That concerns me too. IMO the BYOC area should be a place for stuff to do between things, just like console freeplay and table top freeplay should be as well.
Quite frankly, I think there's easily room for both, so I wouldn't be terribly concerned if I were you. Making no predictions as to next year, for this year BYOC was only $10 extra, and that $10 extra gave you your own relatively quiet private little space where you could sit down, rest your eyes, and game all you want without having to wait in any lines. For $10 extra, that is a certified bargain as far as I'm concerned. Hell, even if I couldn't bring my computer, I'd be tempted to opt for that just to have my own little space.
It's true that there's probably room for a more traditional lan party at PAX, and there's definitely a lot of potential for it to grow significantly, but seriously...it's not as if BYOC will ever take over PAX.
As far as WoW goes, based on what the server guys have told me about WoW (according to them, it only takes one user with poor network settings to completely destroy a perfectly good Internet line) and based on what Khoo has told me about the cost of the connection we had, it simply would not, at all, be possible to provide good WoW support at the event without raising prices for BYOC by an extremely significant and restrictive margin.
All I can really do at this point is swear up and down that if I return next year in the same role I filled this year, I will work even harder to try and make WoW available for play provided I'm not directed otherwise from Tycho, Gabe, Khoo, or Fehlauer.
(The comments attributed to Tycho in this thread are news to me, and rather unexpected).
I am a bit worried by the comment to put more focus on the LAN as I would hate to see the focus of PAX become a LAN party and not a gaming event.
That concerns me too. IMO the BYOC area should be a place for stuff to do between things, just like console freeplay and table top freeplay should be as well. If i wanted just a LAN party experience i would go to a lan party. Having a lan spot and paying a bit extra for a byoc slot so i have a gaurenteed area to be able to find something to do between other things is why i was in byoc, and, imo that is how the byoc area should be.
I'm also somewhat disturbed at the attitude towards wow, and i dont even play it. I could deal with a technical limitation, but honestly, wow is not that bandwidth intensive and bandwidth for an event like this should not be a hard thing to arrange. The attitude of "its not a lan game so no" is wrong imo. If a group of 5 or 6 people wanted to grab a table in the tabletop room and all play a game of solitare together, i dont think anyone would have a problem with that. its the same thing. Just because wow is not a traditional LAN game, as long as its technically feasible it should be allowed if the participants want it. I highly doubt anyone would go to an event like this and just play wow all weekend, but having it available for people to hop on, kill some time here and there, and possibly get together with some others and do something in wow, or any other game that is not a traditional LAN title, should be allowed.
I 100% agree with this and this is what I've been trying to say all along. To me, BYOC was:
- home base
- a reserved chair
- a place to leave my things
- access to the internet (email/web/forums)
- a way to download pictures
- something to do between PAX events
That $10 purchase is what made PAX 10x more enjoyable for us this year over last year. The fact that we got to play BF2 against some really cool guys and play in the UT2k4 tourney was incredibly cool too. But when the room got down to 10 peep after Midnight on Fri/Sat, the WoW would've been cool. We had a 5 man BRD/LBRS planned...
That concerns me too. IMO the BYOC area should be a place for stuff to do between things, just like console freeplay and table top freeplay should be as well.
Quite frankly, I think there's easily room for both, so I wouldn't be terribly concerned if I were you. Making no predictions as to next year, for this year BYOC was only $10 extra, and that $10 extra gave you your own relatively quiet private little space where you could sit down, rest your eyes, and game all you want without having to wait in any lines. For $10 extra, that is a certified bargain as far as I'm concerned. Hell, even if I couldn't bring my computer, I'd be tempted to opt for that just to have my own little space.
It's true that there's probably room for a more traditional lan party at PAX, and there's definitely a lot of potential for it to grow significantly, but seriously...it's not as if BYOC will ever take over PAX.
As far as WoW goes, based on what the server guys have told me about WoW (according to them, it only takes one user with poor network settings to completely destroy a perfectly good Internet line) and based on what Khoo has told me about the cost of the connection we had, it simply would not, at all, be possible to provide good WoW support at the event without raising prices for BYOC by an extremely significant and restrictive margin.
All I can really do at this point is swear up and down that if I return next year in the same role I filled this year, I will work even harder to try and make WoW available for play provided I'm not directed otherwise from Tycho, Gabe, Khoo, or Fehlauer.
(The comments attributed to Tycho in this thread are news to me, and rather unexpected).
