems in less than 40 minutes because we used to have plans for a game after the exam. And if we have 2 exams on the same day, an AOE game is sure between the two 😀

The extreme was when I started playing AOE even in my dreams. After end sems, everybody left for home. In the 3rd sem, I bought a desktop(which can’t be moved) and we didn’t get any lab and hence they killed my AOE carrier and hence the interaction among people. I loved the workspace life. I think I’ll never forget that holy place.

Second Time : Summer of 2007

A lot of friends opted to stay back in college during vacations. I was in BIRC (in main building) at that time. UG2 lab (beside server room) used to be full all the time with would be UG2 and UG3 students. Counter Strike and AOE all the time. Somani, Sachin, Ankush, Ojasvi used to play AOE a lot. I was a bit senti about Open Source and was busy exploring things. We used to discuss the good old time we had in workspace. And one day we planned an AOE game. I was damn excited. It was almost a year since I played AOE. I was wondering if I would be able to perform.

Then started another series of online games. Playing AOE. Night outs etc. I remember writing a post about the exciting summer 2007 dedicated to AOE. One day this guy Hitesh, from UG2K6 came down to UG2 lab. People say he is damn good at playing AOE. We wanted to give it a try and thought of playing with him. The game was FIVE VERSUS ONE :O Hitesh Vs. five UG2K5 guyz. Sounds unfair?? We discussed a lot of strategies to beat him. And then started the game. He very easily erased all of us from the map. I was like WTF!!! Somani was way depressed. Probably he was just a kid at the time. We tried a lot of strategies but couldn’t manage to defeat HITESH.

Well, we never played against him after that. Somani tried a lot even after that but in vain. We switched back to UG3 only mode 😛 And played AOE for another 2 months or so. Vacations over, Game Over!!!

Third Time : Sem 7

Sachin, Atul, Sanket, Akshay, Manish “Sharma”, Ojasvi started playing AOE again since a fortnight or so. On lunch or dinner table, you can see them discussing night outs and AOE strategies. I didn’t pay attention to it. Four days back, I went to Sachin’s room and all of them were planning the next game. I wonder who and why said “Kulbir tu bhi khel na…”. I said “no no no no na .. nahin yaar ..”. I was afraid of getting addicted. But they kept forcing me and I agreed thinking that I’ll play tonight and will never think about it again. I played that night and played quite well.

Next night at about 1AM, I pinged all of them (why ?? :(( ) for playing. Everyone refused. But I was feeling restless. I couldn’t control myself anymore. After almost half an hour later, I got up and went to Sachin’s room and urged to play AOE. He and manish agreed for playing. Now I needed a laptop. I rushed to Atul’s room. He was sleeping. I woke him up and asked if he wants to play. He said, “NO!”. I said, “Gimme the damn laptop if you are not playing!!”. He gave it a second thought and immediately got ready for playing. Oh man!! Again the laptop problem.  I managed to get the laptop (thanks alok). We played up to 4:30AM. I felt a bit relaxed.

Yesterday night, everyone again got ready for playing. We five (sachin, me, manish, atul, akshay) were setting up to start the game that this guy Hitesh appeared. He wanted to play. I was a bit scared. But we decided to play. This time Five vs Two. Hitesh and one more UG2K6 guy and we five. The game started as usual. Me and manish was tower attacked by Hitesh. We had to run for survival. The game went on for almost 2.5 hours. A really hectic game. He was sweeping all my areas and I kept running. At the end we won!! Yes, we won!!!! OMG! The joy of winning the game against that guy can’t be expressed in writing. Then sanket appeared and said that he wants to play. Now it was five vs. three. Sanket, Hitesh and one more UG2K6 guy and we five. The match was pretty easy this time and we won without any difficulties. Sanket made it easier for us 😛 Just kidding. We thought of playing another match. And yes we played it. And that was the easiest match. We won for the three consecutive times.

It was 7:30AM. Breakfast. Sleep 😀

I don’t know whats going to happen today. I am too tired.

PS1 : Ranta is back, probably to complete his B.Tech.

PS2 : Writing long posts these days.

PS3 : I am lost somewhere. I don’t know what I do all the time. At the end of day, I feel sad 🙁