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 k@k 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.

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!

DarthMol said:

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.

Crableg said:

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, 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...

_Caboose_ said:

Those were NOT the golden days, that was more like the silver days, 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

_Caboose_ said:

Those were NOT the golden days, that was more like the silver days, 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

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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B1nary said:

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

I have so many fond memories of LANs. When I was Grade9 or so we were still living on the farm, so one weekend we (my brother and I) organized a LAN with a bunch of friends and we held the LAN in our "stoor" (for the life of me I can't think of the proper English word). Inside we had this long table that we used for exporting grapes that made the perfect spot to put all the PC's.
We made a christmas bed on the back of our truck and everyone slept there (bunch of mattresses and blankets). We also had to lay extension cords from our house and the next building over to the "stoor" because all the PC's kept on tripping the power. Those were fun times.

I also remember the last LAN we had, it was my final year at University. We had the LAN over at a friend's flat and we were about 8 people, it was hectic. One evening we were playing COD4 and we were yelling and screaming so loudly, the campus security came knocking on our door. They had driven past and only heard screams so they came to investigate, we had to assure them we were just playing games! :3
Probably my most memorable LAN moment.

One of the best LANs we have was in a bar in Edenvale I think. We were a tight bunch of Tribes 2 players. The guy I think owned the bar, so they had a spot set up just for us. Most awesome burgers...and beer.

One of our LAN favourites was the Nazi Zombies mode for COD5 - many, many hours spent playing that. I still recall the excitement when a new map was released for free in a patch. Those were the days

This is how LAN's always ended up for me and friends.

Step 1: Spend 4 hours debating what game to play.
Step 2: Play said game for 30 mins.
Step 3: repeat step 1 and 2.

Glordit said:

This is how LAN's always ended up for me and friends.

Step 1: Spend 4 hours debating what game to play.
Step 2: Play said game for 30 mins.
Step 3: repeat step 1 and 2.

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So true, and there's always that one guy who doesn't feel like playing the game everyone else is keen to play. Or you really want to play a coop game but there's 5 of you...

Out last LAN was a disaster. We'd been talking and organizing since January last year. Finally, we had a location, and had all the games decided on ahead of time, and this was October. At the last minute, the friend who kept pushing for the LAN to happen started inviting everyone under the sun to come and hang out. People showed up for a booze fest, ate all the snacks I made for LAN participants, f***ed up my potjie, one guy scared off a couple that were there for gaming by asking about their sex life, and one drunk chick wouldn't stop pestering me (she even walked in on me taking a dump). Oh, and one friend got dumped during the event.

Now we're going to try again. But venue is going to be the problem.

I recall the good old days with serial cable playing Doom and Red Alert! Getting the games to just see each other was fun enough!

More recently we have been carrying Xboxes to each others' houses to play first Left 4 Dead (both) and then Dead Island. Co-op campaign modes replaced any form of competitive gaming. My very best LAN moments ever has been in the Left 4 Dead co-op campaigns! I still hear the piano cues that a tank is close by!!!

I have tried with a few other friends to get together for a PC LAN, but it turns out exactly like [MENTION=3017]Glordit[/MENTION] said - arguments over what to play! Some guys dont have the game, others dont want to play this or that. Painful. We tried it once where the rules were simple: we are playing game "X". It is open source, so everyone owns it. If we get tired of that we can switch to game "Y", also open source. It worked for about 15 minutes until people realised the game in question sucked (it was some ID Tech 3 based shooter).