Its sounding like there are at least six PC customers at PAX:
1. WoW players.
2. LAN players (CS, UT, etc.).
3. People who just want a quiet place to check email and general Internet.
4. People who don't want to bring a PC, but do want to play WoW.
5. People who don't want to bring a PC, but do want to play LAN games.
6. People who don't want to bring a PC, but do want to check email and Internet.
For 1-3: Perhaps during pre-reg we can have BYOC people specify the kind of experience they're looking for, and group like-minded people together. If WoW really is as bandwidth-intensive as I'm hearing here then we'll charge a premium for MMORPG play (and explicitly ban MMORPGs from anywhere but the MMORPG section of the hall). We can also stick the MMORPG people on their own line so there's no possibility of them impacting tournament performance.
For 4: Too bad. A MMORPG is time-intensive. I'm not installing WoW on a donated freeplay machine just so one (1) attendee can enjoy it all weekend long.
For 5-6: This all depends on the number of machines we can secure from donors. Speakeasy helped a lot by providing free wifi throughout the con. But yeah, I'd like to see 100+ donated game machines for LAN games with another 20-40 for general Internet.
I like the suggestion to limit freeplay by rounds, rather than absolute time. And I like the idea of forcing all freeplay machines to play the same game, so as to avoid the issue of tiny teams. As in: from 1:00p to 5:00p all freeplay machines are exclusively CS. Don't want to play CS? Come back later.
As far as giving MMORPG gamers a seperate line i think that may be a good idea however they should have access to the other line as well. Ie, have a pink marked MMORPG hub and a black marked LAN hub in the MMORPG area. I played a lot of CS/BF1942 during PAX this year but would have also played WoW for a few hours in the evenings when it cooled down for a while. I would probably register as a FPS/MMORPG gamer and wouldn't want to lock myself out of FPS games if i was suck on a MMORPG link that didn't have access to the internal FPS servers.
For number 6, I think an email garden completely seperate and away from the BYOC and Computer Freeplay area is the way to go. Just an area w/ couches and tables and a few donated laptops for use to get to the web via wifi and check email stuff.
with decent network planning and qos at the routing level you wouldnt need to have seperate phyiscal networks for mmo's and fps. it would be very easy to designate a portion of available bandwidth for wow and web browsing without affecting steam auth.
As for freeplay machines, i would think that lanwerx or another lan gaming center would be all over sponsoring that area with their own machines in exchange for the massive advertising they could push.
I would probably register as a FPS/MMORPG gamer and wouldn't want to lock myself out of FPS games if i was suck on a MMORPG link that didn't have access to the internal FPS servers.
Yea, that would suck. We'd have to make sure that both networks saw each other and a lan game on network A would still show up on network B.
I don't think that'd be too big of an issue...in fact, I've got a port tunneller sitting on my desktop that should do it now, but I haven't tested it yet.
I like the idea of making it more like a LAN and less like a place to just play games between things. I would have liked to get some full server matches going in either UT or CS, but everyone was alway spread out over several games or even playing single player games. Next year needs to be more structured so that we can get more of a LAN environment.
Cronus on
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
1) pax.lan was a joke. It listed the same few, no-population servers, and none of the web apps worked, or had significant problems. "Going for food" didn't work at all. "Shout box" was very restrictive on the text (although it was kinda fixed), and you couldn't set anything up without knowing where people were. "Open Play Game Request" was not a way to indicate interest in a game, but to list a server - and it still didn't work. There are two ways to run this kind of event: a) open; allow WOW and other MMOs, allow people to coordinate and play servers of any games, built based on good scheduling/interest apps on the website; and b) closed - one or two games at the most, everybody plays these games, they make a big deal out of those games in the room.
2) We needed seat identification badly for a variety of reasons. Already addressed above and in earlier posts.
3) The frequently-angry freeplay notices were very annoying. That's been discussed earlier.
4) They didn't want it to be a hideway, but without any kind of coordination, community, or "event" features (bigscreen showing a server, etc.),
5) Tournaments were very poorly announced, and all the ones I heard about were team-only.
6) If you dug around on pax.lan, you saw a listing for teamspeak and IRC. The teamspeak server was never turned on (or the IP on the site was wrong), and nobody was ever logged into IRC. Of course, since there was no coordination of any part of this event, that's not surprising.
I played some UT and BF2, but it was difficult to find a populated server.
