Fu-LAN Seven

Fu-LAN Seven is only about one month away now. And things are happening really fast now. Or at least, they should.

Repair the switches, get sponsors, materials, Internet, visitors… and try to prevent the crew from knawing at each other’s throats. It promises to be a very “interesting” seventh edition, if you are into advanced antropology. I’m still trying to convince myself that this is a good idea. At least I won’t get bored 😉

Updates can be expected in a month.

* Update (at last)

Fu-LAN 7 has come and gone, and Panic1 saw that was good. To me the Fu-LAN was exceptionally good. Ofcourse not all fellow crew members will agree with me (sorry, ChwyZzZ :(). The workload was divided better, and maybe because I didn’t care as much about everything, things seemed to go alot smoother than usual. Yeah, there were some bumps here and there, but nothing major really.

But I still coulnd’t find the fun in Fu-LAN. It’s weird: there was nothing wrong with the LAN party, very relaxed mood, lotsa games being played, very friendly people, redbull promogirls, etc… And yet I’m loosing interest in all of it. Otaku felt even worse afterwards, he put in alot more effort compared to me, and couldn’t find the fun as well (except deep inside the bottle – DUH!). I have no clue at this time what needs to be done to get myself and my crew motivated again.

We have received very good comments about Fu-LAN7, everyone had a great, relaxing time. We just didn’t have competitions this time, so we might need to work on that some more. All and all it was a success. We still need collect the numbers and comments and talk it over, address the things that needs attention, and pamper the crew a little. After that the Fu-LAN8 can be put in the pipeline. The question on everyone’s lips is who will be starring at the LAN?

LAN Parties?

It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Reading back the review I wrote about OCC22, it’s feels strange. It’s not quite how I feel about LAN parties today. Fu-LAN6 might have been great for the attendees, it sure wasn’t great for me, and FoM was a major dissapointment as well. Thinking back at OCC: you shouldn’t spend your time watching DVDs at a LAN party, you should spend your time playing multiplayer games, something you can’t do (as well) at home. But at the LAN party, you realise that you don’t have the same games as the people in your clan, and you end up being stuck with the games installed on your computer. Playing it alone, because no one else has it.

So I end up getting bored, watching television series on the DVDs I brought from home. But honestly: I can watch them much more comfortly at home. Last FoM I spend 4 hours drawing our clan’s logo in 3D, in a race between Blender and 3DsMax. Ofcourse, I lost, I’ve never done anything like that before, but because I has nothing better to do, I kept on going untill it was completed.

Maybe I’m not “pro” enough, maybe I’m getting too old for this, or maybe I just need a break from it all. Anyway, I have decided not to go to the next FoM and OCC events, so you won’t be getting any reviews on those.

FoM 9.0

YALR (Yet another LAN-party review)

Last FoM I visited was kinda like a revelation to me, this edition the experience is alot milder. The theme competition failed to attrack many participants, half even came dressed as biblical figures instead of the proposed super heroes. Should have known that ZWAM doesn’t do well with rules Cool. The kidnapping of FoM-man was fun for a moment, but failed to raise any attention from the patrons or the crew. They showed the movie on the projector, but that’s just about it.

Compared to last FoM, there were practically no fun competitions. At least none that I noticed. I also missed the BBQ subscriptions, probably because I was not sitting on my ass all day.

1 garbage bag for 20 people, litter all over the floor as a result… I wouldn’t want to be the one to clean it all up. Talking about cleaning up, I really feel sorry for the person in charge of desinfecting the toilets. I feel even more sorry for those bastards that don’t know how to flush the toilet after taking a crap or puking all over the toilet booth. Gory… I held everything up for two days, no way I was sitting myself down in there. The crew claimed they cleaned the toilets every 6 hrs, perhaps they were talking about some other toilet.

