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Announcements Entertainment Games

North America's Largest LAN Party 193

Posted by timothy from the what-about-wan-parties dept.
An anonymous reader sends this early announcement (registration will open later in the month) for Fragapalooza, writing "North America's largest LAN party is coming again this year. Scheduled for July 17th - 20th, 4 Days of non-stop gaming. If the numbers are the same as last year we should see roughly 1100 people packing the Mayfield Trade Center in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Sponsors for past events included some of the biggest names in technology including Intel, Microsoft, ATI, Sympatico and Cisco just to name a few."
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North America's Largest LAN Party More

North America's Largest LAN Party

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  • Lots of machines.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:23PM (#5414114) Homepage Journal

    If they haven't patched their machines it may also be the Largest DDoS Party in North America..
    • "Don't be ridiculous. There's no WAY we're getting hit by 20,000 machines simultaneou..."

      [abruptly cut off as several servers explode]

      • Re:Lots of machines.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by harmgsn ( 612057 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @05:45PM (#5414954) Homepage
        What about QuakeCon? They've had well over 1100 people for the last couple of years. Here [quakecon.org] is their site. Last year, they filled up the Mesquite Convention Center (Mesquite, Texas) and were turning people away. Total count for last year was somewhere around 1,200 people in the BYOC alone. This does not include all the spectators or people that diddn't bring a comp but played on someone else's... Their sponsors include: ATI (last year), Nvidia (year before), Bawls, AMD, Linksys, Speakeasy, id Software (id software auctually pays for most of it). I would have to say that QuakeCon is FAR larger that the one you're referring to. For those interested in going: the BYOC is completely FREE. Yes, you pay nothing at all to get to participate in QuakeCon. They have $30,000+ tournaments (that's grand prize). Normally, they're held in August here in Texas (Mesquite, Texas... east of downtown Dallas) and registration normally fills up within a day of it being opened. =\
        • I was going to point out the same event (I was over there help run it in 2000). A lot of LAN parties like to run events and call themselves the biggest/first at something without doing any checking at all. If the Big Day In [bigdayin.com] down here in Australia can get a full house of 1000 people I'm sure you can do a LOT better over in the states with a lot more population to work with.

    • 1100 guests??? bah!

      Around here that's considered a failiure or good for your first try.

      This easter the worlds largest lan party will be The Gathering [gathering.org] with 5100 guests. Free tickets are still available if you are coming from outside Europe and normally priced tickets are available for people from Europe, but outside Norway.

      I know because we sold the first 4300 tickets in 6 hours via PTN [partyticket.net] and there are over 1000 people on the waiting list for the rest of the tickets.

      The worlds second largest party is DreamHack [dreamhack.se] in sweden with around 5000 guests.

      Assembly [assembly.org] in Finland is also quite large with over 3000 guests.

      Due to general anti-piracy hysteria in Denmark The Party [theparty.dk] (the worlds first large party) had less than 1000 guests this year, down from over 3000 a few years ago.

  • WAN Party? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Should it not be called a WAN party, when the number of players exceeds the limit imposed on one LAN by Ethernet technology?

    E.
    • 1100 is nowhere near the limits of ethernet; you just have to consider a few other matters like how to subnet it, how to hook together all the switches and stuff like that. Nothing too difficult for a competent network engineer and since Cisco are sponsoring, it's possible/likely that there will be some good networking skills on hand.

      In any case, ethernet doesn't always mean LAN; we have two sites which are about 4 miles apart (as the crow flies) which would count as a WAN but still goes over gigabit ethernet fibres.

    • No it should not be called a "WAN Party". To be blunt, a WAN is nothing more than a LAN that crosses large geograaphic areas. Just putting in a router does not a WAN make.
    • Limitations of a LAN? You could run a 64516 machine LAN with nothing but hubs if you really felt like it. It would be an insanely bad idea, but you COULD do it.

  • How many women usually go to these things? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:24PM (#5414128) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone have any idea how many women go to events like this? What's the ratio?

  • Call Guiness (Score:2, Funny)

    by t0ny ( 590331 )
    could be a world record for the largest non-female grouping of people ever! And "Laura Croft" doesnt count.

  • How many people? (Score:1, Troll)

    by larien ( 5608 )
    we should see roughly 1100 people packing the Mayfield Trade Center
    Given the low standard of personaly hygiene some geeks have, you may want to stock up on air freshener and/or nose plugs...