Too few players could be a problem, but if they let us organize ourselves with a WORKING pax.lan, it would have been better, or if they had let us play WOW, etc., then it would have been better.
Most of the enforcers by the door were really good, but some were nasty, forcing me to edge by them as they filled the doorway, giving dirty looks, etc. I did not have the security issue on checkout that others did, although I did leave Sunday morning. I took my CDs and expensive headphones with me in my backpack around PAX, so I didn't have any problems that way.
Overall - if they want to be this loose, then they need to make it more open (and, if they want to be helpful, then let us organize ourselves through powerful, working web apps). It was too little organization to be a "LAN event", and too many restrictions to be a nice "spot to relax away from PAX."
I appreciated a quiet place to spend some hours between panels, etc., but it would have been better in either direction - more "open" (which DiscoDave sound amenable to, but end3r seems philosophically opposed to), or more "organized," which is what it sounds like we'll have next year, which would be great.
with decent network planning and qos at the routing level you wouldnt need to have seperate phyiscal networks for mmo's and fps. it would be very easy to designate a portion of available bandwidth for wow and web browsing without affecting steam auth.
As for freeplay machines, i would think that lanwerx or another lan gaming center would be all over sponsoring that area with their own machines in exchange for the massive advertising they could push.
Lanwerx did it last year and I heard it was a complete fuck-job. Thats why they weren't used this year.
1). I actually saw someone comment that the food run wasn't working, and if I had more time I would have addressed it. Unfortunately there was a last minute change in who was supplying the intranet server, and while I was originally planning on having a week to test everything out and fill with content, I ended up having about an hour. Furthermore, my own internal testing does little as my php configuration (win32) is different from the server (linux)...it really needed to be tested on the machine it was going to be run on, and that was the plan, but again having to rearrange the servers at the last minute had consequences that couldn't be easily be helped.
The servers listed were the dedicated servers provided. I'm not aware of any dedicated (non tournament) servers that weren't listed. Making it easy to find a server with people on it was definitely a goal and I actually had thought we had succeeded at that, although a bigger "Game of the Hour" presense definitely could have been used.
5). In addition to tournament times being listed on the pax website for months ahead of time, we also ran pa announcements for all of them. There are certainly areas of the building that are sufficiently noisy where you can't hear them, but that information definitely should have also been on pax.lan.
6). The teamspeak server wasn't working (or incorrect)? That's news to me! =/
I had originally planned on someone coding in an irc window into the main in real time, unfortunately they backed out and I wasn't able to get it running in time and as such the irc server went completely ignored as far as I can tell (I'm not much of a coder). I do see that as being an important part of the webpage for 2006 and it'll definitely be up and running in time for that. Furthermore, barring another catastrophe, we'll have more time to tweak things and iron out any conflicts between the page software and the php install to make sure everything is running exactly as you'd expect it to.
Hopefully this would help address most of your issues. I'm sorry you seem to have had a negative experience, but I appreciate your feedback.
Lanwerx also closed its Bellevue location earlier this year so any kind of advertising from the event wouldn't help business in the slightest, and the sole reason they even came with their halfhearted attempt at short notice last year was due to a new location opening up the following week which allowed them to bring a bunch of untested PCs to be put into a tiny room with no air conditioning.
LAN centers really can't offer much if anything to PAX as in order for them to make money they need to have the computers in their store, and the advertising they'd get in return for offering up a bunch of hardware does very little for improving business at LAN centers. It's all about events and word of mouth between locals and regulars, something PAX wouldn't help with.
From the earlier posts, it sounds like you all had very little time to prepare; most of my comments amounted to "... and it showed."
From what's been bandied about on this thread - the (unofficial?) announcement of the new venue and end3r's and your own comments, it sounds like next year's event is going to be great.
I did enjoy it for what it was - quiet respite from the rest of PAX, where I could get my game on, SP or MP, to cool down a bit. My comments, again, were to make the point that it would have been better either more open, or more organized; I understand that there were good reasons for neither one happening, though (not the way you wanted to work it, and not enough time, respectively).
I appreciate your patience. It is completely reasonable to not expect broken features in the Intranet, and it's not my intent to make excuses for the parts of it that weren't working.
Next year will be both more organized and more open. Like PAX as a whole, I think the BYOC area should be whatever you want it to be.
