PC Gaming Golden Years: The LAN Age (geddit?)

I was reminiscing about the LANs I used to have with my friends, especially when we could spend the whole weekend gaming. We still very occasionally take our PC's to my friends office and spend a Saturday lanning, although we seem to spend more time drinking beer and talking nonsense but there are some games involved at least.

What good or bad memories do you have of your lanning golden years? Friends falling asleep between "tower defence" levels? The copying? There always being someone who forgot to bring a lan cable? The copying? Tripping the power? The copying? Spending more time getting the cracked version of the game running on everyone's PC's than actually playing the game?

back yay, we have a laplink and I wanted a mod for Quake 2, but it was like 20Mb or something, would have taken ages to copy of laplink. So, we use....either winzip or winrar and about 3 stiffies. My buddy would start the spanned archive process, give me the first stiffie so I could copy while he started with the second. We swapped out until I have the entire thing on my PC. I think it was winzip, because with Winrar, you could create the spanned archive to the HDD. Winzip requested you for a stiffie as it went along.

Speaking of LAN speeds, going from Laplink, Coax cable, 10 all the way to 1000Mbit.

Although I didnt smoke, the [email protected] we used to talk when they went for a smoke break.

Being so tired you were falling asleep, yet when you got into a really great match of Quake, your engine would be running at 100% and not sleepy at all.

Quake 3 Arena and UT release on the same time, smack talk deluxe! Thats where I learned this vs that is so pointless, I bought both games on the same time, enjoyed them both....although Q3A is still better. :p

Tweaking....tweaking the hell out of windows and games to get the best performance, learning so much about Windows processes while doing it and a crapload of Quake command land variables.

Making great friends.

Co-op games! (which turned into cheating within the first 5 minutes, EVERY TIME!)

2007 was the first LAN I ever went too. My friend and his father used to host LANS at their house. The had a spare room off the dining room that they rigged with long tables and plug points. I didnt have a pc at the time but they had a spare and we would play BF2. I laughed so much that night I had a headache, literal laughing fits. I immediately started saving and bought my first PC and BF2 2 months later. Lanning was all I could talk about to anyone who would listen.

I finally got a rig and then went to another LANning group through an invite from Voicy. Laughing till crying and collapsing on the ground with complete strangers. BF2 again.

I think the LAN died a year or so later in my area due to faster internet connections etc.. The only reason I got a pc was to LAN and then it stopped. I only went to 3 or 4 in my life and they were the best nights ever!

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Originally Posted by DarthMol

I was reminiscing about the LANs I used to have with my friends, especially when we could spend the whole weekend gaming. We still very occasionally take our PC's to my friends office and spend a Saturday lanning, although we seem to spend more time drinking beer and talking nonsense but there are some games involved at least.

What good or bad memories do you have of your lanning golden years? Friends falling asleep between "tower defence" levels? The copying? There always being someone who forgot to bring a lan cable? The copying? Tripping the power? The copying? Spending more time getting the cracked version of the game running on everyone's PC's than actually playing the game?

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Exactly this dude, miss those days a lot! Between Lanning WC3 tower defense / Enfo's team survival maps / Battlefield 1942 / an extremely lengthy game of AoE 2 / Counter Strike / Serious Sam and Quake.... It's really just the evolution of the internet & the ease of playing multiplayer at home that stopped it. With your 54k dialup modems or even the ADSL 324k lines it just wasnt viable for most people to play online, especially with the crazy data costs.

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Originally Posted by Crableg

Exactly this dude, miss those days a lot! Between Lanning WC3 tower defense / Enfo's team survival maps / Battlefield 1942 / an extremely lengthy game of AoE 2 / Counter Strike / Serious Sam and Quake.... It's really just the evolution of the internet & the ease of playing multiplayer at home that stopped it. With your 54k dialup modems or even the ADSL 324k lines it just wasnt viable for most people to play online, especially with the crazy data costs.

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Those were NOT the golden days, that was more like the silver days, :p The golden days were IPX/SPX over a damn serial cable playing either diablo 1 or if u wanna go even further Dungeon Keeper 1...

Damn i feel old now...

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Originally Posted by _Caboose_

Those were NOT the golden days, that was more like the silver days, :p The golden days were IPX/SPX over a damn serial cable playing either diablo 1 or if u wanna go even further Dungeon Keeper 1...

Damn i feel old now...

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yeah we Lan'd Diablo 2 using a parallel cable :D

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Originally Posted by _Caboose_

Those were NOT the golden days, that was more like the silver days, :p The golden days were IPX/SPX over a damn serial cable playing either diablo 1 or if u wanna go even further Dungeon Keeper 1...

Damn i feel old now...

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IPX/SPX wow now there is something I have not seen in awhile, I miss half life deathmatch, It was so annoying when the trend of team only FPS games started emerging, not to mention the recent lack of Lan support on most games.

IPX setups using coaxial cables was fun and games until someone switched off or rebooted a pc on one of the end points.

It was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror

Old days? you guys must be really old then :P

I have lanned more that twice every year with my friends, they even lanned on braai day, unfortunately I am in Cape town so i couldn't join them. But yes i know what you are talking about, copying for hours for those that do not have the games, while the guys that do start the server and start playing, sorting out everyone's IP's, turning down firewalls, raging, losing your voice after about 20 hours of shouting bulls**t, everyone sharing drinks and chips, ordering pizza and laughing at your friend who is calling when he screws up, sorting out network cables for everyone.

We mostly play FPS games since my friends have not learned to play war3 :/ But! it's still awesome

CoD 2, CoD MW, Farcry 2, CoD MW3, CS, Q3A

Are mostly what we play, if anyone has some more suggestions please tell me, we need more LAN games!

Does it count if I have 2 pc's setup to lan and my best mate comes over EVERY friday night for games night, and we game together?
It's been a while since we had 4+ people over in one location, its rather tricky to organize these days with jobs/significant others/kids etc in the equation. When you a kid you have oodles of time (unless parents taking you somewhere for a weekend hehe).

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Originally Posted by B1nary

IPX/SPX wow now there is something I have not seen in awhile, I miss half life deathmatch, It was so annoying when the trend of team only FPS games started emerging, not to mention the recent lack of Lan support on most games.

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How about duke3d deathmatch and C&C Red alert with a serial cable. Learnt quite a bit about COM ports and sound blaster IRQ stuff before I was even 10 :)