Taken From: Deadly Night - HBO LAN
Deadly Night
Posted by KPaul at 1/4/2007 2:50 PM PDT
HBO LANs are the stuff of legend. I’ve been to plenty of LANs, all of them were a lot of fun and good times in general. But there’s nothing quite like an HBO LAN. You could drop me in a LAN party where everyone gets a 52” plasma screen, a Xenon with the latest Halo 3 MP build, an all-you-can-eat buffet that stretches a mile and an open bar, and it still wouldn’t compare with an HBO LAN. Actually, if someone sets that up, I’ll totally be there.
You can get a pretty good idea of what it was like by checking out the second disc on your limited edition copy of Halo 2; that was an HBO LAN entitled “Offensive Tetraboxing.” Bonus points for spotting my hat.
One wall of the upstairs setup
Unfortunately, Louis Wu had resigned to never hold another LAN ever again, for undisclosed reasons. I was just as sad as everyone else, but knowing that he had good reason, I never really bugged him about it. But when even his wife is telling him he needs to have another one (she just wanted the basement cleaned out, but that’s a strong ally nonetheless), I jumped on the bandwagon and began to bother the hell out of him as well. Ultimately, he caved and decided to have a LAN while I was home for the holidays this past week. We kept it quiet, but even then we had people coming from all over the country and even Europe for the LAN.
The other wall of the upstairs setup
The LAN primarily took place on the 28th, but for many it started a day or two earlier and ended days later.
TheDonWan’s feet, controllers. The pink one is actually Shishka’s.
Since I was stationed only about 40 minutes away with my family, I was able to drop by late on the 27th to hang out with the folks who’d already shown up. There were about 10-15 people that night, with the NYC crew, which included most of the cross-country and international attendees, showing up around 1am. They played some Halo 2, I shot the breeze with some community members and at around 2am I headed back home, navigating the dark and windy back roads of Connecticut at, er, exactly the speed limit.
Ah! Demon!
Alright, they’re not really demons. But they do leave landmines.
Early the next morning, I headed to the airport to grab TheDonWan and shot straight to Louis Wu’s house. We got there around 10am and the whole crew was already up and fragging each other in high gear. Pretty much everyone was there by then, a few trickled in later in the day but anybody with a significant distance to travel had arrived. Among these, sadly, was the recently defected Shishka. Comically, the flights he booked were never actually booked and he didn’t get in until about 12 hours after he was scheduled to. Well, it’s funny to me, at least.
Fuhrman asleep, under the Christmas tree. Wu goes all out of Christmas.
nof, the guy who called Kingpin a pansy on the LE DVD, endorses rock and/or roll.
The gaming itself was as-expected. It was almost all Halo 2, but Halo 1 did sneak in for a few games. Speaking of sneaking, TheDonWan brought a copy of Sneak King, which got some play toward the end of the night. There was some Fight Night going down, some Geometry Wars Advanced, Lumines, etc. Nick brought his PS2 and Mintz a copy of Guitar Hero 2, which got a lot of play from folks looking to take a break from the H2 action.
When the goin’ gets tough, the tough get sneaky.
Wu’s basement was decked out for the occasion.
There were about 12 loud people in his basement…
…In which Furhman somehow found a way to sleep.
Late in the afternoon, we organized a way to hand out all of the cool swag that I’d shipped out before I left for home, some Bungie.org shirts made by mnemesis, an HBO admin, and a special prize from Blackstar. We made five cool games and for each game we handed out four prizes. Few of the prizes were awarded based on skill, it was more along the lines of “most medals,” “most flag grabs,” “last place” and “highest kill count which is a multiple of seven.” None of the criteria were announced prior to the games, so people just played for fun and then afterwards maybe they won a prize.
After those games were played, there was a game of FAE to determine the winner of the grand prize, which was awarded to Mintz based on his highest hit percentage. The prize was a piece of one of the Master Chief statues that you might’ve seen around the launch of Halo 2, the Chief’s hand holding an SMG.
One of the prizes, a poster signed by all those in attendance, very cool.
After this, Claude and I went to grab the pizzas, eight larges with various delicious toppings. We returned to find the house not ablaze, surprisingly. Freshly refueled, the LAN continued apace with more H2 spanning two floors of the Wu household.
All the snacks and random foodstuffs in the morning, prior to being ravaged.
The feeding frenzy which ensued after the arrival of the pizza.
Things got rough when we ran out of pizza.
Things started to slow down, a couple of guys left, but just then approached the white rider from the west. Actually, it was just Frankie and the moon reflecting off his dome. Yes, Frankie made it to the LAN. He’d been in Jersey visiting family so he decided that he could make the ride up to Connecticut late that night to hang out for a few hours. He didn’t get there until about midnight, but he did stick around for a few hours to hang with one of the coolest slices of the community one could ever hope to put together.
Frankie in one of his tamer poses of all time with Blackstar and CYBRFRK.
After Frankie left, it was time for me to get out of there as well, so I packed up and headed home to get some sleep. So far as I know, everyone made it home alive. Almost everyone had some sort of shenaniganry to deal with in getting home. Lots of us had delays and/or cancellations to deal with. For example, TheDonWan and I started out on separate flights, on separate airlines with totally different layovers at completely separate airports which departed ten hours apart; the only thing we had in common was the final destination. However, we both ended up on the same direct flight leaving from the same airport (JFK), go figure. Once home, massive doses of sleep were in order.
Some HBO admins and a few random old dudes.
The obligatory group shot. Find the photoshopped person!
Much thanks to Louis Wu, his wife, his kids, his dogs, the attendees and everyone else who made this possible. Hell of a LAN.
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