    Note: this is not intended to be aimed at those geeks who do actually know what soap, water and deoderant are. The problem is, even 10% of unclean, sweaty bodies would be enough to make things unpleasant.

    • "Note: this is not intended to be aimed at those geeks who do actually know what soap, water and deoderant are. The problem is, even 10% of unclean, sweaty bodies would be enough to make things unpleasant."

      Hey, I've been in Turkey for six months now. Trust me, you get used to body odor. ;)

    • Re:How many people? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )
      Given the low standard of personaly hygiene some geeks have, you may want to stock up on air freshener and/or nose plugs...

      Man, you ain't kidding on the noseplugs. Air freshener runs screaming from pungent B.O. There won't be many who stink, but all it takes is a few and your eyes water and all you can think of is getting fresh, sweet air into your sinuses.

      This, naturally leads to non-obvious sponsors. I.e. hand out free sample size deodorants and breath cleaners. It probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to have people patrol these things and properly chastise (e.g. humiliate) offenders. Nothing like being shown up as a pig among your peers to get the point across.

    • www.gathering.org - 5000 Attendents.. suck on that ;-)

  • Canada Eh? (Score:2, Funny)

    by jade42 ( 608565 )
    Ah my family's homeland. What better place is there to frag but in a country where you don't worry about getting shot. We can only hope that it's going to have lots of caffeine and the bathrooms are plentiful.
    • Yeah, like the other day down here in Pensylvania, in this crime-riddled country called the US, and I was walking along, and i turn around and there's a gang of thugs (okay they were Amish), playing loud music on their boom boxes with their baggy, sagging pants (fine, fine, they were singing 'I love Jesus' and were dressed in overalls) brandishing knives and loading up their gats (rakes, gats, farming equipment -- whatever: it's all dangerous shit) ready to pop a cap in Jebadiah (your's truly). Sweet Lord, I'm sure glad I ducked into that barn and waited for them to pass.
      • I really wish I had more mod points. ::Sighs::

        I find it funny how every Canadian I've talked to thinks that "Living in America" means "Dodging semi-automatic gunfire so you can jump into your massive SUV".

        I guess it's a combination of Canadian media (most media outlets only give out bad news, and when you hear nothing but murder murder murder and you never hear anything positive, it's easy to form a negative opinion) and the fact that every Canadian tourist I've seen wears Canadian symbols all over their body, which is idiotic. Any person with a room temperature IQ will tell you if you travel to another country, try to hide the fact you are a tourist. Tourists get ripped off and tourists get jacked.

        Canadian tourists wearing a big red maple leaf on both sides of their shirt would be better off wearing neon crosshairs and a "Tourist carries more than $100 Cash" sign. When they get jacked, they tell their friends. :)

        Lived in the US most of my life. Never been mugged or shot. I've been gassed, but that was WTO shit.
        • It's just part of the mock rivalry, Americans make lots of Canadian jokes too. Because we're really so alike it's funny to exaggerate the differences and pretend to be bitter enemies. I work with a Canadian guy and we go back and forth like this all the time. Lighten up a bit.
          • For some it's mock rivalry. For those Canadians who live here permanenetly, sure it is. They chose to move here, after all. But for those who are here for time periods shorter than 3 months, they still maintain the ACTUAL mentality which is mocked by your duo.

  • Too small for me.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:36PM (#5414199)
    Here in Sweden we have DreamHack [dreamhack.se], which is about six times larger than what's mentioned in the article. It also happens to be the largest party of this kind in the world :-).

    • Re:Too small for me.. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Too small for you? You prefer a higher concentration of sweaty, pear-shaped losers?
    • Agreed, there are considerably larger LAN parties here in Germany, as well. The largest I've been to must've been about the size of this one - personally, I'm not too big of a fan.
    • Here in Belgium it's the same - the largest lan-party here was 1600 people... And that for a small country with 10 milj inhabitants... I was really suprised when I read that..

      Hmmm by the way - according to the official site - it would be canada's largest lanparty...

