Do Lan Parties happen any more?

[MavericK]

IMHO competitive gaming getting serious also helped kill it. Things used to be where winning these events at LANs, which happened on the regular, was fun and mattered. Even if you were only getting a CPU or a graphics card maybe a small check if you were lucky. That all changed rapidly. Now those events have entire seasons and professional events with much more at stake and higher payouts. It's very different.

It's not that people don't game in person it's that it's very corporate and organized right now. All the sorts of low budget clubby community run stuff in gaming is dead. We used to have community run leagues and ladders, that's gone as well.

It was never really about that for us, but if you are talking about the massive 200+ person events then yeah, probably. We would sometimes have small prizes, like Jolt Cola glasses or something like that, but nothing on the level of CPUs or GPUs. It was basically a community-funded event that went to pay for the rental space and food. Pretty much all of the network hardware was donated or borrowed.

The main thing that killed it for us was losing the conference space we had rented for a long time, coupled with games turning more towards always-online requirements and more people shifting to stuff like MMOs.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

It was never really about that for us, but if you are talking about the massive 200+ person events then yeah, probably. We would sometimes have small prizes, like Jolt Cola glasses or something like that, but nothing on the level of CPUs or GPUs. It was basically a community-funded event that went to pay for the rental space and food. Pretty much all of the network hardware was donated or borrowed.

The main thing that killed it for us was losing the conference space we had rented for a long time, coupled with games turning more towards always-online requirements and more people shifting to stuff like MMOs.

Even in the heyday of UT2004 there were people playing WoW on LANs. Going before that there were other MMOs. FWIW LAN cafe's are still around where people practice up for tournaments.

 

[MavericK]

Even in the heyday of UT2004 there were people playing WoW on LANs. Going before that there were other MMOs. FWIW LAN cafe's are still around where people practice up for tournaments.

There weren't at ours because we didn't pipe in internet until broadband became more widely available.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

There weren't at ours because we didn't pipe in internet until broadband became more widely available.

LOL!

I miss some of the crazier Mech Warrior LANs where people would show up with pods and all that. I oddly do see lots of events that resemble LANs in the sort of spirit still today. The thing is it's all fighting games and arcade style games where people can all team up or 1v1 on the same console. From smaller stuff to things taking over hotel ballrooms.

 

[djstarfox]

If I'm not mistaken, the Command & Conquer series supports LAN play. I used to play monthly back in the day. Nowadays, LAN parties are mostly "special occassions" for the boys, and it's mostly Halo or another FPS.

 

[regk]

I had some great lan parties at my house the last being in 2010. Usually about 10-15 pcs networked and playing till the morning.

This is awesome, 1999-2001 was a great time for our group of buddies, did this almost every other weekend. Crt's sucked to move lol