The Followup Story

In an effort to document my experiences and to post yet another long winded post (not to be outdone by Zrigged) here ye be...

MML7 – My story

It was a long three days of work, leading up to my planned vacation to MML7 in Louisville, Ky. You know those days, the ones that everything seems to go wrong and you end up having to work late…just in spite of the fact that you are taking a vacation very soon. Never the less, I persevered and made it through to Wednesday night and freedom.

The plans were all in place. My house was the meeting place for the carpool. I got home, did my laundry, did my dishes, and started to pack. Really there wasn’t much to pack. I have been gaming with a gateway laptop now for half a year and my LAN bag is always ready to go. Just throw in the laptop and power supply and I am gone. My suitcase takes about 5 minutes to pack (I’m still a guy!). Four days requires a lot of boxer shorts, an equal amount of socks, a pair of khaki shorts, and a few tee-shirts.

At about 9:30p my cell phone rings. It is Humanshield letting me know he is getting ready to head to work. He had a special request. At the last moment, we had someone decide to go and they wanted to ride with us. I sacrificed taking my chair and grill so Old Bean could join us. HS said bean would call me. I decided that since I was going to drive the next day starting at 4:30am, I should probably get some rest. Off to sleep I went.

At 11:45p my cell phone rings, waking me up. It was old bean wanting directions to my house so I gave them and then went back to bed. What felt like 10 minutes later I am awakened to someone knocking at my door. It was actually 3:30a and Bushwacker had arrived on time.

Humanshield arrived @4:45 closely followed by Oldbean. Bushwacker worked his magic and got everything we needed tightly packed into my truck. We visited the local speedway for some supplies and were finally on the road by 5:30a. The plan was to fuel up the waffletrain at the Wafflehouse in Grove City, Ohio. This was around 7a. At this point in the journey we got a little bit of a scare when the front end of my vehicle started making a very bad noise. It sounded as if the 4 wheel drive was not being fully disengaged, like gears grinding but not meshing. The solution came from cycling the solenoid from 2w to 4wh a few times and driving circles in the parking lot. Haven’t had any problems since.

Back on the road, waffle trains fueled and due at the station in an unpredictable amount of time, we started the longest trek between cbus and cinci. I really despise this part of the drive because it is mind numbingly boring. I put on some classic rock to stay awake while all three of my passengers slept after a large meal. My waffle train tooted a few times, much to my delight. I smiled at my innocent, sleeping, snoring passengers…mouths wide open breathing deeply.

Around 9a we made it to Cincinnati and the Kentucky border. I like driving through that city. When we hit the tunnel I held my breath while my passengers made fun of me. Yes, I still like to do this. Bite me!
From Cbus to La Grange, Ky Bushwacker and Nemisis were text messaging back and forth. Nemisis caught us when we stopped for gas about 20 miles from Louisville. Bushwacker, fleeing my increasing volume of waffletrain warning toots, finished the trip with Nemisis. We arrived at our hotel, the Southeast Redroof Inn, at around 12:30. What a great hotel, location, and price. Three nights cost $196 split between myself and my roomies. The Wafflehouse down the block, strategically located, was awfully inviting but we decided to continue on to the lan party.

I was not sure what to expect. I have experienced a Lanwar event at the university but never a MML. Having been to the last 2 MLL events I was used to an event around 1k people. This one would obviously be smaller. I was happy with the last lanwar so I hoped this would be similar. For those that have not been to this location, it is your typical inner city college, well landscaped, lots of fancy buildings. For the first timer it can be a little confusing actually finding the LAN and a place to park. For the second timer (ME) it takes a few wrong turns to remember what I had to do in January. The actual lan party occurs on the second floor in the south east wing of the student center.

Check-in was a breeze. We were late for the line so there wasn’t one. After waiting in line at quakecon for 5.5 hours I decided it wasn’t worth getting into a lan party early. Think about it. If you are the first one in and set up there are no servers or players for the games you want to play and you end up waiting around at your seat for the servers and players to show up.

According to my Xfire account, I managed to play around 26 hours of games in 3 days. In the order of most played to least it was:

Diablo 2
CoD4
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Track Mania Nations Forever
Battlefield 2142
Team Fortress 2
Quake 4

Humanshield brought his server and we started backing up some files to it. I really, really, missed my gigabit connection at LANOhio. Please, don’t view this as a complaint. I know that when a lan party gets bigger than the 24 people then gigabit gets stupid expensive due to bottleneck prevention between linked switch units. That netgear 24 port switch we, the volunteers of lanohio, bought for 300$ has been a dream come true and has spoiled us royally. I had about 30gb of patch files and ISO images to backup to //humanshield and sat there waiting on the 10/100 network for around 2 hours before I got to play any networked games. Of course the new 2TB HS server still only has a 10/100 card so it would not have made a difference at this event.

