Last month saw the first eXtreme LAN organised by LanGames.

We thoroughly enjoyed the LAN, and were most impressed but the excellent venue, complete with aircon, a 24-hour kitchen, and a range of other comforts you would expect to find at a four-star hotel – which is where the LAN is held. For more on March’s eXtreme LAN, complete with photos, click here.

Two of SA’s best CoD4 teams competed at the event: Pantheon and BFB, with Pantheon coming out on top in the end, winning a selection of hardware prizes.

One of Pantheon’s CoD 4 players, Hayden “poOks” Huntington was so impressed by the event, that he wrote an article encouraging local competitive gamers to attend it. The article was published on Pantheon’s website.

PoOks’s thoughts on eXtreme LAN

For the past two years myself and many other competitive players have been aching for more well run LAN’s with an excellent venue, better competition and prizes that make the trip worth it. It seems that a LAN has finally come along that offers all of the above, but very few people seem to want to make the effort and support Extreme LAN and this not only confuses me, but it irritates me.

If us gamers want competitive gaming to grow and actually become something more than just a fun hobby, we need to make the effort and not expect everything to fall into our laps.

Think of it from the sponsors’ point of view, why should they sponsor an event where there is little knowledge of the exposure they are going to receive from the event. Should they just throw money at an event where 5 teams have registered and hope more teams will show up on the day? Not very sound business savvy.

It’s quite simple if we want better prizes and better LAN’s us players have to register for events so the event organizers can go to the sponsors and show them the amount of people expected for the event. Big sponsors seem keen to get involved in our local gaming scene but us players have to support events and it is going to require time, money and commitment from our side as well as theirs.

The last eXtreme LAN did have a very short notice period and I can understand why many teams couldn’t make it. For this month’s Extreme LAN teams have been given a month’s notice and still we see only 5 teams registered so far for Call of Duty. I will concede to the point that there wasn’t a solid schedule for the competitions, but we have now been given one. Are teams going to still sit around and not support this lan?

I can see some people arguing about not having money, I think that’s a rather pathetic argument. I work twice a week as a waitron and I can still afford to pay my 4MB ADSL, a trip up to Joburg and a few nights out in between.

Lastly I would just like to say that eXtreme LAN truly has an amazing venue. Having the LAN hosted at a 4 star hotel certainly has its perks, the room where the LAN is held is fully airconned and that coupled with internet really sets a higher standard for LANs in this country.

This weekend’s eXtreme LAN

This weekend will see the second eXtreme LAN event, and early registrations, while not massive, are already looking significantly better than last month’s. As poOks and other LANers that were there last month, including myself, will attest, the eXtreme LAN is a truly world class and professionally organised event. The padded seats are there, all they need are the gamers to fill them.

April eXtreme LAN details

Start: Friday 23 April 20:00

End: Tuesday 27 April 15:00

Venue: Kopanong Hotel, 243 Glen Gory Road, Norton Estates, Benoni, JHB

Competitions: RiseUp Counter Strike 1.6 finals, CoD4, ATi Eyfinity Challenge, Ad-Hoc LAN competitio.

Prizes: R25,000 worth of hardware prizes will be won, courtesy of AMD and Sapphire.

Price: R120 a ticket – book here

Features

•  An air-conditioned venue

•  Easy access to food and beverages with both a tuck shop and full restaurant

•  Accommodation and a swimming pool (special rates have been arranged)

•  FRAG’s mammoth infrastructure with a Gigabit network, dedicated power cables, 24 Port Smart Allowance Gigabit switches and an experienced admin crew

•  A 4MB/s Internet connection for authentication and updates

Discuss April’s eXtreme LAN in the forums