Date: November 12, 2007 - Author: Greg King
Last weekend, Evansville, IN was home to AsylumLAN 30, and not only was our own Senior Editor and Indiana-resident Greg King there, but Matt H, Corey, Rob and his friend Chris made the trip down as well. Being the 30th AL, it was something special, and we've recapped the entire event inside.
Held roughly every three months at the Vanderburgh county 4-H fairgrounds in Evansville, Indiana, AsylumLAN is if anything, one of the most consistent LAN events in the area. Now on their 30th event, it's difficult to argue that their commitment to the local gaming community is in any way lacking.
With dozens of sponsors and a loyal following in the area, Derek and his wife Kimberly have set out to build on the initial success of the LAN back when it was held in the house of Rick Trevino. Even if you only go by the number of events held, it's clear that they're doing something right.
With this past LAN being so special, their 30th consecutive event, not only did I make my way down last weekend, but riding shotgun was none other than my iron fisted boss and owner of Techgage, Rob Williams. Not content to share the weekend with myself, Rob made sure that his Canadian friend Chris, our own power supply guru Matt Harris (madmat) and Cory (THUMPer) from our forums enjoyed the LAN as well.
With everyone in town, and big plans for the weekend, our first order of business was to prepare the our PCs. While my PC was already built and ready to go, we needed to piece together Rob's machine as well as the rig for our overclocking contest sponsored by our friends at Asus and OCZ. With the four of us burning the midnight oil, we completed our machines and headed to bed, resting up for a long weekend of games, contests and little sleep. Insert Bawls joke here.
For those unfamiliar with the area, Evansville is located in the south western corner of the state, roughly a three hour drive from Indianapolis and one that is in no way enjoyable. It's simply an uneventful tour of the state via two incredibly straight roads. Leaving around 3 pm, we started our trip south, gaining an hour thanks to the time zone differences and arrived in Evansville just in time to miss the setting up of the everything... just like we had planned.
Seriously, we left with every intention of helping setup for the event but as it turned out, we didn't quite make it so while the staff was inside finalizing the network, we hung around the outside of the building, waiting for registration to open. When the doors did open, we quickly got signed in and found our way to our seats, directly across from Derek, Kimberly and the rest of the AsylumLAN staff.
As the event progressed, and more and more seats filled up, Derek, who goes by the gamer tag "Grymskull", emceed the event from start to finish. Taking over the reigns handed to him by Rick prior to AsylumLAN 28, Derek announced the opening of the landmark party. We have already mentioned a few times that this was the 30th AsylumLAN. It's easy to simply show up and enjoy yourself at these events but this LAN has become something that the attendees have come to expect and as the seats slowly became less and less vacant, Matt, Rob, Chris, Cory and I all sat down and realized that we were completely lost as to what we wanted to play first.
Each LAN party has certain games that the attendees can vote for prior to kick off and the winning games get their own specific tournaments with trophies going to the winning teams at the end. For those games not included in the tourneys, it's up to the gamers themselves to organize matches, host games and get things going in an unofficially organized manor.
One surprising exclusion this year was Counter-Strike: Source. Receiving too few of the votes, everyone's favorite multiplayer game was not being played competitively but that didn't stop anyone from finding an open game and fragging away. As for the official tournaments, newcomer Team Fortress 2 got its own tourney, along with Battlefield 2, Unreal Tourney 2004 and Track Mania. First up for the Techgage crew was tried and true Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. While not a favorite of Rob, I supremely love this game and for all that play it; there is something to be said for taking out your opponent with a toilet.
After a few rounds of HL2: Deathmatch, we decided to fall back on a few favorites. Rob, Chris and Matt all got into a few matches of the original Unreal Tournament and I settled in for a little Bioshock action. All the while, players from across the Midwest practiced their games of choice either with their respective clans or on one of the many independent games setup by those who simply want to play against other gamers.
