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Games Entertainment

MillionManLAN Party: The Doors Are Open 168

Posted by michael from the remember-to-eat dept.
socram writes "Tom's Hardware has an overview about one of the biggest Lan Parties. This event is sponsored by AMD, ATI, ASUS, ABIT, Cisco, NVIDIA, and the Hitachi storage division. Check this article out, more than 1000 people killing their brain cells! Presentation by ASUS, ATI's Q&A Session and more."
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MillionManLAN Party: The Doors Are Open More

MillionManLAN Party: The Doors Are Open

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  • What's with the million? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 28, 2003 @01:46PM (#6320401)

    Does this event actually fit one million people, or is that just hyperbole?

    Dreamhack Summer 2003 [dreamhack.org] had about 4000 visitors.

  • yeah but in Louisville, KY ??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by malakai ( 136531 ) * on Saturday June 28, 2003 @01:47PM (#6320408) Journal
    why?

    Hell, pick Orlando so people can do a theme park or something else that makes the trip more worthwhile. Or those with families can let the kids go do something while they hang out geeking.

    LA, NYC, Orlando, New Orleans... the places are well known. All major events occur at them. They are picked for good reason....

    Louisville, KY??? what are they smoking. No wonder they can barely break 1k people.

    -malakai

    • Re:yeah but in Louisville, KY ??? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Louisville and the surrounding area is where most of the people that put on the event live. Would it get a bigger crowd in a bigger city? Yeah, but it doesn't do too bad being in KY. That, and it's held at the Kentucky State Fair and Exposition Center, and Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom just happens to be right in the middle of the complex.
    • Why is having it in Kentucky a big deal? It seems to make pretty good sense to me. It's centrally located, for pretty easy access from the Eastern US and the Midwest, and I have heard that Louisville has a pretty fun nightlife.

    • Re:yeah but in Louisville, KY ??? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by invultor ( 669012 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:06PM (#6320518)
      I really doubt most of the attendees even have children. It's a LAN party, not a vacation trip! And if you need a theme park to "make the trip more worthwhile", then you are not geek enough for this kind of event anyways! It's about surviving through days and nights of antisocial filesharing, fragging and fun, even if you need a Jolt Cola IV. Who has times for themeparks? The UT2k3 tournament is about to start!
      • I don't know who you think is on the other end of your bang stick in most computer games, but it's not all swm 18yos. There are a lot of 25-40 with families and play these games. Lots of LAN parties i've gone to, i've been the only one w/o a family.

        -malakai

    • Re:yeah but in Louisville, KY ??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @03:10PM (#6320792)
      Hey I live here and I'll be first to say that this event is friggin huge. Sure they could have picked a bigger city, but what city has loose enough power restrictions, fire regulation standards, and a big enough convention hall to allow all these people???

      Lousville, Ky. Add in on top of that Kentucky has one of the largest nerd populations short of Cali and Florida (per capita that is). Just about 70% of the people I know here are nerds. Not to mention the city I live in (Berea Ky) has about 7 computer stores (all within like 4 miles of each other, and this is a pretty small town). Plus the temperature is just perfect, and all the bawls you can drink. Just because we are in Kentucky means nothing. Oh yeah and did we forget to mention, Kentucky's schools have one of the largest networks in the world, almost every computer in every school in Kentucky is hooked into it. Maybe this is why we have so many computer nerds here.....
      • ciroknight says:

        Hey I live here and I'll be first to say that this event is friggin huge. Sure they could have picked a bigger city, but

        what city has loose enough power restrictions, fire regulation standards, and a big enough convention hall to allow all these people???

        umm, NYC, Orlando, New Orleans, LA all have convention centers that dwarf your expo center. Power and Fire are not an issue as long as it's done correctly.

        ciroknight says:

        Lousville, Ky. Add in on top of that Kentucky has one of the larg

        • Okay I live in Louisville myself... I never would have thought anything like this would happen here.. but you know what.. who cares! it happens here get over it and buy a ticket... someone is always going to complain that its too far away cause its always going to be too far for some people. But you also have to take into concideration that if since it is in (quite unknown) Louisville, KY there is probably fewer of the problems as there would be in a larger city.
    • Louisville makes perfect sense. It's central. It's got a good airport. Lots of convention space and hotels. And really good...

      Louisville, KY??? what are they smoking.

      Exactly, my friend... Exactly.

