Hosting LAN Party

[Rico]

Hey everyone,

I'm planning on hosting a LAN party this saturday for some friends and I this weekend and I must say this is my first LAN with more than 2 or 3 computers or so. As such, I had a few questions to ask:

1) Daisy chaining power-strips: How bad is it? I plan on having 7 people for sure, but the number might go up to 12 or so. We're having the party in a 2 bedroom apartment so we obviously won't have an outlet for each person. Any advise?

2) Games: Most of the people coming to the LAN are not hardcore gamers. A lot of them a girls and this is their first LAN party. Mind you, most of them can play WoW and GW on their PCs, so that should serve as a guage of the power of their systems. Which games would you guys recommend for a LAN? They like Diablo and WoW type stuff, so hack and slash RPGs are good. How about other games? I'm sure I could get them to try new stuff.

I'm looking for 3-4 year old games so as to avoid having issues with people not being able to run them. Suggestions?

3) Networking: I may have around 2 hubs total and I asked most people to bring a powerstrip and a network cable. I was planning on just daisy chaining the hubs together and then hooking them up to the apartment's router so we all had internet access. Any foreseeable problems with this?


Thanks a bunch guys... and if this turns out ok, we might host a bigger LAN party some other time and maybe even invite some fellow HL2.netters!

 

[giant384]

plz don't bother playing mmo games at a lan. to me its a huge waste of time.

i recommend you play fps,rts, or something like that.

for power consumption i would recommend only 3-4 people to each plug so you dont switch the breaker off.

where do you live, i would love to join

 

[Steel.Inferno]

For RTS: Starcraft or Warcraft 3 are good bets to try. If they don't like the normal game, you could try DoTA for WC3, or any one of the bajillion tower defense maps.

At my last lan party aeons ago (6 folks) we played CS 1.6, BF1942, and warcraft 3.

 

[Rico]

Any other suggestions? It's tomorrow!

 

[Ennui]

STARCRAFT

it's all you need

Titan Quest, Unreal Tournament, etc are also good

 

[Majestic XII]

I really hope you're not actually going to use hubs. I think you mean "switch".

The hubs will go nuclear on your ass if you use them, I'm serious.

Anyways, daisy chaining power-strips is possible. I've done it before, running a couple of computers from the same socket. It's not recommended, but it works (did this back in the day when computers didnt need so much juice)

Two or three computers on the same socket should not be a problem.

 

[Seppo]

indeed, FPS games are the best. I played the multiplayer demo of Return to Castle Wolfenstein for 12 hours straight when it came out, it was 2001 I think

 

[Link]

Check out wolfenstien:enemy territory - Its a free fps that came out a few years back, made by the same team that made quake wars. I've never played it, but I hear its the shit.

 

[Beerdude26]

Call Of Duty 2 = Partay
Trackmania Nations = omg awesome

For RPG's, maybe Neverwinter Nights.

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

My vote for a lan would be TFC / CS: S / with a bit of UT2004...

Edit: BF2 might work, too.