First off, I have to say to big red that dude, I’m SORRY. I was an asshat to you because I spent 8+ hours trying to get BF2 running on my computer and I was at my wits end. With the workload you had, I’m surprised you didn’t ban me. Thanks for your patience. Also the other enforcers were great and the LanpartyNW guys were exceptionally gracious and helped people out endlessly. Pro bono no less…
1. I personally would have liked to been able to play 24hrs… I know this has been touched on… but c’mon.
2. I think some of the more respectable people should have been given admin privledges. I mean, stormy could have admin’ed the BF2 server, it’s not like he wouldn’t be fair. And being able to change the maps etc would have been nice.
3. WoW support.. because I just can’t get enough.
4. Between the dudes announcing “FREEPLAY!!! YOU NEED TO LEAVE!!! GET UP NOW!!!!†and the goddamn Drumming game and Guitar game, I wanted to kill myself. Next time, make the BYOC area like.. where the tabletop area was (which brings up an interesting point, you could have easily controlled the in/out flow of BYOC by only being able to access it from a hallway and having a desk set up.. not by being IN a hallway thoroughfare like it was now)
5. Organize “gaming times†for different games so that there are more people on the servers at any one time.
6. I agree with Stormy’s suggestion. It was weird to go from a 30 person game down to 15 when Freeplay would end.
Overall, I have to say I was happy with everything. My first BIG lan and aside from my own personal technical troubles, it was fun!
First off, I have to say to big red that dude, I’m SORRY. I was an asshat to you because I spent 8+ hours trying to get BF2 running on my computer and I was at my wits end. With the workload you had, I’m surprised you didn’t ban me. Thanks for your patience. Also the other enforcers were great and the LanpartyNW guys were exceptionally gracious and helped people out endlessly. Pro bono no less…
1. I personally would have liked to been able to play 24hrs… I know this has been touched on… but c’mon.
2. I think some of the more respectable people should have been given admin privledges. I mean, stormy could have admin’ed the BF2 server, it’s not like he wouldn’t be fair. And being able to change the maps etc would have been nice.
3. WoW support.. because I just can’t get enough.
4. Between the dudes announcing “FREEPLAY!!! YOU NEED TO LEAVE!!! GET UP NOW!!!!†and the goddamn Drumming game and Guitar game, I wanted to kill myself. Next time, make the BYOC area like.. where the tabletop area was (which brings up an interesting point, you could have easily controlled the in/out flow of BYOC by only being able to access it from a hallway and having a desk set up.. not by being IN a hallway thoroughfare like it was now)
5. Organize “gaming times†for different games so that there are more people on the servers at any one time.
6. I agree with Stormy’s suggestion. It was weird to go from a 30 person game down to 15 when Freeplay would end.
Overall, I have to say I was happy with everything. My first BIG lan and aside from my own personal technical troubles, it was fun!
This is the kind of feedback that will help the PAX LAN evolve into something really unique and cool--good stuff so far. I think that the most important part of the LAN that was missing that would make this into an integral part of the "Penny-Arcade Expo" was the confusion over spectators.
Namely, that they should be encouraged. Finals on projectors using spectator mode broadcast somewhere would be really cool to see. An announcer or even listening in on team chat would also be really cool. I don't know if this would all be technically possible but I think that it would be fun to find out and try to do. I know that area in the Meydenbauer is really a bottleneck for people to stand around in, but the next venue might offer up some really neat possibilities. Let's check it out.
I think that the best ideas so far were:
1. Round/Game based freeplay for the pub rigs.
2. More upfront info on the intraweb site--I think that would really be sweet if we'd had more time to anticipate what was going in on it. Great idea!
3. LAN "clusters" so that gamers of the same ilk would be seated near each other, and hopefully these clusters would also really be 'ready-made' teams. These would be the core groups that the public rigs would be joining into. I think that would be a fun and easy way to get really good games going. Also, identification would be neat.
4. Stuff. Last year I brought the TinyGod, and it has it's own built-in security, with a locking door to my PC, and a locking drawer for peripherals, and all of the rest of the hardware is locked down to the rolling rack with security Torx screws. I don't think that everyone should have to go to such extremes, but I *do* think that the attendees should take responsibility for their own stuff. Here's my suggestion:
I liked the security of having Enforcers checking in stuff, but it's just too much shit, and most of the stuff I had was too small and concealable for that to really be effective, so I was forced to carry it around for the entire time. Next year I'm going to bring one of those plastic storage bins from Target or whatnot and drill a hole in the cover and bottom to accept a small padlock. This is where all of my peripherals are going to go between events. CD-Roms, schwag, headphones, and your mouse can all be dumped into your 'locker/bin' for safe-keeping, and we'll be saving the Enforcers a lot of headache.