      What:
      Canada's Largest Gaming Event / LAN Party
      • I thought about this too, and I guess the headline is designed to bring out people screaming "but this is not in America, it's in bl*dy Canada!" or something to that effect. You know, for people to shoot down with witty comments. Canada is in North America, and if there's no larger event in the US (or, I guess (although my geography was never strong) Mexico), then the headline is true.
    • It's the same here (Norway). The Gathering [gathering.org], Norway's biggest LAN party, is going to have 5100 attendants this year. Last year, about 1/5 of the 4500 attendants were female. Norway is a very small country, with only 4.5 million inhabitants.
      • The Gathering is NOT a LAN for crying out loud.
        it's a COMPUTER PARTY.. with a underline and all those nasty colours you can put on a piece of text under "PARTY".. :-D

        Attendent at The Gathering '98-'01, Crew: '02-'03

  • Toronto (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The LAN Party is held in Alberta. If they would have gotten a trade center or an exhibition place in Toronto, they might have gotten some more visitors than their estimated amount of visitors previously held.

    Well, just a thought.

  • French's biggest lan party (Score:4, Informative)

    by jeriqo ( 530691 ) <jeriqo&unisson,org> on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:40PM (#5414228)
    The French's biggest lan party is called "lan-arena",
    the last one (7th) had 1500 players and 8000 visitors..

    More info here [esworldcup.com]

  • Recognize anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:43PM (#5414241)
    You can bet that most of these people [lotl.cc] will be there...
    • Quote from the front-page: "These two guys each have several Gigabyte collections of mp3's/pr0n/warez/movies, and proceed to consume all the network's bandwidth by sharing and transferring these treasures between each other." How pathetic... Lan-Party doesn't mean leeching (well, on the last day maybe), but ZOCKEN!

  • Only 1100? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Talla ( 95956 )
    1100 people making it the biggest in North America? That's pretty lame. Although not strictly a pure LAN party, the biggest in Norway (with 4,5 million inhabitants) is The Gathering, and this year the first 4300 tickets that were laid out for sale was sold out after eight hours.

    • Re:Only 1100? (Score:2, Informative)

      by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 )
      Once you get to about 500 people, it's all about the same. Tournaments, prizes, exhibitors. The difference between 1,100 people and 4,500 is mostly numerical.
      • TG ain't a pure ga(y)mer lan, there are a lot of scene events, these are more spectator friendly events than watching CS....

        Scene events like demos often draw a huge crowd. There's something special about sittin/standing together with hundreds of other enthusiasts watching wicked demos. Check out scene.org for more info.
        That's the beauty of a large LAN, there's enough sceners to feel at home, there's enough gamers yelling for those who like that. On a 500 person LAN you would never get 250 people competing in non-game competitions like 4k, 64k, demo, music, tracking etc. Reminds me, I've been to TG and a host of other lans, and last weekend I was in the crew organizing a 200 person lan in. What I just don't get is all the bloody CS players screaming when they lose or win.
        Picture this: You're walking quietly down an aisle making sure noone sleeps "on" their place, cos that is a fire hazard, and without warning some 14 year old in a hooded gangsta sweater stands up and yell "GULL" (gold). Last TG there was a lot of people yelling "Arne" out at random. Arne is pretty common name, the equivalent of Michael in the US.
        Is this kind of behaviour a local phenomenon in Norway, or does that happen all over the world?

  • Bigger (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dethkultur ( 617989 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:52PM (#5414287) Homepage
    Quakecon [quakecon.org], gets more, has for a couple of years now.

    And as for grrl gamers showing up, yes there will be plenty I assure you. Some hot ones too. Only maybe 1 out of 50 of participants will be female based on the big lans I've been to, but they do show up (usually as a gf, or MOM even, but there are some female clans out there.)

    • >> but there are some female clans out there

      Are they looking for a mascot?

      But seriously, as far as Canadian Lan Parties, fragala is pretty decent.

  • That's not the largest. (Score:3, Informative)

    by revmoo ( 652952 ) <slashdot&meep,ws> on Saturday March 01, 2003 @03:54PM (#5414300) Homepage Journal
    What about million man lan [millionmanlan.com]? 2500 people in Louisville, KY, and another 2500 in Los Angeles, CA.

  • LAN moments (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 )
    I love LAN parties. The smell... is the only drawback. :P

    My wife and I actually Honeymooned at the third Monster Mash LAN party. Seriously... we got married and went there! She was prego at the time and we couldn't fly, so there was nothing else going on. But seriously... it was cool of her to go there.

    No, my wife isn't a gamer. Just a really cool chick.

