QuakeCon 2013 : August 1-4

[Krenum]

Had a blast, got there early thursday morning and left about 3am Sunday morning.

The QuakeLive Final was INTENSE! but USA Rapha pulled it out coming back from a best 3 out of 5 0-2 deficit against Russia's Evil! It was amazing! Also the Doom II contest very cool, its good too see these older games still popular and being played.

I want to say that the vendor room this year was awesome! Waaayyy better than last year, there was so much to do and I thank everyone that was involved and the overall organization of the Event was better as well.

I also wanna give a shout out to Gary, who had his Quake themed 800D PC on the Cover of CPU Magazine, I got a chance to talk with him for a while and he is one cool dude, Thanks again for the info man.

QC 2013 in the books , can't wait till next year!

 

[trick_m0nkey]

Yeah I went by last night for a couple hours just to check it out. Was fun, the vendor area is alot smaller then I thought it was going to be though. Not much was going on though.

Guess the BYOC is really the only reason to go year after year. Weren't many speakers or anything either. Kinda bummed about that, but I still will be going next year for the BYOC.

BYOC was very stable this year.

One thing though....I think today's modern gamers are much more used to online gaming than LAN gaming. Kinda disappointing. I feel like most of the BYOC just hooked their rigs up and played on online servers. Hell, my table would mainly go to some random server or play MWO 4 man groups because sometimes there just wasent that much LAN games except for CSGO or TF2, which you can only play so much of until you want some variety.

 

[Krenum]

Yeah I went by last night for a couple hours just to check it out. Was fun, the vendor area is alot smaller then I thought it was going to be though. Not much was going on though.

The vendor area was alot better than last year, there was also way more to do this time around. I don't know if you went in 2012 but this year blew it away.

 

[volto]

For the past several years they actually have separate subnets for each table so you can only see lan game servers hosted on your own table for LAN, or internet games. Kinda defeats the purpose of a BYOC lan, it's just like playing from home on the internet. Qcon has really gone downhill after bethesda bought them out.

 

[trick_m0nkey]

For the past several years they actually have separate subnets for each table so you can only see lan game servers hosted on your own table for LAN, or internet games. Kinda defeats the purpose of a BYOC lan, it's just like playing from home on the internet. Qcon has really gone downhill after bethesda bought them out.

That decision was not made lightly.

The fact of the matter is:

Most modern games dont even have LAN as an option (Starcraft 2, BF3, etc)

And, as the LAN grew, it became obvious that they were reaching a critical mass. 3000 computers on the same network on the same subnet is stretching the very limits of a network you throw together in 3 days time, especially on a network where nearly every user is a heavy user.

The year before they implemented the fragmented subnetting, the network was so slow and unstable that it nearly killed the BYOC. Also, it made it easy for individual people to single handedly bring down the network.

So now they have a very fat 2 GB pipe and separate subnetting.

So now we have excellent internet for an era that has mainly internet based games and a rock solid stable network.

The disadvantage is that setting up a LAN server has been killed off.

It sucks, but it was necessary. Now what needs to be done is to make people aware of the server browser that was built, and we need more people to host dedicated servers for the con.

 

[volto]

I understand the decision, it is the easiest solution, but I would rather have an unstable LAN at a LAN party than drive halfway across the country for a weekend of awesome internet. Really quakecon has turned into a family reunion, seeing cool people you only see once a year, and that's fine, but I wish it was also a LAN party again, since that's what it was always about.

 

[trick_m0nkey]

I understand the decision, it is the easiest solution, but I would rather have an unstable LAN at a LAN party than drive halfway across the country for a weekend of awesome internet. Really quakecon has turned into a family reunion, seeing cool people you only see once a year, and that's fine, but I wish it was also a LAN party again, since that's what it was always about.

It's not so much that it was the easiest solution as it was the only real viable solution. An unstable LAN is by far the biggest thing that the community was crying about, and this was what had to be done.

This is the future of LAN gaming as we know it. We're just going to have to adapt as a community to make it work.

 

[Krenum]

I understand the decision, it is the easiest solution, but I would rather have an unstable LAN at a LAN party than drive halfway across the country for a weekend of awesome internet. Really quakecon has turned into a family reunion, seeing cool people you only see once a year, and that's fine, but I wish it was also a LAN party again, since that's what it was always about.

If you want to LAN , then bring a hub and only connect to your friends. Its not the fault of the promoters and the people that we connect through the internet now days, its just the evolution of the technology.

I prefer to think of going to Quakecon as a place were we can all have something in common and experience things together, like a reunion you said. I kind of relate it to going to the arcade as a kid and socializing with others that have the same interests as me.

 

[myelin1]

quakecon is more than gaming to me. it's being with friends and being a kid again for 4 days straight. it's easy to find a server on the WAN and have everyone at your table connect to it. or, someone can setup a WAN gaming server (e.g. TF2) and play each other on it. we did this and it was great since people in our gaming group that couldn't make it to the con were still able to game with us. woooooooooop!

 

[PSYKOMANTIS]

BYOC was very stable this year.

I was staff this year and helped lead the team to crimp and layout a cable.
We worked our assess off this year to make the BYOC the best it's ever been.
Comments like this means a ton to my team and I.
Thanks!

 

[slightlyhuman]

I was staff this year and helped lead the team to crimp and layout a cable.
We worked our assess off this year to make the BYOC the best it's ever been.
Comments like this means a ton to my team and I.
Thanks!

little late to the thread but yes, BYOC and everything else was very stable this year. last year it was great too AFAIK.

looking forward to next year.

hope you're doing well, psyko.

-eog

 

[Mavsfan]

I havent been to a LAN party before they became a big sport.

I remember the first time meeting John Romeo and the preview of Doom II before it came out... old old old old old days