Once you put your name on your big bin, you'll only be checking in three things: CPU, Monitor, and Locker-Bin. Easy and secure.
As for making me an admin, cool, but I think that everyone should have a say and elect a "Mayor of LANville" so that we all have a point of contact and a person for the LANpartyNW guys and Enforcers to interface with before and during the event.
Yeah, we needed to make ourselves a bit more visable as network/game admins. I think we can get some volunteers for specific game admins and make up some name tags on the fly. The BF2 fiasco was our fault, we used something of a default config and it included the swear banning. What the Fuck?! OH well, we did get it fixed once it was brought to our attention, although it was brought up while one admin was trying to get the Quake Omegathon round started and I was scrambling to code up a script for the UT admin to get his servers launched. Just bad timing really.
I just read the thread again and it seems the problems can be put under the following categories:
Venue
Organization
I dont know the layout of the next venue but it *has* to be better than the current one. The issues mentioned in the last like 4 posts will be solved next year with the larger space available and more time to get things completed.
The maydenbauer just sucks for security because its like swiss cheese. We did the best we could with the room layout and the rules we were given by the venue staff.
First off, I have to say to big red that dude, I’m SORRY. I was an asshat to you because I spent 8+ hours trying to get BF2 running on my computer and I was at my wits end. With the workload you had, I’m surprised you didn’t ban me. Thanks for your patience.
No prob. btw: what ended up being the problem? Cause I saw you playing bf2 toward the end there.
i am too lazy to read all of this right now but i did see some complaints about the freeplay announcement guy.
I personally loved him, people shouldnt have to be told multiple times to get off their butts because people are waiting. I saw too many people last year basically squatting PCs. The fact that the the announcer had to be so forceful speaks more to the maturity of the people on the computers.
i am too lazy to read all of this right now but i did see some complaints about the freeplay announcement guy.
I personally loved him, people shouldnt have to be told multiple times to get off their butts because people are waiting. I saw too many people last year basically squatting PCs. The fact that the the announcer had to be so forceful speaks more to the maturity of the people on the computers.
Absolutely.
But... given that you can't easily change each of the 100s of gamers flowing through there, why not work on the one or two guys who were doing the announcing? I'm not sure if you were in the BYOC room the whole time, but it got really annoying after a while.
i am too lazy to read all of this right now but i did see some complaints about the freeplay announcement guy.
I personally loved him, people shouldnt have to be told multiple times to get off their butts because people are waiting. I saw too many people last year basically squatting PCs. The fact that the the announcer had to be so forceful speaks more to the maturity of the people on the computers.
Absolutely.
But... given that you can't easily change each of the 100s of gamers flowing through there, why not work on the one or two guys who were doing the announcing? I'm not sure if you were in the BYOC room the whole time, but it got really annoying after a while.
I was there most the time, I was in the back with Stormy. Im assuming if everyone just got up when they said "time", then the extra stuff would not be needed.
My suggestion... Next year give a 5 minute warning and a "Time's up" announcement. Anyone who needs to be told again to leave gets a punch on their badge and they dont get in again. I bet that threat would keep them in line.
My suggestion... Next year give a 5 minute warning and a "Time's up" announcement. Anyone who needs to be told again to leave gets a punch on their badge and they dont get in again. I bet that threat would keep them in line.
My suggestion... Next year give a 5 minute warning and a "Time's up" announcement. Anyone who needs to be told again to leave gets a punch on their badge and they dont get in again. I bet that threat would keep them in line.
i you
Want to be on my team next year? :P
A bit forward, and thanks but no thanks. Im a founding member of "team fucking huge" PAX Battlefield champs 2 years running now.
My suggestion... Next year give a 5 minute warning and a "Time's up" announcement. Anyone who needs to be told again to leave gets a punch on their badge and they dont get in again. I bet that threat would keep them in line.
i you
Want to be on my team next year? :P
A bit forward, and thanks but no thanks. Im a founding member of "team fucking huge" PAX Battlefield champs 2 years running now.
Posts
and now here comes the part where everyone says "OMFG A T1 THATS TEH SPEED!"
Divide that amongst over 200 people.
General internet access and cs:s (since its tournament) would take priority.
If next year PA could aquire a sponsor to give somthing simlair to t3 speed or higher then it might work
It's true that there's probably room for a more traditional lan party at PAX, and there's definitely a lot of potential for it to grow significantly, but seriously...it's not as if BYOC will ever take over PAX.
As far as WoW goes, based on what the server guys have told me about WoW (according to them, it only takes one user with poor network settings to completely destroy a perfectly good Internet line) and based on what Khoo has told me about the cost of the connection we had, it simply would not, at all, be possible to provide good WoW support at the event without raising prices for BYOC by an extremely significant and restrictive margin.
All I can really do at this point is swear up and down that if I return next year in the same role I filled this year, I will work even harder to try and make WoW available for play provided I'm not directed otherwise from Tycho, Gabe, Khoo, or Fehlauer.
(The comments attributed to Tycho in this thread are news to me, and rather unexpected).
I 100% agree with this and this is what I've been trying to say all along. To me, BYOC was:
- home base
- a reserved chair
- a place to leave my things
- access to the internet (email/web/forums)
- a way to download pictures
- something to do between PAX events
That $10 purchase is what made PAX 10x more enjoyable for us this year over last year. The fact that we got to play BF2 against some really cool guys and play in the UT2k4 tourney was incredibly cool too. But when the room got down to 10 peep after Midnight on Fri/Sat, the WoW would've been cool. We had a 5 man BRD/LBRS planned...
Its sounding like there are at least six PC customers at PAX:
1. WoW players.
2. LAN players (CS, UT, etc.).
3. People who just want a quiet place to check email and general Internet.
4. People who don't want to bring a PC, but do want to play WoW.
5. People who don't want to bring a PC, but do want to play LAN games.
6. People who don't want to bring a PC, but do want to check email and Internet.
For 1-3: Perhaps during pre-reg we can have BYOC people specify the kind of experience they're looking for, and group like-minded people together. If WoW really is as bandwidth-intensive as I'm hearing here then we'll charge a premium for MMORPG play (and explicitly ban MMORPGs from anywhere but the MMORPG section of the hall). We can also stick the MMORPG people on their own line so there's no possibility of them impacting tournament performance.
For 4: Too bad. A MMORPG is time-intensive. I'm not installing WoW on a donated freeplay machine just so one (1) attendee can enjoy it all weekend long.
For 5-6: This all depends on the number of machines we can secure from donors. Speakeasy helped a lot by providing free wifi throughout the con. But yeah, I'd like to see 100+ donated game machines for LAN games with another 20-40 for general Internet.
I like the suggestion to limit freeplay by rounds, rather than absolute time. And I like the idea of forcing all freeplay machines to play the same game, so as to avoid the issue of tiny teams. As in: from 1:00p to 5:00p all freeplay machines are exclusively CS. Don't want to play CS? Come back later.
-Mike
As far as giving MMORPG gamers a seperate line i think that may be a good idea however they should have access to the other line as well. Ie, have a pink marked MMORPG hub and a black marked LAN hub in the MMORPG area. I played a lot of CS/BF1942 during PAX this year but would have also played WoW for a few hours in the evenings when it cooled down for a while. I would probably register as a FPS/MMORPG gamer and wouldn't want to lock myself out of FPS games if i was suck on a MMORPG link that didn't have access to the internal FPS servers.
stabn
As for freeplay machines, i would think that lanwerx or another lan gaming center would be all over sponsoring that area with their own machines in exchange for the massive advertising they could push.
I don't think that'd be too big of an issue...in fact, I've got a port tunneller sitting on my desktop that should do it now, but I haven't tested it yet.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
1) pax.lan was a joke. It listed the same few, no-population servers, and none of the web apps worked, or had significant problems. "Going for food" didn't work at all. "Shout box" was very restrictive on the text (although it was kinda fixed), and you couldn't set anything up without knowing where people were. "Open Play Game Request" was not a way to indicate interest in a game, but to list a server - and it still didn't work. There are two ways to run this kind of event: a) open; allow WOW and other MMOs, allow people to coordinate and play servers of any games, built based on good scheduling/interest apps on the website; and b) closed - one or two games at the most, everybody plays these games, they make a big deal out of those games in the room.
2) We needed seat identification badly for a variety of reasons. Already addressed above and in earlier posts.
3) The frequently-angry freeplay notices were very annoying. That's been discussed earlier.
