Ever been to a LAN party?

I overheard a discussion at work which made me cringe.
Basically 2 co-workers talking about a mutliplayer RPG they were playing at a 'lan' party. It just sounded a bit err .. odd.

Allow me to explain ..

Women go to Anne Summers parties
Kids go to birthday parties
Men go to anything where alcholic beverages are available

Fine, but who goes to a LAN party?

I picture it as a group of geeks hording their PC equipment into a room, linking up, sitting down with headsets on, drinking coca-cola, and battling it out with each other in Unreal Tournament 2 or whatever.
3 hours later, someone shouts, "I own you all!"

Close?

If so, where's the exit?!

Pretty much spot on. We tend to spend our time on Call Of Duty 2 though (using the extreme+ mod, for those in the know).

Geeky? Very. Fun? Definitely.

I've never been to one.

The closest thing to it was Blitzcon 4/Coder's Workshop 1.

I annually attend Defcon though which is a similar sort of thing.

LMFAO :) Right on. I did it once, pretty cool- we just installed a game on the college PC's day by day until each machine had the game installed.

The when our tutor threw a sickie, *clickclick!* :)

In the late 90's me and some friends went to someone's (big) house/villa, so there was one hobbyroom of about 4x4m filled with computers.. such weekends (it was the time of desktops we moved eh, no notebooks) were filled with warcraft2, starcraft, C&C etc. Usually about 4..6 ppl, sometimes up to 12, all in that room.

We extended this concept to the restaurant of a hotel, since one of the ppz that came by on the usual meetings runs a hotel. Warcraft2 in a hotel.. ^_^

Of course I've also been to a few demo parties (The Party, Wired, Bizarre, X, Takeover, Lowres) to compete with stuff, but that prolly doesn't much count, tho in theory it's the same geeky stuff.

Ive been to a fair few in my days.
The longest was a 3 day event at the University in my town.

The whole idea of a lan party has changed a lot over the years. Originally it was intended for the Demo Scene. Holding competitions for Demo's, Graphics and Musical Art as well as programming/Hacking skills. But with the advent of the 'l337 pwnage age' the balance has shifted more and more to turning these events into FPS Tournaments. Bit of a shame, but still a lot of fun if your into that kinda thing :)

I also still do small-scale LANA parties at a friend house once or twice a year. That is indeed just small group of friends duking it out in various games with lots o snacks and booze :)

I went to TheGathering in Norway in 2002!

thousands of people - mainly gaming, but I was more into writing music in Impulse and Buzz tracker back then, and I was in the "Demo Scene" corner.

I lost every contest I entered! But the experience was awsome :D

I bet you learned alot too! :)

On The Party...6 iirc, I was awake 110 hours nonstop, that's including the day before/after and the bustrip. :D

110 Hours?

Christ. Well done on surviving!!!

Well, it was about 12 hours for the bustrip, but we drove at night to avoid chaos. But I can't sleep in a carchair while being surrounded with 8 other freaks talking crap all the time.. naturally I was already awake that day, so when we arrived it was one full day already. Note that the party place was in Ars, we actually thought it was Arhus, somewhere south-east of Denmark. Somewhere in the morning we were driving in circles in search of more sceners (read: cars stuffed with equipment and ghosts), but there weren't any. And then we saw some lady on a bike (at 05:00 in the morning!), so we jumped out of the bus and were yelling around that lady 'Ars Ars Ars Ars'. I could imagine that ladies moving early on xmas morning to avoid horny cafe geeks would be a bit surprised to see a foreign bus stop next to you while a number of foreigners jump out to start dancing around you, yelling 'Ars Ars Ars'. :P
Anyway, she explained we had to go far more north. And so the trip went on, after driving on the left side of the road for a while (so nice of this approaching truck to notify us of our single sleepy driver :D) and missing an exit we finally arrived. Anyway, that was already a whole first day.

Then, ppl who've gone to those parties prolly know you can't sleep there due all the noise and chaos. A fireman was checking on cheating ppl who were sleeping under the tables.. :P

So, the actual party takes 2.5 day orso, then the same bustrip home again. And arriving home in the morning I just finished the day as any other.. I guess 4.5 day is a good guess then..

Arf, and in the end we didn't even compete wih our demo as it wasn't finished. :S

The initial description of a LAN party is pretty much spot on, and a great deal of fun it is too!

I have not been to one since, well, at least 5 or 6 years now. Moving the equipment is a pain in the arse. These days we just get in a private game over the net with headsets.

I can't stand FPSs in general so havn't been to a 'proper' LAN like, ever. But my mates get together once or twice a year and play some actual fun games.

me and the lads just go to the local netcaff. Sod hording all the euip around, although wireless and laptops make it easier :>

Yeah but I used to play 4 player C&C at work, that's a kind of party. Also used to do 2 player C&C and also coop Quake II etc at my home in mini Lan Parties, that's fun.

Actually, I seem to have been going to alot of LAN parties
recently! Halo's been the main game of choice. I don't play
it otherwise, because I'm indifferent towards the game and
don't own an XBox.

But when we get 8+ people together playing capture the flag,
it's mondo fun! Who the hell cares if we're nerds? And how
can you call someone else a nerd without regarding the fact
that you're posting on a BlitzBasic forum. ;)

I have been to small ones and hosted small ones. They were all quite fun, even with the fast connections making playing over the net easy there is nothing quite like being able to shout abuse at some one in person.

I've been to few local ones (20 - 40 people), once the power cable wasn't rolled out completely, from the rolling thing or whatever it is, and it burnt out, smoke effects and all :P.
We had contest, not only in games, but quiz and stuff too. When it got midnight we got stoned and started to watch movies with projector :)
We will have another on in a week or so and one of my friends tries to tune up his 486 (clocked up to 200MHz) with 128MB of RAM and a powerfull GPU (can't recall it right now) with WinXP installed on it.

Is your friend still stoned?

He shouldn't be. He used a pipe to suck air (-15C) from outside to inside he's case and waited until the temperature of the CPU reached zero and turned it on, but it didn't and that's as much as i know about it at the moment.
The CPU didn't accept 2V or something.