Seattle LAN Was A Success!

whaz, allmEntal, EVOL, Fearghas, feroz, nkro, v1ze, driver8, relapse, n4utikal.
10 dudes, a keg from a local brewery (hefeweizen, yum!), meat from a local butcher for a BBQ (burgers, ribeye, linguisa, andouille), an ounce of that other stuff, mid 70s/low 80s both days (21-27 Celcius), and sunny all 3 days. Oh yeah, pancakes, bacon and coffee for breakfast both days :D.

Didn't have local QL LAN servers, but even with 10 of us in game, we all pinged under 17 to Seattle. LG felt amazing and rockets were hitting like rails. We even played some RA3, which I'd never done before. (Ummmm, superior format over CA, anyone? And +rstats?) The good news is, driver8 and I are gonna run that RA3 server from time to time, and we'll be able to get enough people to fill it up.

When people were taking breaks or crashing, we played some awesome "LAN vs INTERNET" CA pubs, and both won and lost. Whaz and I played a bunch of duels, and he gave me some really good feedback. Then he watched me duel ice9 on ztn 2 or 3 times, and coached me a little, and gave me feedback. It kicked ass! We set up 2v2 and 3v3 round robin CA tournaments, and challonge.com is actually a pretty handy resource.

http://challonge.com/evollan1
http://challonge.com/evollan2

Feroz and I won the 2v2 CA tourney. Feroz was a beast. 9-4 comeback on asylum. SO many ridiculous clutch shots to save the round. It was awesome seeing him play on his picmip 0 setup.

whaz, feroz and fearghas won the 3v3 CA tourney in a best of 5 (they 3-0'd us!), but the map scores were close! 10-9 asylum, 10-6 overkill, 10-9 trinity. We managed to scrape together some prizes, so whaz won a Das Keyboard Ultimate keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches, feroz won 10 months of a pro QL subscription (courtesy of syncerror who gave us 12 months of tokens for prizes - thanks!), and fearghas won a hard surface Razer gamepad with a hardshell zipper carrying case.

On Sunday morning, feroz, fearghas and I all signed up and played in the faceit NA tourney. feroz and fearghas were seeded to play against each other first round, and feroz was sitting behind fearghas LOL. At one point I heard fearghas yell out "You better not be looking at my screen!". feroz went on to play sparks. I was initially seeded against some 1050 elo guy (Yes!) - but he pulled a no-show, and they said "Just kidding, EVOL vs chance". I lost 21-3 on dm13 :p. allmEntal and whaz were going to sign up too, but they were still asleep (it didn't look like there was going to be a faceit cup when we looked Saturday night :/)

We played some great CTF games, and even played a 5v5 instaCTF shitfest on dueling keeps, even though it took me 3 tries to spawn the server correctly (lol @ insta w/ mg, or "insta CTF" with no flags).

I'm happy to announce that this LAN exceeded all of my own expectations in every way, and I am happy to make it a yearly institution. Now that we pulled it off once, I think next year's will run very smoothly. I'd like to schedule it the same weekend of a faceit season finale if possible, so we can have it on the bigscreen at the LAN. We had 10 players, and there's definitely enough room for 20. Anyone who attended this year can have a reserve spot for next year if they want it.

I don't have a TON of pictures, and I didn't set up streaming, recording, etc - I really just wanted to be a member of the LAN, and meet these guys and play quake. I've been playing with these guys for the last 3 years. Many of them have been playing together for the last 13, and met each other for the first time. I didn't want to stress myself out trying to make some huge documentary of it. BUT....I do have a few things :)

Footy from an all LAN ca game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdotnTEfAQ

Footy of me while playing chance in the Faceit cup (this is pretty funny haha):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKcGtXXg08

a few pictures:
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...52b42e.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...ea910a.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...77932d.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...5481dc.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...a92985.jpg

Maren and I the morning after (still in recovery mode lol)
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...0ae7d6.jpg

Quake is where it's at dudes! The older I get, the more the game feels like a chessboard than an fps, I love its infinite depth. I love the crispness of the movement, the r_picmip 10, r_vertexlight 0 graphics, the shit talking, the cups, the celebrities, the mechanics of the weapons, the pros, the [+] whoring, the constant config tweaks, all the game modes, the clutch factor, the "cheater!" drama, zoot's stupid 8:50-down-10 comeback predictions, etc. I really like the culture, the people, the eliteness of it - all of it. I'm a software engineer/architect by trade, and it's crazy how much I think about this game, and how I'd love to be able to improve it - to contribute. I made youtube duel series initially, and those weird timer practice tools to try and help contribute in someway to the game and community that I love. I don't really play any other games - I have a wife and kids and a career, so for gaming, I really only make time for drunk mariokart with the wife, and quake live with all you dudes. Thanks for making the LAN a success. I feel like the LAN contributed to Quake history in some way, and I'm pretty stoked about it. See you next year :)


-EVOL



PS: Best wit award goes to driver8. We were in a CA pub, playings 6v6, which is already a lolfest, and it was 6 of us on LAN vs 6 online players. Esteem was leading the interwebz team, but they were losing. I'm sure he was screaming "GO NEST" with say_team every round, and at one pointed he commented, "It must be nice to have a team you can actually punch in the face", and driver8 replied: "if you were here, I don't think you would punch feroz anywhere", and we all lit up pretty good here.
(feroz is 6ft 8in tall (203cm), and could probably bench press a semi truck).