4) They didn't want it to be a hideway, but without any kind of coordination, community, or "event" features (bigscreen showing a server, etc.),
5) Tournaments were very poorly announced, and all the ones I heard about were team-only.
6) If you dug around on pax.lan, you saw a listing for teamspeak and IRC. The teamspeak server was never turned on (or the IP on the site was wrong), and nobody was ever logged into IRC. Of course, since there was no coordination of any part of this event, that's not surprising.
I played some UT and BF2, but it was difficult to find a populated server.
Too few players could be a problem, but if they let us organize ourselves with a WORKING pax.lan, it would have been better, or if they had let us play WOW, etc., then it would have been better.
Most of the enforcers by the door were really good, but some were nasty, forcing me to edge by them as they filled the doorway, giving dirty looks, etc. I did not have the security issue on checkout that others did, although I did leave Sunday morning. I took my CDs and expensive headphones with me in my backpack around PAX, so I didn't have any problems that way.
Overall - if they want to be this loose, then they need to make it more open (and, if they want to be helpful, then let us organize ourselves through powerful, working web apps). It was too little organization to be a "LAN event", and too many restrictions to be a nice "spot to relax away from PAX."
I appreciated a quiet place to spend some hours between panels, etc., but it would have been better in either direction - more "open" (which DiscoDave sound amenable to, but end3r seems philosophically opposed to), or more "organized," which is what it sounds like we'll have next year, which would be great.
Lanwerx did it last year and I heard it was a complete fuck-job. Thats why they weren't used this year.
The servers listed were the dedicated servers provided. I'm not aware of any dedicated (non tournament) servers that weren't listed. Making it easy to find a server with people on it was definitely a goal and I actually had thought we had succeeded at that, although a bigger "Game of the Hour" presense definitely could have been used.
5). In addition to tournament times being listed on the pax website for months ahead of time, we also ran pa announcements for all of them. There are certainly areas of the building that are sufficiently noisy where you can't hear them, but that information definitely should have also been on pax.lan.
6). The teamspeak server wasn't working (or incorrect)? That's news to me! =/
I had originally planned on someone coding in an irc window into the main in real time, unfortunately they backed out and I wasn't able to get it running in time and as such the irc server went completely ignored as far as I can tell (I'm not much of a coder). I do see that as being an important part of the webpage for 2006 and it'll definitely be up and running in time for that. Furthermore, barring another catastrophe, we'll have more time to tweak things and iron out any conflicts between the page software and the php install to make sure everything is running exactly as you'd expect it to.
Hopefully this would help address most of your issues. I'm sorry you seem to have had a negative experience, but I appreciate your feedback.
LAN centers really can't offer much if anything to PAX as in order for them to make money they need to have the computers in their store, and the advertising they'd get in return for offering up a bunch of hardware does very little for improving business at LAN centers. It's all about events and word of mouth between locals and regulars, something PAX wouldn't help with.
From the earlier posts, it sounds like you all had very little time to prepare; most of my comments amounted to "... and it showed."
From what's been bandied about on this thread - the (unofficial?) announcement of the new venue and end3r's and your own comments, it sounds like next year's event is going to be great.
I did enjoy it for what it was - quiet respite from the rest of PAX, where I could get my game on, SP or MP, to cool down a bit. My comments, again, were to make the point that it would have been better either more open, or more organized; I understand that there were good reasons for neither one happening, though (not the way you wanted to work it, and not enough time, respectively).
Next year will be both more organized and more open. Like PAX as a whole, I think the BYOC area should be whatever you want it to be.
This is the dude with the pony Computer…
First off, I have to say to big red that dude, I’m SORRY. I was an asshat to you because I spent 8+ hours trying to get BF2 running on my computer and I was at my wits end. With the workload you had, I’m surprised you didn’t ban me. Thanks for your patience. Also the other enforcers were great and the LanpartyNW guys were exceptionally gracious and helped people out endlessly. Pro bono no less…
1. I personally would have liked to been able to play 24hrs… I know this has been touched on… but c’mon.
2. I think some of the more respectable people should have been given admin privledges. I mean, stormy could have admin’ed the BF2 server, it’s not like he wouldn’t be fair. And being able to change the maps etc would have been nice.
