LAN Parties - tell me about them

The Game Room
1

So I’ve been a PC gamer since time immemorial (well, 15 years or so). But I’ve never attended a “formal” LAN party. I usually played online with friends, or occassionally 4-5 of us hooked up on a LAN to play Starcraft or Diablo. But I’ve never gone to
a LAN party type “event” as it were.

Well it looks like there’s going to be one at my local Microcenter in Jersey. Unfortunately I can’t find any details other than some sort of girl gaming clan will be in attendance? What’s a gaming clan exactly? For a Pc gamer, I’m starting to feel like such a noob.

Anyone know what to expect? Do I have to bring my own rig? Do I just show up and play, what is it like? Does anyone happen to have details for this particular LAN event?

I thought this things died out back a while ago. Should I wear my “roll a d20” t-shirt just so I can be extra geeky?

2

Bring your own computer, assorted network patch cords, power cords … everything you would need to play a game online.

Last lan party I went to they had a private server copy of everquest and we played all hooked up to his game server, not the official EQ servers … I had a blast. You might see if you can find more info, like what specific game, just in case [the horrors of a my little pony lan party would be immesurabbly damaging to me :D:eek:]

3

LAN parties are big fun. Bring your hardware for sure.

4

A group of five of us plus an occasional extra person or two used to gather weekly for MMO’s and Italian food which is definitely a LAN party though a quieter one than you might expect (the mean age was around thirty-three). So I’ve got some experience here but not necessarily exactly what you’ll find.

First, as stated by the other posters, your own hardware is a must. They’ll have power and a spot for you to network in but you should bring everything you’ll need to play. I’d also check to see if you need to reserve a place; they might not have room for drop ins.

A clan is just a group of gamers; a formal team. It’s hard to get more specific than that since each one is different. There’s ones that are tight cliques and ones that are open to people who just ask. There’s ones that only play one game and one where everyone is constantly pursuing the next big thing.

I’m sure that there’ll be geekier shirts than that at a LAN party. When I want to blow gaming nerds minds I wear my text adventure shirt.

5

All I want to add is that these things will never completely die out. And that the girl gaming clan is probably somewhat famous, and, thus either (a) really good, (b) slutty or © both. I’ve heard of clans that were really just a bunch of “booth babes” to get people to come, and others that were serious gamers. And I’ve seen some hot gaming clans on TV, who everybody only thought were going to be bad.

But, all my experience is second hand or worse, as I’m a not a very good gamer.

6

I’m am intrigued. Describe this shirt of awesome geekdom.

7

It’s a custom one my friends made for me. It’s just white with black text in a fixed width font and it says:



>i

You are carrying:
   This shirt (worn)
   Pants (worn)
   Your wallet
      Your wallet contains:
      Four dollars

> **_**

Though it has an old style block cursor instead of the underscore.