  • If on DAY 3 or 4 you wait more than five minutes for a toilet to become free... dial 911!
  • is throwing a temper tantrum right about now.
  • That's nothing compared to this LAN Party! [attrition.org]
  • It's nice, in a time like this (ie War(s) pending) that there are still those good 'ole LAN partys being held. Since I can't go I hope everyone has a blast!

    Frag one for me :)

  • Can anyone tell me what is so positive in how big the party is? Last time I was on a LAN party we were about 20 persons, and most of us knew each other. And it was real fun. But I doubt that it would have been that much fun if we hadn't know each other. Big parties are often dull because you just sit there by your computer, something you could do at home too.

  • Quakecon has surpassed that amount in the last 2 years. in August 2002, the LAN, not the actual amount of spectators/tourney particpants was totalled at 1300 ports. (people were getting turned away.) Actual amount of people attending the event was some where in the excesses of 3500 people.

    largest LAN in North America... pish.. riiiight.
  • At TheParty we usually pack around 4000 people, that's in Denmark, come on, you can do better than this, shu.
  • Well over here in Belgium we have LAN parties with around 1500 people.. It just reakky r0x. And that post by someone you said that large LANs are dull cause you don't know anyone.. Well that's just not true.. I'm pretty 'anti social' .. but I met heaps of people on that one large LAN.. these large LANs just bring the people together.. everyone is ALIKE.. it was one of the best times I've had.. :D
  • 1100 people, 1100 legal copies of fragging games? I hope the organisers at least include a "I certify that all my software is legal" clause to give them some indemnity. The BSA (or Canadian equivalent) would be itching to raid the place - imagine the propaganda value: "BSA breaks up giant software piracy ring". (If not the BSA, then the games manufacturers - send mole to fragfest, look for evidence of pirate copies of their software, get warrant to raid fragfest, profit!!)
    • "The BSA (or Canadian equivalent) would be itching to raid the place"

      If ANYONE wants to put their grubby hands on my computer, they better have a search warrant in hand, otherwise they be gettin' straight up bitchslapped! (In Quake I mean, physical confrontation alarms me) *snort*

  • Also the worst run LAN ever (Score:3, Informative)

    by strAtEdgE ( 151030 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @05:54PM (#5415029)
    I've been to all but one of the FP events since it's inception in 1997, I even won the tournament that year back when everyone played nothing but quake. I've got to warn people though that with size comes a distinct lack of quality... last years FP was a complete disaster, the words anarchy and chaos come to mind.

    I definately won't be going back and if you're more interterested in a good time than simply being around lots of computers, I suggest you go to a LAN that hasn't completely outgrown itself.
  • Fragapalooza.com says that on the front page. Not "North America".
  • 1,1000 attendees? That's nothing compared to 13,500 [aerotechnews.com] in the USA last year. And it lasted 3 weeks!
  • Nice thing about the lan parties lately, lots of prizes, both cash and computer hardware/software.

    Here in Washington, we had GDFest [gdfest.com] and the IVGF [ivgf.com] in Seattle. GDFest claimed to be the biggest lan party on the west coast. Was cool, sponsered by ATI. ATI picked one guy, who snap a Leadtek 4600 in half, to win a ATI 9700. Snapped the thing in 2 pieces. NCGamers [ncgamers.com] really ran a top class lanparty.

    IVGF Just started this weekend, didnt hear about it till Thursday and all the slots where filled. Strange it wasnt on LanParty.com [lanparty.com] In fact, i dont think GDFest2003 was on it either. Really would of liked to have a chance to enter. $50,000 in prizes. Didnt realize it was the same people as GDFest.

  • That aint many for a country of canadas size, one of new zealands biggest LANs (http://www.equinox.net.nz) attracts over 600 people (60 of them female), and NZ has a population of 3.9million....
    Canada has how many million? huh :)

    long live NZ

    oh i almost forgot
    http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/dal/equin ox.avi 8mb avi of equinox...

  • If your looking for some good ol Counter Strike online you should checkout http://www.ugleague.net for an online league :) There is a huge dedicated community to these lan parties on gamesnet and I'm glad to be apart of it ;)
  • The second I read this I knew this was a Canadian event... Why? Cause nobody in the U.S. would call it this, we don't need to associate ourselves with someone else constantly.

    Canada, worlds number one at being just north of the United States. =P

  • Call Guiness (Score:2, Funny)

    by dlb ( 17444 )

    This is probably the largest congregation of male virgins in history.

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