    • Yeah... all the techies clearly missed the theme park that's NEXT DOOR TO THE CONVENTION HALL. Besides, these people no doubt have huge families, drive SUVs, and really need a place to park Martha and the kiddo's while they're in the hall sipping scotch on the rocks with the stuffed shirts...

      Years ago, Borland was hosting a party in San Diego for their annual developer convention. Cool place, but as I was standing around chatting with other Delphi programmers, I realized that we were not only all wearing t
    • A) MillionManLan is just really large lanwar [lanwar.com], which was started, and continues, in Louisville.

      B) Louisville does have a Six flags, and a minor league baseball team or two if you really want to get out for a while.

      C) It's a lan party, not a family vaction. 98% of the attendies are between the ages of 16 and 24 or so.

      D) It's a central location in the US, so more ppl can attend.

      D) Your there to play games!

      E) I've been to a few lanwars, and the first mml. They totally kick ass, and there really is no rea
    • Actually, Louisville [louisville.com] is central for a lot of cities in the country. It is just a few (driving) hours from a lot of the major cities in the midwest and southeast. 4 hours from Columbus, OH and St. Louis, MO; 6 hours from Chicago, IL; 3 from Nashville, TN; 8 from Atlanta, GA and 2 from Indianapolis, IN.

      It is home to the Kentucky Derby [churchilldowns.com], home of the First fully contained experimental artifical heart transplant [courier-journal.com]. And, besides that, I live here and love it here. I have been here all of my life and there's

  • Smell (Score:5, Funny)

    by jrap ( 614351 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @01:50PM (#6320431) Homepage
    Hope it will be well ventilated. Even at small LAN parties, no matter how much cologne is sprayed, the BO from geeks quickly takes over the whole room. Hate to see what happens with one million nerds...

  • Weird (Score:1)

    by dtldl ( 644451 )
    Did anyone else think its weird ATI and Nvidia sponsoring the same event?
    Maybe Asus/Abit as well but thats not an as obvious rivalry.

    • Re:Weird (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thryllkill ( 52874 )
      it makes perfect sense, since they are both targeting the same demographic.
    • Yeah the crowd here tends to be a bit more into ati than nvidia. Thats probably because ati has been to like 3-4 of our events so far. Though we all treat Nvidia with the respect they deserve. Besides more free stuff ;p
      • NVidia has a very small presence - almost no free stuff, nobody actually on the floor talking to people, etc.

        But the real reason ATI is so big is because they have the fastest boards available now, and everyone is running them. 2 years ago everyone was on NVidia's nuts because they were the fastest.

  • Sponsor Talks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @01:51PM (#6320439) Homepage
    I guess this is what happens when you have a giant corporate-sponsored lan party...you get lots of advertising and sponsor hype.

    I mean think about it, the spirit of the lan party is in gathering your friends for hours of fragging and trash-talking. In a giant event like this, you're stuck between uber 1337 n1nj4 d00dz (strangers telling you to ph33r them, j00 n00b!) and companies advertising products in your face all day.

    I'd take a teeny little router with a few friends any day instead.

    • Re:Sponsor Talks (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      All the sponsor discussions have been off in a separate area of the event, and it's been pretty low-key. I don't have a sales-gerbil up in my face all day or anything. They've got products to talk about, sure, but they've also got free stuff to give away and people to answer questions about their products. It's been handled really well.

    • Re:Sponsor Talks (Score:4, Interesting)

      by deadsaijinx* ( 637410 ) <animemeken@hotmail.com> on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:02PM (#6320493) Homepage
      agreed, LAN parties should be about you, your 30 closest friends, and that dumpster you plan on diving into. On the other hand, at these huge ones you could score some free MoBos, and all you have to do is shave and paint your head ;]

      Unfortunately, LAN parties will soon be illegal under the DMCA, as they provide some of the fastest pirating networks available.

    • Re:Sponsor Talks (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) *
      I always thought that the minute you invote companies into an event you become their whores too. Then I went to QuakeCon and learned that the vendors and the BYOC can comfortably co-mingle without becoming too much of a hassle and in your face.

      Or perhaps it's just that they pick vendors that respect the gaming community. I never felt any pressure to go over to ATI's booth last year and really do anything. They had a great idea for their booth: a "chill-down" area, where geeks could go to watch a movie, dri
    • I agree that the small party has many merits. However the larger lanparties aka lanwar( which isnot sponser held its held by a local lanner he pulls in sponsers but they do not run the show in any way and you aren't forced to see their advertising. You only go see it if you want to. Which I fully recomend as you can have many thought provoking questions arise.) The size of lanwar draws many varied gamers. If you have 30 people in your basement or what ever and a couple guys get bored of playing your ube
  • I've been to Dreamhack [dreamhack.org] twice now and they've estimated everything from 4000 to 6000 people.

