What is a LAN Party?

It's a "party" where a bunch of computer gaming nerds bring their computers to a central meeting place to hook together with other computers connected by a LAN (Local Area Network) to play multi-player games such as Halo, Age of Mythology, Battlefield 1942, and so on for hours at a time.

My own personal experiences with LAN parties are all quite fun. Everyone shows up at the predetermined place at around 9-10 pm, the games/patches are all installed by 10-11 pm, and the network/IP address problems are usually worked out before or exactly at 12 am, and the games don't end until 4-5 am.

Now that you know, or already knew what a LAN Party is, would you, or do you ever go to a LAN party? :rolling:

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 24 user(s) have voted.
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Poll Results: LAN Parties... (24 votes.)

Would you, or do you ever go to a LAN Party? (Choose 1)
* I go every time, and will continue to in the future. - 38% (9)
* I would, if I could... - 42% (10)
* I would not... - 13% (3)
* What's a LAN Party again? - 0% (0)
* Other/just the results for me... - 8% (2)

I used to be at big parties when I was younger, and I've been a couple of times at The Gathering (http://www.gathering.org), one of the biggest LAN parties in the world. These days we're almost never more than two or three friends who come together with our computers, and we play until we're too drunk to understand what we're doing.

Back at school, the CIS department sponsors monthly LAN parties. UT 2K4, Maybe a little Halo, and file sharing out the yin-yang.

Ah, great fun.

They're pretty fun, but the most people we could gather for ours was 4.

'Would if I could'.

But how the hell am I supposed to drag along the box, screen, keyboard, mouse, and everything else I need in my hands on my bike?

That's why you have "frag box", one of the may things designed just for lan party. i have seen on magazine that people turn a lawn mower into a tower casing mounting damage dealing lan partying machine.

But how the hell am I supposed to drag along the box, screen, keyboard, mouse, and everything else I need in my hands on my bike? Borrow your sister's bike...you know, the pink one with the little wite flower basket on the handlebars... :hahaerr:

"Frag boxes" are nice and all, but a high praformance laptop makes things a lot easier when it comes to transportation of your gear. One guy that usually always shows up at the LAN parties has a new Dell XPS laptop and another guy that sometimes shows up has an Aleinware laptop that has the upgradable video card thingy going on...they're both way better than my laptop, but mine holds it's own up against some of the custom PC rigs that show up at the party. The only thing my laptop lacks is RAM...only 384 total, and I went cheap by getting a 64MB nVidia GeForce FX Go5200, I was going to get a 128MB card, but I wanted to keep the price as low as I could. :rolling:

A lan party is a bunch of geeks linking their computers together via a network in one of their mother's basements, deciding on one of the newest games to play but it always ends up being counter-strike.

Since my friends and I go to a selective school, they come from ages away and so since my friends are lazy and so am I our nearest equivalent is playing Liero Extreme on the school LAN - its all set up already and Computer Studies make us do practically no work. ( LieroX is the best we can do with disabled CD drives and 20MB server space) and that's really fun anyway, because my computer was stuffed for a while and so I got really really good at it, as it was the only working game. With recent games like FarCry or NWN it must be awesome.

I have never attended a LAN party as a participant but I did briefly drop by a few that my computer science friends were participating in when I went to univesity. I quickly came to the conclusion that (a) I was no where near as avid a gamer as I would have had to be to be competitive against those geeks and (b) I wasn't really interested in playing the games that they chose anyway.

Even back then the c/s geeks seemed only to want to play first player shooters and while I have played the odd FPS game a few times they are not my cup of tea. It seemed that a few of the guys were keen on playing Worms but they were always shouted down by the group.

In the last week of last term (last year) some people (okay a collection of 'geeks' and 'nerds') downloaded the demo of UT (original because the computers at school have terrible/no graphic cards - and no cd drives). We were all in one of the big computer rooms hooked up to the school network shooting the cr*p out of one another. Great fun.

I'm going to another LAN party this weekend, only a fri-sat one tho'... Me & my friends, we frequently throw major LAN parties...
Well major, it usually tops at 12 guys, and averages at 6 at any given time, but it's still lots of fun
A 4-day one in the christmas break, from 1/1-1/4 and 3 different, multiday LAN parties and a mini-LAN (just me, my best friend, and ADSL) in the summer hols (which were 9 weeks :D )

And yes, usually it ends being a frag-fest, but sometimes, we also do some Starcraft or Age of Mythology.

And indeed, playing FarCry with a few people, on a network, is Great! but usually we play Quake 3 (pwns UT2K3, only UT we got) and URBAN TERROR, a really good realistic Q3 Mod

If only I could get people to MP RPG's... I've already converted my best friend (an avid FPS'er who also enjoys some RTS) to RPG'ism by convincing him, after much badgering, to play BG.

Ugh, enough rambling. Yes, I go to LAN parties. I *love* LAN parties. And although I'm not as good as the best, I don't *nearly* suck as hard as the most irregular gamers of the lot, so there's always plenty of challenge, without the demotivation of getting quite pwned all the time :)
Hmm maybe not a bad idea to get the UT2K4 for the upcoming LAN
:borg:

Was on a LAN last weekend with 7 other dudes, and we had a great time. I borrowed a computer, as mine sucks, and we played Call of Duty for about 12 hours, it was great.*

*Even though a lot of the games' weapons are poorly designed and unrealistic.

Go LAN parties. Lots of beer, lots of guys, and a couple of games.

*drinks beer* *conquers the bridge* *drinks beer* *destroys the gate* *drinks beer* *pwns enemy city* *opens new bottle*

But how the hell am I supposed to drag along the box, screen, keyboard, mouse, and everything else I need in my hands on my bike? Stuff it all in a bag, and carry it in a wheelbarrow ;)

Honestly, back when I had to haul my old Compaq around to LAN parties, it was a pain in the butt, especially with a heavy 21 inch CRT monitor. That's one of the main reasons I got my laptop. Hell, my laptop weighs less than a 13 inch CRT monitor. Plus it looks cool. :love: :rolling: