Only 2 and a half years old, FRAG Lan has become one of the most well know gaming events in SA. From its humble beginnings in April 07, Durban’s biggest LAN has grown from 28 gamers to hosting 400 at its most recent event.
One of the event’s stalwart organisers, James Baillie, sent MyGaming an interesting blog piece detailing the founding of FRAG LAN, its rapid growth and its continued rise to become one of the country’s most successful LANs.
The history of Frag LAN by James Baillie
1. FRAG had its official first event in June 2007 at Toti High where there were 28 gamers (Original founders were Craig (freeloader), Michael (killerbyte – ED. Who now writes for PC Format), Kieron (Ron2k) & they were assisted by Francois (Ravenlord) & Ben (RobThePyro) & Julian (Xiphan) – there were probably more – I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there.
2. September 2007 – FRAG’s 2nd event had 70 gamers attend and it was held at Crawford College. (This was James and my first event with FRAG)
3. December 2007 – event was held at Westville Boys High, Drama Hall and yeah, there was drama! We had 110 gamers come and we had the worst power trip we have ever had with there being no power from 10pm Friday to 4am Saturday morning!!! We only had 1 guy who wanted to “sue” us and wanted a refund.
We got the power back on and we learnt a hell of a lot about power and since that day FRAG has not had another power trip or power incident lasting more than 1 hour. BIG THANKS TO ALL THOSE THAT STAYED THAT FRIDAY – the event turned out great in the end.
4. September 2008 – 5th September was by far the biggest event we had had to date, with just on 200 guys coming – not bad! We gave away R35k worth of prizes at this event! We had The Lair come and run the comps for the event and we learned a lot from them. 2nd September event was held at Westville Boys High
5. December 2008 – The first Showcase! FRAG had a full-page advert in NAG. We had teams from Cape Town, PE, JHB and Pretoria come to the event. 350 guys came to the event and we ran it with the help of Mayhem from Jhb. At that stage FRAG could only handle up to 200 guys on our own, that is why we needed Mayhem to assist and we’re thankful that they did.
Once again, The Lair ran the competitions. We didn’t do as well as we had hoped, but still, a 350-man LAN with gamers coming from across the country was great!!
6. January 2009 – so we started off 2009 slowly. We had a smallish LAN – 200 gamers showed up. We introduced something different, an alternative to the usual pc gaming, Jenga. Turned out to be a success and now we have started implementing more different games as we go along. Awesome!!
7. February 2009 – Whoa – Xbox tournaments!! Guitar Hero!!! SingStar crazyiness. I think we started to let it all hang out in that event.
Once again, 200 + gamers at the event = an awesome LAN!
8. April 2009 – Street Fighter 4 tournament, mystery comps (not liked by all) and of course 300+ gamers!! Nuff said!
9. June 2009 @ Crawford College!!!!!OMW – this was a busy event! 275 gamers crammed into Crawford College – that is absolutely insane!! We couldn’t get Edgewood as a venue for this event, so we had to make do with Crawford, which we did. Thanks to everyone who put up with the crammed space. We even had our very own FRAG dungeon (cold spot right at the back behind the stage and screen)
10. August 2009 – so during Matric exams, we still manage to get 200 gamers to the event, that is awesome and testament to the gamers in KZN. Apart from 1 small power trip, the event was flawless.
11. December 2009 – Frag second showcase event with AMD as sponsors pulled a huge crowd of over 400 gamers to the event. Amazingly we had literally no problem at the event, and it was by far the most awesome FRAG LAN so far.
The next FRAG LAN will take place between January 29-31 and will cost R130 for the weekend. To find out more and book your spot visit frag.co.za.
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