    How's that for a Lan, Tom'sHardware?
    • Judging by the non-english main page for DreamHack, I'm gonna guess it's not in the US. This is a big deal for a U.S. LAN party. Burden (the head dude behind it all) completly admits they do it bigger in overseas, but that's far away. You think geeks hate hauling their gear 100 yards from parking lot to table? Imagine how much it pisses them off to move shit overseas. And do all those big name companies (AMD, ATI, ASUS, etc) sponsor Dreamhack? Tom's Hardware isn't concerned with how many people show; they
    • You have to remember we are probably a younger party. Burden(organizer) has a goal of 5000 people. And I remember him saying, in refernece to lantrocity which turned poeple away @ like 1500 people, I don't want to turn anyone away. Its mostly the atomsphere here that I return for. And meeting people from all over that I wouldn't normally.

  • What about the ladies? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They should provide bodyguards for the girls. If I were one, I sure as hell wouldnt want a million men...oops...nerds after me...

  • QuakeCon (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) * <.moc.liamg. .ta. .stnapyffuprm.> on Saturday June 28, 2003 @01:56PM (#6320466)
    I'm not sure how appropriate it is to call the LAN party the "Million Man LAN" when only 1000 people are expected to attend.

    This year QuakeCon in Dallas will have 2,000 BYOC attendees, with 3,000 total people expected to show up.

    • Those 1000 are RIAA(TM)-adjusted. These people probably download 1000 times as much mp3's as the average person.

    • I'm not sure how appropriate it is to call the LAN party the "Million Man LAN" when only 1000 people are expected to attend.

      I'd say similarly appropriate to calling 300,000 people a Million Man March.

  • hmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bravehamster ( 44836 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @01:58PM (#6320478) Homepage Journal
    MillionManLan...more than 1000 people

    In a related story, organizers of the event displayed disgust with the "conservative" news medias "clearly biased reporting." Bob Roughhead gave this statement:

    While it is clear to us that we did fall short of our goal of 1,000,000 gamers coming together and celebrating their geekness in a public display, our counts put us closer to several hundred thousand gamers. That the conservative news media would stoop to such tactics to degrade this event sickens me.


    In an interview on Larry King, the Reverend Al Sharpton took the side of the geeks, pointing out in a rambling incoherent 12 minute statement that the Man also tried to keep him down.

    Police called to the scene for traffic control were adamant with their totals, saying that there were no more than 2000 geeks present at most. Tear gas and beanbags gun were put to use, however, when a college sorority on a scavenger hunt strayed too close to the pack. There were no survivors.

  • Waste of space (Score:5, Funny)

    by fobbman ( 131816 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:01PM (#6320491) Homepage
    They should have put the servers in the women's restroom. Might as well, as they wouldn't get used otherwise.

  • Games may be addictive, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Killing their brain cells? Alcohol is rarely seen on the LAN parties I've attended. Doesn't help the aim. Other drugs are similarly unattractive to gamers and smokers are usually separated from non-smokers. So how do you kill brain cells on a LAN party anymore than a computer worker does all day every workday?

  • I'll probably be downmodded into oblivion, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by W2k ( 540424 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:04PM (#6320506) Journal
    Firstly, this must be one of the most poorly written /. "news" items in the history of the website. "Tom's Hardware has an overview about one of the biggest Lan Parties". That sorry excuse for a sentence alone makes me sick.

    Second, with LANs like DreamHack [dreamhack.org] attracting I believe around 5000 visitors each year (actually twice each year, since there's both DH Summer and DH Winter nowadays), a LAN of merely a thousand peeps hardly qualifies as "one of the biggest" IMO. Reading the official website [millionmanlan.com] they seem to really think they're the largest LAN party in the world, judging from the "about" page. A bit US-centric are we? Morons.

    I won't even go into how the whole thing seems more like a giant marketing gig (the people attending are basically paying $30/day to be fed advertisments from AMD, ASUS et al) than a LAN party.

    • Re:I'll probably be downmodded into oblivion, but (Score:4, Informative)

      by Norwolf ( 875 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:10PM (#6320541) Homepage

      Indeed, but also - remember The Gathering, Norway [gathering.org] (this year, The Gathering again reclaimed the throne as the world's largest computer gathering with 5100 attendants).

