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Not a review of Showdownlan 2006
Non TMC version:
When I first heard about this lan, pretty early in fact, I immediately signed up and paid for my seat as soon as I was able to. It didn't matter that, back then, the ticket cost $60. $60 for a lan ticket is the most I've ever paid but then when I considered how many days/hours the lan would go for 72 hours and that the event was hosted by PDXLan...it was a no-brainer.
Once the word of this lan spread though, the price immediately brought down rage and furious anger by many potential attendees (Californians can be funny like that). Thankfully, the person in charge of the lan Vector (a.k.a Matt) was able to get the sponsors to help lower the cost in half for the final price of $30.
The 480 person BYOC sold out.
A large lanparty like this couldn't be possible without the help of the sponsors. The sponsors help pay for things like, power, space and advertising. They also provided prizes and "shwag" to the attendees. In fact, for the $30 price, every attendee got a copy of "Armored Fury", "F.E.A.R. Extraction Point" and "Prey". A gaming value of over $80. There were t-shirts, keychains, mousepads, balls, rumbling foam grenades, pens, case badges and company promotional items galore. The retail value of prizes/shwag that the sponsors gave out tallied to over $70,000.
Antec gave out tons of cases and power supplies and an Ageia PhysX card.
Danger Den gave out a godly amount of water cooling kits, cases and coolers.
Newegg gave out motherboards, notebooks, food and 2x $1000 gift certificates.
Crucial gave out an amazing amount of system ram and usb thumbdrives.
Corsair gave out systems.
OCZ gave out cpu coolers and ram.
Patiot gave out computer parts, and ram.
Zalman gave out coolers for you cpu and video card.
Zboard gave out keyboards and Fang game pads
Func Industries gave out customized comemorative mouse pads.
THQ gave out prizes for the "Company of Heroes" tourney they held.
There was a tourney from the people bringing out the game Timeshift.
One gamer said that there was so many things to do, when do you have time to game?
The organization of the event was out standing. Seeing as how the entire staff from the sponsor boths to
the PDXLan/PC Gamer crew worked together, like a CAL-I team. Contest and raffle drawings other sponsored activities never seemed to impeed on the main tournaments or the BYOC.
The free BBQ (and by BBQ I mean Pizza and VitaminWater, good stuff btw) thrown by Newegg was the site where Danger Den held their Water Ballon contest, Antec held their PSU toss and where Crucial held their 100v100 Dodgeball contest. If sunlight and phyical activity doesn't bring 480 gamers together...I dont know what will.
The fun times and halarity Newegg's Picnic provided is almost as good as being one of the two winners of their $1000 gift certificate. For 3 days San Jose was besieged by the PC gaming community and from what I've scene I think everybody (myself included) is ready to do it again...and soon...and hopefully next time with internet access.
[TMC]/[TMM] Version:
I came to this lan expecting good times...and once again PDXLan did not dissapoint. It was awesome how you could just drive up to the door and unload. I was able to score a ride from JonDoms because unfortunately Sn1perfox had to bail. Harbor Freight foldable cart FTW! That cart was brought in not 2 or 3 or 4 comps since both JonDoms and I bought two seats, but 5 computers. Our BF2/Vent/Trackmainia server made an appearance...thanks to the JonDoms.
Through no fault of Hawtie, our shirts were not available, but what she was able to pull of in time was providing a pwn sauce TMC banner. Mucho Thanks for taking one for the team (the banner appearantly made a crack on her windshield). Table 8 err...the TMC section could not be avoided by anyone. If you were on the mainstage and looked towards the crowd our banner was there, if you were in the BYOC and looked towards the booths our banner was there. If you turned your head to see who was yelling out "In the butt" or "Damn you SilentDeath", our banner was there.
A side note: I think everybody preferred the plump Ruby over the anorexic cracked out Ruby. Though conversations were littered with crossfire references/inuendos.
Being as how teams had to be registered and full for the tourney and some dudes were not around at the same time, scrambling and creating non "homo squad" teams was done on friday evening...followed by BF2 and some Dead Rising. Yes Dead Rising...for the XBox 360. It seemed that Orangeshirtmafia, instead of paying back $600 to Metalslug's mom, provided an Xbox 360 with 4 controllers to him...there was no reciept, unsurpisingly.
Speaking of Metalslug he told us where we could buy some energy drinks from the hotel lobby for cheap, but the next day it was double. It seemed that night was "half off" night. With people comming and leaving at different times Metalslug, Juice and Dima had some shuffling and bitching to vent.
A bunch of us walked to a pizza joint friday night (My <3 Pizza), sans Pink Shirt. EvilKickass keept up the conversations and walked back we saw Supermans house and Gat3Keeper's new SUV limousine.
Not too long after we came back, Antec held a musical chairs contest that JonDoms Mcee'd and we saw some really cool action of Hypertheading on my file server. The Friday night late night crew had no internet but what we lacked in connectivity we made up for in refrigerated exhibition hall. I was not able to connect to the TECH wifi connection, but Gat3keeper was. Gat3keeper also had uber leet pwn you in the butt Trackmania maps. That JonDoms was able to put on the Trackmania server, after he brought us some breakfast. Pancakes/eggs/hav/beacon/potatoes.
Saturday mornings was the time for the multiplayer tournies. With lan going on...even without TMC...there was a scramble/shuffling of players and who's computer they would use...all that work payed off in the end since even though every TMC team lost in the first round, we had Saftey Dance playing on KraZ's phone when Dima called him.
Celebration of our BF2 n00bness was on short order since the Newegg's Picnic/BBQ was up on the list. We were told to form a single file line, get a slice of pizza and a vitaminWater and enjoy ourselves. After getting a slice of pizza and a vitaming water I enjoyed myselft right back to the back of the line when KraZ went in the line.
Wash rinse & repeat, KraZ 4 times, me 5 times.
Then people lined up for the DangerDen water contest...but we stayed sitting in our area but then I saw some chick lineing up to get wet, and immeadiately went forth to partake of the festivities. Boris got pwned by the DangerDen dudes and I suffered splash damage via the Russian conflict of Dima/Boris.
Following the DangerDen thing was Warhawk with the Antec PSU toss. People were almost killed and everybody cheered. The Crucial guy won and Mameman took 3rd. Crucial guy then held the 100v100 dodgeball contest. CSI Little Asian Kids had the highest kill/death ratio. Metalslug had missed a golden opportunity, missed was left vaulnerable but was still able to escape some (as he taunted in the heat of battle) bitch.
The festivities provided by all was frickin sweet.
Back at the BYOC I took some pictures of the booths and sat in on the "Supreme CommanderJ" presentations, while Evilkickass won a 7950 GX2 for filling out an Nvidia survey. Dima and KraZ broke out the Dremels for some popcicle bridge pwnage. All their work payed off in the end with them winning a t-shirt. At least Dima won a 1st place at a Paperairplane contest and won an Antec case.
IT DOESN'T STOP!!!
I had been up since Friday 6:30am I got tired enough at 2:30am Sunday to borrow the large leather chairs from the Timeshift booth...so was JonDoms and Metalslug. ++Magic points to Dima for being cool with overnight staff to let us keep using them. Ginger showed back up and somehow JonDoms and I went with him to see if he left his light on his new truck on. Yes he did, what a n00b. Magically we ended up at some taco joint and Metalslug built some lan shrine.
Sunday morning was just getting in on as many sponsor raffles as you can and playing GRAW on the
free-to-play Antec gaming area for a while with Ginger|R|. KraZ got into the Intel overclocking presentation and again won an Intel Extreme Edition proc and mobo (3.7Ghz and 955 chipset). The Abit guys came around and awarded me with a cool Abit watch because I displayed my Abit mobo on top of my computer.
IT DOESN'T STOP!!!
Then after the prizes for the main tournies were awarded it came time for the main. Your seat number was your raffel ticket and because of me you can only win one time. Seems getting back in line for the Danger Den Waterblock Shuffle board contest made Vector want to handicap my chances of winning. (it did not work)
With everybody to the front Dima got all of table 8 in the back. When Vector was handed the number of table, we all chanted "TMC, TMC, TMC", when ever Vector said, "Table 8" we all cheered. When every someone's seat was called, the crowd initiated the 10 second countdown unclaimed prize limit for the next seat.
Warhawk got another water cooling kit, Quicksilver got an Antec case, Offspring won a 7950 GX2 but was at a Giants game, so I won it. At the end they gave out commemorative customized Funct mouse pads and Boris got one.
It DOESN'T STOP!!!
Then it was time to pack up. Some lady asked me to use my cart, I said no...some other girl almost tried to sneak away with it...not happening...Boris almost won Gat3keeper's lcd gear grip...
THATS WHERE IT STOPPED!!!
I got home around 10:15pm...10:00am this morining I awoke in my chair.