And then there were the pro-gamers… Disillusioned teens who actually believe you can make a profit by gaming. And when those teens go down in a game, they go down loud. Screaming “kill those fucking bastards” over a crowd of 400 irritated gamers is dangerous at best. I believe he deserved a good spanking, only lucky for him the crew stopped several attempts of willing volunteers aiming for his ass. All this pro-gaming shit is destroying the fun in LAN-parties if you ask me, there is way too much focus on “official competitions” and “world cyber game qualifiers” these days, it’s hard to imagine how one would possibly find any fun in there. This is also the reason why I’m skipping the next OCC, it’s completely dedicated to WSG qualifiers, with an “invitation only”-LAN so the die-hards aren’t offended. Not for me.

Like BoeBoe said: maybe we’re just getting too old for this kind of stuff, or maybe the LAN scene really is changing for the worse.

OCC22

OCC has yet again proven itself to be the leading LAN party organization (at least as far as I can compare) last weekend. Even on this 22nd edition (has it really been going on this long?) the OCC crew has shown the same dedication and moral as if it was the very first LAN party, and they were all 16 years old again.

The Internet had a few hick-ups, but who needs Internet when you can play Battlefield2 or Trackmania Nations on a LAN server? A ftp server containing the latest patches for the popular games (or at least the games where there are compos for) could limit the usage of Internet to MSN only.

I heard some complaints about long waiting lines on the food shop. I didn’t experience that myself, I barely ate anything that weekend Smile.

To the clans that were sitting next to us (ZWAM and Unreadable), thanks for making this OCC edition as fun as it was! Too bad we lost the quiz, we didn’t even get close to Unreadable this time, maybe we do game better when we are completely wasted… Wink I also wanted to do that “Shear Panic” boardgame compo, too bad it got cancelled…

Next one up would be FoM9.0 in Sint-Niklaas on June 29th…

Fu-LAN 6

Last weekend I organised the 6th edition of Fu-LAN. Not as the LAN leader this time, but just as a member of the crew.

Thinking back on this edition fills me with mixed emotions: all patrons say that this edition was not the best ever, but yet is was still great. Ok there were a few annoying problems like the traditional compo failure and the internet gateway crashes (and me being sober was apparently a set back for most of the attendees), but no one really experienced that to make the LAN less great. I hear nice words like: relaxed, nice people, friendly crew, etc… The racing seats from Intel were a great attraction, and with only 40 gamers, everyone had the chance to play with them.

On the other end of the bar, among the fellow crew members, I hear a total different story. We made this LAN a partial success, yet we didn’t achieve the goal of 50 gamers, and we didn’t have any fun organising this event. All work and no play. We were always trying to solve problems, prepare food, running around senseless, or just trying to get some rest. I didn’t have the time to do anything fun, or talk to my friends, or mingle among the gamers, or get wasted… We will need to make some serious changes, or no one will want to start organising Fu-LAN 7.

Contradictory, this was the most efficient Fu-LAN ever. We were set up on Friday, and cleaned up on Sunday in record speeds, all thanks to great help from our friends. To all who assisted in making this LAN party become a reality: thank you very much! It wouldn’t have been possible without all your help.

Panic1 @ OCC21.bis

{mosimage} November 3rd to November 5th: OCC21, take 2.

After the cancellation of the original OCC21 edition early august 2006, OCC was shrouded under a dark shadow. The forum was shut down for about a month to protect the crews moral from ranting gamers, and rumours about the end of this monumental LAN party organisation were all over the LAN scene. The OCC crew always said that cancelling the OCC21 edition was not the end, but just an emergency solution to lacking participations and an unevitable financial disaster. Well, the crew came through, and OCC21.bis is a fact. This weekend in Temse and I will be there. Return later for a full report on what happened at this revival edition (if I still remember what happened when I wake up on Monday, I have a tendency to get really drunk at OCC LAN parties)…

* UPDATE *

Click “Read More” to read the entire report.

Continue reading “Panic1 @ OCC21.bis”

Panic1 @ FoM

After the cancellation of OCC21 at the beginning of August, I lived in fear and terror that this would be the first summer in years without any LAN party. But there it was: my ticket to a happy ending after all: Frag-o-Matic 8.1!

And it came just in the nick of time, the summer is almost over. I have never been at a FoM LAN party before, but I have heard alot about it. Some are really positive, others just hate it. So I arrived at this LAN party with mixed expectations and a very critical mindset.
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