      But again, it's a computer party, not a strictly LAN-party. For those of you not into this, check tg.nlc.no/notalan.html [tg.nlc.no] for more information regarding competitions not game-oriented.

    • Re:I'll probably be downmodded into oblivion, but (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'll probably be downmodded into oblivion, but ...
      Just be glad I have no mod points or I would oblige you.

      Claiming you'll be modded down is the quickest, weaseliest way to get mod points on Slashdot, and everyone knows it, yet the mods still fall for it.

    • yeah, last year it was supposed to be a two location event (CA and KY), and house about 10,000 people. Of course actually attendance fell way short, so they limited the plans this year. I have to tell you though, if you ever get the chance to attend lanwar or millionman lan, burden & co. throw one hell of a lan party. You barely notice the sponsors, as they spend most of their time playing games right along side you, and giving out free shit :-) Last year I got a geforce 3, some kick ass Altec Lansi
    • I won't even go into how the whole thing seems more like a giant marketing gig (the people attending are basically paying $30/day to be fed advertisments from AMD, ASUS et al) than a LAN party.

      Um, from where i'm seated at the LAN, i can't see one advertisement - unless you count the guy with the ASUS logo painted on his head. Yup, i'm really being force fed advertisements...

      Sure there's marketing - they have to pay for it somehow - but you only see it coming in/going out, or at the q&a sessions
  • I bet those 1K people they've signed up have about 2000 teeth combined.

    Ever been to Kentucky?

  • Although the visitors amount doesn't make it sound like one of the top-5 biggest, but as it's so well credited I guess those who really wanna play and not goof around made it there =).

  • LAN party? (Score:3, Funny)

    by pasi ( 518572 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:09PM (#6320534) Homepage


    From Slashdot File: [slashdot]

    LAN party n 1: An event where all the
    {STFU N00b X11ter person}s collect together with massive amounts of energy drinks. The difference between playing at home and playing at LAN party is the smell and ability to actual throw things at your enemies. {IRC} access is restricted to Quakenet and overclockers are demigods.

  • Million? (Score:3, Funny)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Saturday June 28, 2003 @02:28PM (#6320618)
    In other news, the thousand-man LAN party was a great success last night, as the sole attendee played Quake all by himself. Organizers were delighted with the success of the event.
  • Just another nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand more million-man-lan parties to actually get a real million head count!
  • ...with a thousand people? it shoudl be renamed to MillionManLAN Full Speed
  • Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these Million Man LANS!

  • I'm At MML2 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 28, 2003 @03:25PM (#6320870)
    I'm at MML2 and it being on the 3rd of 4th days now, I can say it's been incredible. I'm Lockhart on Netizen CS Team 2, and we lost to our Team 1 13-11 in the quarters. Our match was played really late because we had a hardware problem on one of the tourney computers, but other than that 1 glitch, the computers are incredible. I didn't win anything other than all the amazing free things up on the FTP here... I'm not at liberty to say what I've gotten, however ;D
    For the people who said that there isn't anything to do for the family... Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom is literally next door. And so far, I've left my stuff here 3 days straight and not a single thing has even been touched. My monitor, case, mouse, keyboard, even my backpacks and food have not been taken. This is one of the coolest things I've ever been to, and even if you don't come for the games, come for the free stuff and the people. I drove for 15 hours from CT to get here, and it has been worth every minute of the drive.
    • Very well put. I drove 8 hours from Detroit, and it's been MORE than worth it. Everyone is in a great mood and very friendly. I'll definately be back next year.
    • wow, stay around till cleanup and burden may give you a prize for traveling the longest distance :-) (Of course last year I think we had some guy from Hiwaii)
  • 1000 people isn't very impressive. Dreamhack, Sweden has 5000 twice a year (I was one of the 5000 a few weeks ago). And later this summer there's another LANparty in the south of Sweden -- Gamehalla -- which is supposed to have 5400 or something.

    I'll be impressed when there's a 10.000-person LANparty. Not that I see the point of that many people, but anyway.
    • Ahem....

      The largest and longest running "monster Computer Party" is The Gathering in Norway.

      Note The "computer Party" monniker as it's not just Gamers that attend.
      These event are huge BECAUSE we don't focus on one specific group.

      We try to give everyone something here. Frome the person that just started using a computer, to the Linux Fanatic, the Uber Gamer or the Demo Scener.
      And all the people in between.

      Is it doable..well..we've been told that what we do is not possible,can't be done,the hardware does
  • Big deal! I can find that on any college campus on any Friday afternoon.