3. WoW support.. because I just can’t get enough.
4. Between the dudes announcing “FREEPLAY!!! YOU NEED TO LEAVE!!! GET UP NOW!!!!†and the goddamn Drumming game and Guitar game, I wanted to kill myself. Next time, make the BYOC area like.. where the tabletop area was (which brings up an interesting point, you could have easily controlled the in/out flow of BYOC by only being able to access it from a hallway and having a desk set up.. not by being IN a hallway thoroughfare like it was now)
5. Organize “gaming times†for different games so that there are more people on the servers at any one time.
6. I agree with Stormy’s suggestion. It was weird to go from a 30 person game down to 15 when Freeplay would end.
Overall, I have to say I was happy with everything. My first BIG lan and aside from my own personal technical troubles, it was fun!
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
This is the kind of feedback that will help the PAX LAN evolve into something really unique and cool--good stuff so far. I think that the most important part of the LAN that was missing that would make this into an integral part of the "Penny-Arcade Expo" was the confusion over spectators.
Namely, that they should be encouraged. Finals on projectors using spectator mode broadcast somewhere would be really cool to see. An announcer or even listening in on team chat would also be really cool. I don't know if this would all be technically possible but I think that it would be fun to find out and try to do. I know that area in the Meydenbauer is really a bottleneck for people to stand around in, but the next venue might offer up some really neat possibilities. Let's check it out.
I think that the best ideas so far were:
1. Round/Game based freeplay for the pub rigs.
2. More upfront info on the intraweb site--I think that would really be sweet if we'd had more time to anticipate what was going in on it. Great idea!
3. LAN "clusters" so that gamers of the same ilk would be seated near each other, and hopefully these clusters would also really be 'ready-made' teams. These would be the core groups that the public rigs would be joining into. I think that would be a fun and easy way to get really good games going. Also, identification would be neat.
4. Stuff. Last year I brought the TinyGod, and it has it's own built-in security, with a locking door to my PC, and a locking drawer for peripherals, and all of the rest of the hardware is locked down to the rolling rack with security Torx screws. I don't think that everyone should have to go to such extremes, but I *do* think that the attendees should take responsibility for their own stuff. Here's my suggestion:
I liked the security of having Enforcers checking in stuff, but it's just too much shit, and most of the stuff I had was too small and concealable for that to really be effective, so I was forced to carry it around for the entire time. Next year I'm going to bring one of those plastic storage bins from Target or whatnot and drill a hole in the cover and bottom to accept a small padlock. This is where all of my peripherals are going to go between events. CD-Roms, schwag, headphones, and your mouse can all be dumped into your 'locker/bin' for safe-keeping, and we'll be saving the Enforcers a lot of headache.
Once you put your name on your big bin, you'll only be checking in three things: CPU, Monitor, and Locker-Bin. Easy and secure.
As for making me an admin, cool, but I think that everyone should have a say and elect a "Mayor of LANville" so that we all have a point of contact and a person for the LANpartyNW guys and Enforcers to interface with before and during the event.
Venue
Organization
I dont know the layout of the next venue but it *has* to be better than the current one. The issues mentioned in the last like 4 posts will be solved next year with the larger space available and more time to get things completed.
The maydenbauer just sucks for security because its like swiss cheese. We did the best we could with the room layout and the rules we were given by the venue staff.
No prob. btw: what ended up being the problem? Cause I saw you playing bf2 toward the end there.
I personally loved him, people shouldnt have to be told multiple times to get off their butts because people are waiting. I saw too many people last year basically squatting PCs. The fact that the the announcer had to be so forceful speaks more to the maturity of the people on the computers.
1) WoW......stay at home please, save the limited bandwidth for normal internet use.
2) We needed smaller sized BF2 servers and people that knew how to run them, which leads me to....
3) Language filter on the bf2 servers? a silly idea no one knew how to remove.
Absolutely.
But... given that you can't easily change each of the 100s of gamers flowing through there, why not work on the one or two guys who were doing the announcing? I'm not sure if you were in the BYOC room the whole time, but it got really annoying after a while.
I was there most the time, I was in the back with Stormy. Im assuming if everyone just got up when they said "time", then the extra stuff would not be needed.
My suggestion... Next year give a 5 minute warning and a "Time's up" announcement. Anyone who needs to be told again to leave gets a punch on their badge and they dont get in again. I bet that threat would keep them in line.
i
Want to be on my team next year? :P
A bit forward, and thanks but no thanks. Im a founding member of "team fucking huge" PAX Battlefield champs 2 years running now.
NO, you cannot steal my helo driver.