The Lost Art of Lans

Lans are dying because there's a lack of games to play. That's pretty much it.

The arena shooter is dead, CS is 12 years old. Starcraft is 13 years old. When SC2 comes out it will improve somewhat. Games like MW2 and Bad Company 2 having no lan support kills them as options.
 
Not true. While it's more of a PITA, we're planning to play Bad Company 2 at our next LAN party and for quite a few afterwards. All we have to do is find a server that has plenty of room, or rent one ourselves and we're good to go.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Lans are dying because there's a lack of games to play. That's pretty much it. Games like MW2 and Bad Company 2 having no lan support kills them as options.
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wtburnette said:
Not true. While it's more of a PITA, we're planning to play Bad Company 2 at our next LAN party and for quite a few afterwards.
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wtburnette is correct... BC2 seems to have revitalized LAN events, and tho public distribution of server files won't allow us to host on our own machines, we rented a 28-man pub from a local GSP to practice on for now, and to play tournaments on during the LAN. (PowersGaming BC2 Dallas).

There seems to be this concern about can your whole LAN party connect to and play on an online server. Before our LAN last year, we rented a public Crysis:Wars server for months to practice on. During the actual LAN, we ran C:Wars on our own machines, but one night we wanted to test our connection by allowing all 20+ players to connect to that online server. Everybody pinged the same; about 21-23 hitting our Dallas server from Austin and had no problems whatsover. BC2 should be even easier as the requirements are less.

Also agree that BC2 will last a long time. It's already setting records for sales/gameplay, and those of us that have had the opportunity to play the game feel it can go the distance. There's an excitement in the air like I saw back in 2000 when CS hit the shelves. And DICE is supporting the community like I've never seen before. Our GSP actually CALLS them and leaves a msg, and they usually call him back within 24hrs. Haven't seen that before. New maps are being ported as we write this.

Personally I think IW messed up with MW2, and DICE learned from their mistakes. Things are different now... PC Gaming, and LAN events, are certainly not dead.
 
BC2 is great and all, but the venue for my large event (~300-500ppl) has a 512k fractional T1.

If they can get a damn cable drop I'm going to bring in a couple of 50/10 modems, but until then I'm screwed.
 
PowersGaming said:
wtburnette is correct... BC2 seems to have revitalized LAN events, and tho public distribution of server files won't allow us to host on our own machines, we rented a 28-man pub from a local GSP to practice on for now, and to play tournaments on during the LAN. (PowersGaming BC2 Dallas).

There seems to be this concern about can your whole LAN party connect to and play on an online server. Before our LAN last year, we rented a public Crysis:Wars server for months to practice on. During the actual LAN, we ran C:Wars on our own machines, but one night we wanted to test our connection by allowing all 20+ players to connect to that online server. Everybody pinged the same; about 21-23 hitting our Dallas server from Austin and had no problems whatsover. BC2 should be even easier as the requirements are less.

Also agree that BC2 will last a long time. It's already setting records for sales/gameplay, and those of us that have had the opportunity to play the game feel it can go the distance. There's an excitement in the air like I saw back in 2000 when CS hit the shelves. And DICE is supporting the community like I've never seen before. Our GSP actually CALLS them and leaves a msg, and they usually call him back within 24hrs. Haven't seen that before. New maps are being ported as we write this.

Personally I think IW messed up with MW2, and DICE learned from their mistakes. Things are different now... PC Gaming, and LAN events, are certainly not dead.
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Renting a server is great for large organized lan events but for smaller lan parties and the grassroots of lan gaming it's an added cost many people don't want.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Renting a server is great for large organized lan events but for smaller lan parties and the grassroots of lan gaming it's an added cost many people don't want.
Click to expand...

yep... that's gonna be one drawback to this trend of "no server files for public distribution" stuff, but on the bright side, it will keep GSP's in business which will help competitive gaming.
 
I am willing to hit up a lan thats on the East coast if anyone has one in the next few weeks. Really suffering from Lan withdrawl.
 
PowersGaming said:
......During the actual LAN, we ran C:Wars on our own machines, but one night we wanted to test our connection by allowing all 20+ players to connect to that online server. Everybody pinged the same; about 21-23 hitting our Dallas server from Austin and had no problems whatsover. BC2 should be even easier as the requirements are less.
....
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I can confirm that at our lan that we had March 5th we had 12 players on a 6/1 Business line, and while there were brief moments of lag, overall nobody had issues....
 
Post college, in my own house. I have 4 computers setup for LAN and we use them almost every weekend.
We usually end up with +2 friends who bring their own computers about twice per month.

D-Link DIR-655 and a D-Link 8 port Gigabit switch. Love that switch. Best $20 ever.

Age of Empires 3
League of Legends

During college breaks, we'd end up lanning on my mom's dining room table with 6-8 computers as well. Once we had 11 computers spread out between the 2 dining rooms and the back deck. That was awesome.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Lans are dying because there's a lack of games to play. That's pretty much it.

The arena shooter is dead, CS is 12 years old. Starcraft is 13 years old. When SC2 comes out it will improve somewhat. Games like MW2 and Bad Company 2 having no lan support kills them as options.
Click to expand...

i agree 100%
 
My LANs are about once every 3-6 months, we had one at new years and we're having one over the easter weekend in a few weeks, I don't think we'll have trouble getting the usual 6-8 people online for a game of BC2 since I have a 50mbit/1.5Mbit internet connection, but lacking LAN options is still pretty lame IMO.
 
I have 4 person LANs almost every weekend since January :) I have to organize a larger scale gathering this summer.
 
tis suck, nooone seems to lan on massive scales at all, i missed the whole era of big pc gaming.. the only way to lan hardcore is to go like 600 miles in one direction for a big lan party: something like quakecon...its all because of stupid casual gamers i just despise them... also console fags...
 
I remember at an old LAN center that closed down near me, they would have "all nighters" you could sign up for. There were 20 PC's and we would all play a LAN of BattleField 1942 from 9:00PM Saturday night to 9:00AM Sunday morning. If it wasn't BF1942 then it was the original COD or CS:S. That was some of the most fun I have ever had.
 
I had a hard time finding people to LAN with for quite awhile. It wasn't until i was a senior in high school that i started finding small groups. They are out there is just everyone acts independently, or doesn't meet often enough to bother getting people to come. Right now i have one LAN group that meets every 5 months of so, play olds games on a dedicated server, lots of fun i am looking forward to gaming with my cousin.

Nows there is one big acceptation to this.
Its turns out for the last five years, i have been leaving next to someone that has a permanent self owned 4v4 set up in his house. They are all fairly modern two been playing alot of supcom, and cohs over there. So right now i am laning all the time, about once a weekend. What really stopping me now is no lan support, and steam. It seems that i am stuck with the games i have now, with no future for new games, sad really i might just cry.... as the game choices become old, people are starting to lose interest in going over and that will kil it someday. But i will fight to my death to at least have a 2v2 set up.
 
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