    (No, I didn't read the article. Why should I read the article?)

  • For example, take one guy who was asking about the possibility of upgrading his integrated graphics. Terry on a whim suggested that since he could not give him a PCI video card at the moment since his Gateway system didn't have an AGP slot.

    lol. Since when did PCI video cards fit in AGP slots?

  • these bashers. I'm tired of the reference to dreamhack. Sure its big, its also in Sweden. Lets see how much is a plane ticket to sweden with your computer as well as hotels and everything? Its not a viable option for everyone. We also have a large numbers kids under 18. Fat chance one of them will make Dreamhack. I'm not dissing on dreamhack here i'm sure its a great time but i cannot afford to make the trip. I have an hour and a half drive and i have room to bring my own chair. Don't have to rent
  • Most of the people who actually lug their computers out to Texas for QuakeCon are there for the LAN Party in the BYOC area. Yes, it's a LAN party. There's more to the event than that, but in the BYOC area it's a 72 hour LAN party. Regardless of what else is going on, MML is NOT bigger than QuakeCon. Thus, they aren't the biggest in the US. And don't even begin to claim that most of the people at QuakeCon aren't there for the LAN. Maybe the 2700 people that were there that didn't bring their computers

  • Opinion on TomsHardware? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mod me offtopic if you want, but since the article references Tom's...

    I have used Tom's site for a reference for a few years now and I was wondering if anyone else has noticed a drop in quality or even a dreaded 'selling out'. I find this sad, since I read with great interest during Tom's crusade against RAMBUS when most of the other PC press was buying into Intel's BS about RDRAM.

    As evidence of a difference from the hard hitting reviews of yore, I present:
    Tom's watered down review of the Hydrocool200: h

  • Why wasn't there a story about this earlier? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm near Louisville and would have loved to have gone.. I didn't even hear of MMLP 1 let alone 2...
  • several NVIDIA and ATI employees found dead after a vicious geekfight over pixel shading.
  • I wish I had gotten one of those A7N8X Deluxe boards..... I need one......

    No, really. Bad capacitors on my board...... Slashdot provides the intriguing story behind them if you search for it. Hint: I've got a broken Taiwanese ECS motherboard....

    Anyone win one of those and not want it??
    • Beware, half my USB ports failed and ASUS has been of negative worth in regards to support (their support system is broken, and when it does work after putting in that much effort you get completely ignored).

      I keep wondering when I'll grow up and go for a cheap "it does what it needs to" motherboard.

      This fecal matter just isnt worth the suffering I've had...
      (I was bitten earlier by an ABIT KT7A-R, horrible motherboard)
  • We had a much bigger one in my home down in Denmark some years back. That was an AWSOME party with 3412 paying visiters. http://www.theparty.dk/pages/other/history_1996.ht ml There is a long history of LAn parties in Europe. The went from programming to Demo to play games events. I fund them borring now adays where the realy computer freaks are not there and only the guys that bring ther Xbox. Regards, Lars
    • The link should be http://www.theparty.dk
      press history and 1996.
    • We had a much bigger one in my home down in Denmark some years back.
      That was an AWSOME party with 3412 paying visiters.
      www.theparty.dk/pages/other/history_1996.html
      There is a long history of LAN parties in Europe.
      The went from programming to Demo to play games events.
      I find them borring now adays where the realy computer freaks are not there and only the guys that bring their Xbox.
      Regards,
      Lars
  • the article mentions that this party is one of the biggest (or THe biggest) ever to take place in North America.

    You must remember, however, that these parties have been going on in Europe on an incredibly larger scale for over ten years.

    To them, 1,000 people is nothing, and they do so much more at their parties (Demo Competitions [pouet.net], music compos, and even some good ol' fashioned C64 compos. In fact, gaming (and warez trading) is outright banned in some of [untergrund.net] the parties [demo.org]. You've gotta have respect for these p
  • Well, they do all get to see breasts of a kind...

    -Nano.
  • Im not sure how aware /. readers are of the blackballing [amdmb.com] THG is performing at the MML, but it absolutely sickens me. I've been reading Toms for a number of years, and this kind of control over the online media HAS to be stopped, before it becomes the defacto standard for events like this. Major props to amdmb.com for bringing this type of slime to our attention.
  • LAN parties are a fucking pussy way to kill brain cells... if thats what they think they are doing. They are actually a good way to do somehting that DOESN'T kill braing cells, I have thought all along.
    Perhaps the article sender should get a real idea of what having a wild time is. It's not a LAN party.

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