Non TMC version:
When I first heard about this lan, pretty early in fact, I immediately signed up and paid for my seat as soon as I was able to. It didn't matter that, back then, the ticket cost $60. $60 for a lan ticket is the most I've ever paid but then when I considered how many days/hours the lan would go for 72 hours and that the event was hosted by PDXLan...it was a no-brainer.
Once the word of this lan spread though, the price immediately brought down rage and furious anger by many potential attendees (Californians can be funny like that). Thankfully, the person in charge of the lan Vector (a.k.a Matt) was able to get the sponsors to help lower the cost in half for the final price of $30.
The 480 person BYOC sold out.
A large lanparty like this couldn't be possible without the help of the sponsors. The sponsors help pay for things like, power, space and advertising. They also provided prizes and "shwag" to the attendees. In fact, for the $30 price, every attendee got a copy of "Armored Fury", "F.E.A.R. Extraction Point" and "Prey". A gaming value of over $80. There were t-shirts, keychains, mousepads, balls, rumbling foam grenades, pens, case badges and company promotional items galore. The retail value of prizes/shwag that the sponsors gave out tallied to over $70,000.
Antec gave out tons of cases and power supplies and an Ageia PhysX card.
Danger Den gave out a godly amount of water cooling kits, cases and coolers.
Newegg gave out motherboards, notebooks, food and 2x $1000 gift certificates.
Crucial gave out an amazing amount of system ram and usb thumbdrives.
Corsair gave out systems.
OCZ gave out cpu coolers and ram.
Patiot gave out computer parts, and ram.
Zalman gave out coolers for you cpu and video card.
Zboard gave out keyboards and Fang game pads
Func Industries gave out customized comemorative mouse pads.
THQ gave out prizes for the "Company of Heroes" tourney they held.
There was a tourney from the people bringing out the game Timeshift.
One gamer said that there was so many things to do, when do you have time to game?
The organization of the event was out standing. Seeing as how the entire staff from the sponsor boths to
the PDXLan/PC Gamer crew worked together, like a CAL-I team. Contest and raffle drawings other sponsored activities never seemed to impeed on the main tournaments or the BYOC.
The free BBQ (and by BBQ I mean Pizza and VitaminWater, good stuff btw) thrown by Newegg was the site where Danger Den held their Water Ballon contest, Antec held their PSU toss and where Crucial held their 100v100 Dodgeball contest. If sunlight and phyical activity doesn't bring 480 gamers together...I dont know what will.
The fun times and halarity Newegg's Picnic provided is almost as good as being one of the two winners of their $1000 gift certificate. For 3 days San Jose was besieged by the PC gaming community and from what I've scene I think everybody (myself included) is ready to do it again...and soon...and hopefully next time with internet access.
[TMC]/[TMM] Version:
I came to this lan expecting good times...and once again PDXLan did not dissapoint. It was awesome how you could just drive up to the door and unload. I was able to score a ride from JonDoms because unfortunately Sn1perfox had to bail. Harbor Freight foldable cart FTW! That cart was brought in not 2 or 3 or 4 comps since both JonDoms and I bought two seats, but 5 computers. Our BF2/Vent/Trackmainia server made an appearance...thanks to the JonDoms.
Through no fault of Hawtie, our shirts were not available, but what she was able to pull of in time was providing a pwn sauce TMC banner. Mucho Thanks for taking one for the team (the banner appearantly made a crack on her windshield). Table 8 err...the TMC section could not be avoided by anyone. If you were on the mainstage and looked towards the crowd our banner was there, if you were in the BYOC and looked towards the booths our banner was there. If you turned your head to see who was yelling out "In the butt" or "Damn you SilentDeath", our banner was there.
A side note: I think everybody preferred the plump Ruby over the anorexic cracked out Ruby. Though conversations were littered with crossfire references/inuendos.
Being as how teams had to be registered and full for the tourney and some dudes were not around at the same time, scrambling and creating non "homo squad" teams was done on friday evening...followed by BF2 and some Dead Rising. Yes Dead Rising...for the XBox 360. It seemed that Orangeshirtmafia, instead of paying back $600 to Metalslug's mom, provided an Xbox 360 with 4 controllers to him...there was no reciept, unsurpisingly.
Speaking of Metalslug he told us where we could buy some energy drinks from the hotel lobby for cheap, but the next day it was double. It seemed that night was "half off" night. With people comming and leaving at different times Metalslug, Juice and Dima had some shuffling and bitching to vent.
