Do Lan Parties happen any more?

[n0ob3r]

Hello All,
In High school, I use to go to and host LAN Parties.

Do these things happen any more for those on this forum?

 

[chameleoneel]

Hello All,
In High school, I use to go to and host LAN Parties.

Do these things happen any more for those on this forum?

Classic LAN parties can be tough, because many games no longer offer the option. You can all get in a room together.....but, you will likely be otherwise playing online. That said, there are still some games which support it.

Also, Fighting Games are popular right now. Its likely there is a local FGC* club, if you live in/near a proper city.

*FGC = Fighting Game Community

 

[n0ob3r]

Its true. Long gone are the days where we all had to drag our full towers and CRT monitors across town to get a decent ping =).

Believe it or not, this is the first time I have heard of a FGC. I will have to look into that.

 

[Nobu]

Try to do every weekend, usually stardew valley, if we're not doin dnd. That said, it's tough when you also have to take care of two-three kids.

 

[chameleoneel]

Its true. Long gone are the days where we all had to drag our full towers and CRT monitors across town to get a decent ping =).

Believe it or not, this is the first time I have heard of a FGC. I will have to look into that.

If you aren't really playing any fighters, but want to: find out about your local FGC groups and which games are popular locally. And then pick one of those games.

If you are picky or are already playing a favorite fighter----it can be tough, if your local FGC groups aren't' really playing that game. A big example would be Soulcalibur 6. For whatever reason, that game is generally more popular on the East coast. West coast, it can be tough to find consistent groups for SC6.

Some of the other most popular fighters are Tekken 7, Smash Bros., Under Night In Birth, Street Fighter 5. And a new Guilty Gear releases pretty soon. There ought to be a surge for that game.

Tekken, Street Fighter, and Smash Bros. are likely to have local groups in most major areas. Everything else is a big YMMV.

 

[dthree]

Same.. i used to host'em.. doom 2/quake/warcraft 2 etc.. but doubt people are doing lan parties like they used to lol

 

[n0ob3r]

Ahh, classics. =)

 

[sabrewolf732]

A couple friends and I will get together sometimes and bring setups but we just end up playing online together in the same room. Its fun to drink and eat and talk shit together though

 

[n0ob3r]

A couple friends and I will get together sometimes and bring setups but we just end up playing online together in the same room. Its fun to drink and eat and talk shit together though

It use to be for the low latency and network performance, now you can get that where ever you are as long as you have broad band. However, you can never replace gaming in the same room as other people and the fun that is had with that. =)

 

[Westwood]

Yea, I really miss those days. We'd pay $20 for a "lock in" and game all night at out local center once a month. There had to be twenty of us. Pizza place right next door. They'd pound on the wall to let us know food was ready.

Those were incredible times. I often thought it'd be neat to buy a building here and open something up, but like others have said, it seems those days are over.

 

[sharknice]

I haven't the past year because of obvious reasons, but normally yes.

I have a couple groups that do PC LANs several times a year.
I also actually have a group that do original Xbox Halo CE LANs with CRTs. We don't haul them over there though, a guy has a guest house and we just keep them all there. I only go once a year or so but they do them almost monthly.

 

[criccio]

Yes, most nights on Discord.

We're all so over dragging our machines around the state.

 

[mvmiller12]

We've had an annual LAN party for the last 20+ years (until last year - last year broke the chain). We do it the week of July 4. 24x7 gaming all week long.

As far as games being "online" vs LAN - that's just networking. Who cares? The important part is we're all together in close proximity, taunting each other.

 

[Armenius]

It use to be for the low latency and network performance, now you can get that where ever you are as long as you have broad band. However, you can never replace gaming in the same room as other people and the fun that is had with that. =)

You can get 1-2ms latency on a LAN. Show me a game where you can get that kind of latency over the internet. 100-150ms lag is somehow considered "good" these days.

 

[Westwood]

As far as games being "online" vs LAN - that's just networking. Who cares? The important part is we're all together in close proximity, taunting each other.

That's what I miss about it.

 

[maro]

I had the most awful case that had a handle built-in just for carrying around, peppered with surf/watersports/auto stickers. It is probably the computer equivalent to having a mullet haircut in the 90's. Caught a lot of grief over that case, but it had a handle for easy carrying!

... good times...

 

[n0ob3r]

I had the most awful case that had a handle built-in just for carrying around, peppered with surf/watersports/auto stickers. It is probably the computer equivalent to having a mullet haircut in the 90's. Caught a lot of grief over that case, but it had a handle for easy carrying!

... good times...

Hahhaha, I laughed at this.