The general attitude at the LAN seemed to be good. It was nice to see less pro gaming and more of an appeal to the new majority of “gaming enthusiasts”. Those that don’t know what this new wave of lan party thought is can find out more through the writings of the PDX Lan party leader, Max Conwell (Vector), located on the articles section of the Palit Lan web site. I know I was happy to see WSVG die a fiery death at the hands of it’s own cry baby pro gamers. Some further proof of this phenomona in action was that the CS tournament had very few players. Now granted, most wanted to play in the CoD4 tourney, many have simply abandoned CS for Warcraft 3: Defense of the Ancients.

For what it was worth this enthusiast got involved in some tournament play. I played in the Track Mania Nations tournament not because I wanted prizes, but instead because I love the game. What a blast trying to better my time against other players. I also talked my team mates in to doing the CoD4 tourney. I didn’t think we would do any good because most of us only play the game at lan parties. Turns out I was correct. Team Bakery handed us a shutout of 6 to 0. On the bright side we didn’t have more than an hour of time invested in that event and managed to go out to lunch at Hooters to celebrate while other teams were still stuck at the event!

What I liked the most about these tournaments was the stern iron-fist rule that the organizers introduced. I knew InfinityPlus and Zeke would run a nice Trackmania event because INF+ had verbally chastised and embarrassed some smart-alecky CS kiddy at LANWar40 who came to the tourney meeting with an attitude and no preparation. The Platypii CoD4 organizers warmed my heart when they asked about 11 team captains if anyone had a problem with the rules. Three hands shot up only to be trounced upon by the word “tough!” These organizers started discussions months ago, made a decision, and stuck with it. Way to go!

For a lan party this size there were only a few sponsors. I would guess that many disappeared along with WSVG. I was impressed with Dustoff (first saw this company at quakecon07). I think they are the only PC cleaning supply company that has tried to really appeal to gamers like myself. I do like their screen wipes. Seagate surprised me. I never expected to see that company represented at a LAN party. Their presence definitely sways my future dollar votes for hard drive purchases.

I hope, as I first experienced at MML5, to see presentations from more companies. The geek in me that used to dream of attending E3 loves a good convention where I can see what new products and games are coming to the market. I spend around $3000 a year on Computer equipment and games and usually do most of my buying research at booths at LAN parties. I think for next year I will take some time and write to a few of my favorite companies marketing departments and tell them about Lanwar.

Other fun to be had at Lanwar included their common events such as Rock Paper Sissors and Ductape wars. Waffletrain members Shibumi and Burnadette did the ducktape event which I wanted to join in on but got caught up in a 4v4 match of supreme commander FA. Waffletrain Vet CrazyBillyBob did very well in the case mod contest. With three years of your life invested in building that mod, you’ve earned it! Congradulations.

Team waffle train held up our traditions. While I had to sacrifice my grill in order to provide a seat for OldBean, we did get an el cheapo $20 grill from walmart. That was an adventure. Relying upon CBB’s gps we first drove to darn near Nashville Tenn. Looking for the one on the little device (knowing well that there was one 2 blocks from our hotel). It was one of those lets keep driving until we find it events. We did finally find a walmart, but it was the old skool style without the 24h super center. At this point I gave up, purchased my shampoo and a tee-shirt and drove the hour and 15 minutes back to the lan. Humanshield, Bushwacker, and Cbb relying upon the same GPS went north and I believe made it to Indy.

We managed to eat at the Wafflehouse 4 times. The record still stands at 5 visits in the same event (set at ShowdownLAN07 in Indy). Sunday I simply ran out of “steam” and opted for a Big Boy buffet instead.

On a new team note, we have some new members. Welcome member Way2Eazy4you who gamed with us at MML5 BF2 tourney and survived more waffle train abuse this time. Welcome Shibumi and Burnadette. Burnadette is our first Female gamer, having experienced the Wafflehouse for the first time this past weekend. Of course this means our beloved for fun clan/guild/group is now officially not a sausage fest!

We managed to do some parking lot grilling on the fourth deck of the parking garage on the Fourth of July and watched what few fireworks occurred as the weather permitted. The lanwar group grilled at the event as well so we tried our best to stay out of their way. It turned out very good.

The weekend started winding down and my team mates and I packed up early Sunday morning. We got to the hotel around 3am. Billybob had a family emergency and left before 8am. His wife is doing fine and recovering from a violent reaction to some prescription medicine she was taking. My caravan left around 10:30am and arrived back at my house at 3:30pm. In years past we have stayed Sunday for cleanup and gotten home Monday at 1am. We just didn’t have it in us this year.

Humanshield, doomed to be married in a few weeks, had what I hope was a good LAN Bachelor Party. The guys made sure to rip on him at every opportunity. I told him “he will be missed.” He even thrilled CrazyBillyBob by saying that after he was married he would still be able to go anywhere, anytime he wanted. CBB found this comforting because he thought he was the only one that was that naive before getting married.

Overall, I think the Lanwar staff did a great job running another large event. I returned from my vacation feeling very relaxed and renewed. I take a gamble trying to relax through the chaos that can be a lan party. This time around I had plenty of fun and entertainment. Time to start preparing for quakecon.