A bunch of us walked to a pizza joint friday night (My <3 Pizza), sans Pink Shirt. EvilKickass keept up the conversations and walked back we saw Supermans house and Gat3Keeper's new SUV limousine.
Not too long after we came back, Antec held a musical chairs contest that JonDoms Mcee'd and we saw some really cool action of Hypertheading on my file server. The Friday night late night crew had no internet but what we lacked in connectivity we made up for in refrigerated exhibition hall. I was not able to connect to the TECH wifi connection, but Gat3keeper was. Gat3keeper also had uber leet pwn you in the butt Trackmania maps. That JonDoms was able to put on the Trackmania server, after he brought us some breakfast. Pancakes/eggs/hav/beacon/potatoes.
Saturday mornings was the time for the multiplayer tournies. With lan going on...even without TMC...there was a scramble/shuffling of players and who's computer they would use...all that work payed off in the end since even though every TMC team lost in the first round, we had Saftey Dance playing on KraZ's phone when Dima called him.
Celebration of our BF2 n00bness was on short order since the Newegg's Picnic/BBQ was up on the list. We were told to form a single file line, get a slice of pizza and a vitaminWater and enjoy ourselves. After getting a slice of pizza and a vitaming water I enjoyed myselft right back to the back of the line when KraZ went in the line.
Wash rinse & repeat, KraZ 4 times, me 5 times.
Then people lined up for the DangerDen water contest...but we stayed sitting in our area but then I saw some chick lineing up to get wet, and immeadiately went forth to partake of the festivities. Boris got pwned by the DangerDen dudes and I suffered splash damage via the Russian conflict of Dima/Boris.
Following the DangerDen thing was Warhawk with the Antec PSU toss. People were almost killed and everybody cheered. The Crucial guy won and Mameman took 3rd. Crucial guy then held the 100v100 dodgeball contest. CSI Little Asian Kids had the highest kill/death ratio. Metalslug had missed a golden opportunity, missed was left vaulnerable but was still able to escape some (as he taunted in the heat of battle) bitch.
The festivities provided by all was frickin sweet.
Back at the BYOC I took some pictures of the booths and sat in on the "Supreme CommanderJ" presentations, while Evilkickass won a 7950 GX2 for filling out an Nvidia survey. Dima and KraZ broke out the Dremels for some popcicle bridge pwnage. All their work payed off in the end with them winning a t-shirt. At least Dima won a 1st place at a Paperairplane contest and won an Antec case.
IT DOESN'T STOP!!!
I had been up since Friday 6:30am I got tired enough at 2:30am Sunday to borrow the large leather chairs from the Timeshift booth...so was JonDoms and Metalslug. ++Magic points to Dima for being cool with overnight staff to let us keep using them. Ginger showed back up and somehow JonDoms and I went with him to see if he left his light on his new truck on. Yes he did, what a n00b. Magically we ended up at some taco joint and Metalslug built some lan shrine.
Sunday morning was just getting in on as many sponsor raffles as you can and playing GRAW on the
free-to-play Antec gaming area for a while with Ginger|R|. KraZ got into the Intel overclocking presentation and again won an Intel Extreme Edition proc and mobo (3.7Ghz and 955 chipset). The Abit guys came around and awarded me with a cool Abit watch because I displayed my Abit mobo on top of my computer.
IT DOESN'T STOP!!!
Then after the prizes for the main tournies were awarded it came time for the main. Your seat number was your raffel ticket and because of me you can only win one time. Seems getting back in line for the Danger Den Waterblock Shuffle board contest made Vector want to handicap my chances of winning. (it did not work)
With everybody to the front Dima got all of table 8 in the back. When Vector was handed the number of table, we all chanted "TMC, TMC, TMC", when ever Vector said, "Table 8" we all cheered. When every someone's seat was called, the crowd initiated the 10 second countdown unclaimed prize limit for the next seat.
Warhawk got another water cooling kit, Quicksilver got an Antec case, Offspring won a 7950 GX2 but was at a Giants game, so I won it. At the end they gave out commemorative customized Funct mouse pads and Boris got one.
It DOESN'T STOP!!!
Then it was time to pack up. Some lady asked me to use my cart, I said no...some other girl almost tried to sneak away with it...not happening...Boris almost won Gat3keeper's lcd gear grip...
THATS WHERE IT STOPPED!!!
I got home around 10:15pm...10:00am this morining I awoke in my chair.