Perhaps there should be a Hard Forum Lan party in the future..... =)

 

[God_Of_Death]

I have not been to a lan in years and mainly because I see so few advertised. I would go more for the file sharing and that stopped when all of these streaming services made it easier to see what you wanted when you wanted without the need to keep large files stored on your HDD. And then the games began not offering lan capability so it became moot. No file sharing and no newer A+ games offering lan gaming really diminished the lan party scene. and then the broader availability of good internet just keeps nailing that coffin door.

Yes, you can all gather at a house with fiber and at least be able to game on the same internet connection but it then becomes a logistical nightmare and some of us are getting old and with kids and family. these younger gamers will not understand the culture of lan parties and how epic it was.

i always found it amazing how pizza at a lan party would taste so much better than normal.

good times. i don't think lan parties are out the door yet but they are definitely being handed their hat unless we think of ways to modernize it and make it enticing to the younger gamers.

 

[n0ob3r]

.....i always found it amazing how pizza at a lan party would taste so much better than normal.

And how traumatizing it was to lay your head down on the sofa cushion that had been sat on for 24 hours

 

[warhol76]

These really were the good ole days!

 

[DoubleTap]

You can get 1-2ms latency on a LAN. Show me a game where you can get that kind of latency over the internet. 100-150ms lag is somehow considered "good" these days.

In modern fps games with a "trusted client", having a higher ping is an advantage for those pushing the fight.

Besides most games not supporting private servers and local play, the whole paradigm of HPB vs LPB how we used to compensate for our ping is dead and gone.

My guess is that if you tried to bring it back, most people would hate it.

 

[warhol76]

In modern fps games with a "trusted client", having a higher ping is an advantage for those pushing the fight.

Besides most games not supporting private servers and local play, the whole paradigm of HPB vs LPB how we used to compensate for our ping is dead and gone.

My guess is that if you tried to bring it back, most people would hate it.

I would agree. LAN parties were big because that was the best way to accomplish playing together back in the day. Now that latency is low and you can do it much easer from the comfort of your own home with your personal setup, why would you want to do it any other way.

 

[LukeTbk]

I would agree. LAN parties were big because that was the best way to accomplish playing together back in the day. Now that latency is low and you can do it much easer from the comfort of your own home with your personal setup, why would you want to do it any other way.

Like many things that are fully possible to experience at home, for the share person experience.

 

[cjcox]

I think there is loss with regards to remote only (and highly variable) interaction. Not to mention all the vulnerability exposures.

Some might say "same", but I think most that experienced the time period would say, it's not the same at all and it many ways it's worse. Sure, there might be convenience.... but watching an NFL game from home could also be viewed as convenient.... but is it the "same" as being there?

And in reality, it's more like saying having a school reunion via zoom is the same thing as being there.

 

[Saturn_V]

There were power issues at the last two LANs I tried going to- and that was 6-7 years ago. Didn't take much to pop the breakers.

The last real LAN I did was HardOCP's in Dallas 2008/2009? Wasn't quite QuakeCon... but close enuff to say I did it.

 

[cjcox]

There were power issues at the last two LANs I tried going to- and that was 6-7 years ago. Didn't take much to pop the breakers.

The last real LAN I did was HardOCP's in Dallas 2008/2009? Wasn't quite QuakeCon... but close enuff to say I did it.

It's a good point. Perhaps more mobile ready systems should be recommended nowadays. I mean just imagining the closed room with 5 or 6 computers all outputting hundreds of degrees of heat....

Intel iGPU LAN parties?

Person 1: What you playin?

Person 2: Doom II

 

[DoubleTap]

There were power issues at the last two LANs I tried going to- and that was 6-7 years ago. Didn't take much to pop the breakers.

The last real LAN I did was HardOCP's in Dallas 2008/2009? Wasn't quite QuakeCon... but close enuff to say I did it.

We did them in the mid 90s when PCs were drawing 200 to maybe? 300 Watts and we still had breaker issues.

Serious PCs are now 600-900W and putting more than a few in a home is going to cause issues - and maybe fires....

 

[sharknice]

We did them in the mid 90s when PCs were drawing 200 to maybe? 300 Watts and we still had breaker issues.

Serious PCs are now 600-900W and putting more than a few in a home is going to cause issues - and maybe fires....

We make sure we divide the PCs between several circuits at our LANs and have extension cords we can run to others if needed.

I designed my basement with hosting LAN parties in mind and have a bunch of 20 amp circuits down there.

 

[MrGuvernment]

We did them in the mid 90s when PCs were drawing 200 to maybe? 300 Watts and we still had breaker issues.

Serious PCs are now 600-900W and putting more than a few in a home is going to cause issues - and maybe fires....

a 15amp circuit can handle about 1800watts total, so that could be 3-5 systems, split that between 2 circuits and you are likely fine as long as you dont have like 20 people trying to play. And if a fire is caused, your wiring is pretty dam faulty as the circuit breaker should trip before anything

 

[DoubleTap]

a 15amp circuit can handle about 1800watts total, so that could be 3-5 systems, split that between 2 circuits and you are likely fine as long as you dont have like 20 people trying to play. And if a fire is caused, your wiring is pretty dam faulty as the circuit breaker should trip before anything

Ours were closer to 20 people...

 

[n0ob3r]

In indianapolis indiana, we had some pretty large Lan Parties. In high school , my personal lan parties started as 5-10 people. However, as it progressed, my parents actually moved all the furniture out of the house into the garage and we hosted (if memory serves me right) around 40 people. We lived in a 3 story house and we had to pull power from every circuit . It was 15 degrees outside but you could feel the heat on the walls . Some people brought managed Gb fiber switches and we had fiber hanging from ceiling fans =). It was pretty crazy.

Indy Gamers had some much larger ones and stompfest had 200+ people (Memory is fading, but I thought one time it was 400).

Seems like it was so long ago now having kids of my own and have moved on. Good times though.

 

[anthonyferguson]

Miss those days. Me along with my friends and couple of LAN gamers host our private LAN party each week consisting of 10 people in total.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

They're still around just not in the sense they were.

Yes, fight clubs are a thing since they all prefer to play in person and are really easy to find. I wouldn't classify Smash as a fighter (it's not) and it also has it's own sort of dedicate community. These are two different types of games and groups of people and if their communities are large enough in your area they aren't going to be mixing with each other. You generally have the Capcom type gamers (Street Fighter, Marvel), the animu group (Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, really any sort of ARC/Aksys type game) and then the Tekken crowd. Anything else is really sort of edge case so if you're Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Dead or Alive, Soul Caliber, you're going to want to make sure enough people play it, odds are they don't. SNK is odd as there are dedicated groups for anything SNK and some of the main series (KOF) are more popular than the edge cases but aren't huge like the main games. Bonus about the FGC is you will find a lot of people who dabble in beat-em-ups and shmups as well so if you are looking to say play Streets of Rage 4 or something like that in person odds are you'll get that.

Fight clubs are still because they all hate online and it started in arcades, that's not going anywhere.

PC type LANs are really only the usual e-sports suspects. You'll find a lot of stuff or CS, SC2, Overwatch, DOTA and none of those things require a space heater to run. A lot of this is for people to play in the same room it's not about ping. It's easy to find it you are networked into those communities as they all have regular hangouts.

Anything else is deader than dead.

 

[N4CR]

My double wide steel case has wheels on it for exactly this reason! If there was no room, it also doubled as a portable gaming surface (for KB/Mouse). Last LAN I did was few years back, CS:S, UT and few others was a great time! Best way to socially play computer games and the ping is untouchable.

Kind of miss packed cybercafes for this reason too.

 

[Jabroni31169]

Yea man, I miss some hotel conference room lan parties. UT Instagib or CTF was the jam back then. A few tribes games but not as much as UT. I was one of the first guys in our area to cut up my case for fans and neon lights. I remember packing my small 2 bedroom apartment with 10 folks and I "Borrowed" a cisco 10/100 switch from work to run the party since I was the only guy in our group with a cable modem at the time. Ahhh...I miss those days.

 

[n0ob3r]

Yea man, I miss some hotel conference room lan parties. UT Instagib or CTF was the jam back then. A few tribes games but not as much as UT. I was one of the first guys in our area to cut up my case for fans and neon lights. I remember packing my small 2 bedroom apartment with 10 folks and I "Borrowed" a cisco 10/100 switch from work to run the party since I was the only guy in our group with a cable modem at the time. Ahhh...I miss those days.

Some good memories from UT.

One of the LAN parties I attended was sponsored by DFI Motherboards (When they use to make gaming motherboards), AMD, Intel, ATI (before AMD bought them) and Nvidia (among other sponsors). If I remember right, there was one guy that cleaned up every UT tournament that was thrown out. Lets just say, he almost won enough parts to build a computer

 

[Zeoclang]

I tried looking up the organization that used to throw hotel conference room LAN parties in my area but it looks like it doesn't exist anymore. Unfortunately, large scale LAN parties seem to be a thing of the past.

 

[alxlwson]

Lanwar.com

 

[Red Falcon]

Bringing back the 1990s in the 2020s!