One thing to point out is the way the network handled everyone playing against each other at once. In theory, if the servers are setup correctly, all each attendee needs to do is plug their PC into the local switch and all will work as it should. The thing is, with as many people all connecting with each other, there are a lot of places that the network can break down. We were all pleased when everyone was up and running without a problem in sight.
This is a testament to Kimberly, going by the gamer tag "Devlar", and her group of dedicated staff. One thing she has going for her is her networking know how. As the head of the IT department at the local college, she has employed many of her students to take part in the setup, maintenance and tear down of the network and with each one doing their part, everything ran as smooth as possible throughout the entire party.
For those who might not be entirely up for three straight days of gaming, there were other events to keep your attention, as well as prolong the onset of carpel tunnel. The first night, the traditional Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament was held and carried well into Saturday morning. For the first time ever at AsylumLAN, those without PCs could partake in their own tournament as the first console tournament on the 360 took place and the game of choice... you guessed it, Halo 3.
On Saturday, Techgage officially opened up sign ups for our overclocking competition. Sponsored in part by Asus and OCZ, we tried to get together a wallop of a prize package. As the name suggests, the only goal was to get the highest Cinebench 10 score possible by overclocking our provided machine. This not only get people out of their seats, but also gave many the chance to work with hardware that they otherwise might not have the chance to do normally.
Our PC consisted of the Asus X38 based Maximus, an Intel QX9650 and our favorite cooler, the CoolIT Freezone. While our original goal was to get more people to attend AsylumLAN, we truly wanted to see the prizes, which consisted of a Q6600 provided by Techgage, a kit of OCZ 2GB DDR2 Platinum memory and an Asus P5K Premium, go to a good and deserving home. Runner up in the competition got that same kit of RAM. After an hour or so, we finally got enough people to sight up to make the whole thing worth while. With our 15 contestants in queue, we opened up the competition.
For the event, we had a handful of rules; basically to preserve the life of the hardware long enough for each person who wanted to play around with it got that chance. With only 30 minutes to complete their fasted run, it was interesting to see the approach each person took in their attempt to win the goods we brought with us. A few started quite high, maxing everything out to the highest voltages we would allow and then working their way down to the first stable setting they could get.
When we bench our hardware in our labs, we make certain that our overclocks are 100% stable for an extended amount of time. This was not the case last weekend. With such a small time frame to work in, everyone simply wanted to get through the benchmark without a system crash so stability past the first two or three minutes was not something that anyone really cared to worry about and rightfully so.
As the night progressed, we saw many different people attempts many different strategies. Throughout it all though, one thing was constant. The people running these benches all had one thing in mind, the swag awaiting the winner. This was apparently motivation enough for some to push the QX9650 as far as they possibly could go. Sadly, one of the main components holding them back was our choice of cooler.
While the Freezone is deadly on a dual core CPU, on a quad (especially one with 1.6v pumped through it), the chiller just couldn't keep up and we eventually saw temperatures well into the upper 80s and mid to lower 90s. Those temps were all Celsius of course. For a while, we were even concerned that the event would get completed as the more the CPU was benched, the higher its temps seemed to go. Fortunately for all involved, the CPU made it through the benching and by Sunday morning, a winner was announced... too bad he wasn't there to claim his prize.
As we commented on earlier, a few of our prizes were graciously sponsored by Asus and OCZ. Not ones to leave anyone out, they also were kind enough to help support the LAN itself by giving Derek coolers and video cards for the lucky attendees whose names would eventually get called.
This is another area that sits well behind the scenes. Well out of sight of anyone not willing to share the headache of making the calls and sending the emails. Derek works his tail off for each and every event securing enough prizes that almost anyone who shows up is likely to leave with something. A few big sponsors this year were Ideazon, Gigabyte, OCZ, Asus, Seagate, Cooler Master, Tagan, FSP and Antec.
For those who were willing to hang around for the drawings... and who wouldn't, Derek periodically drew names and awarded prizes to those whose number had been called... so to speak. It was fun to hear the names that people were actually signed up as. From the death themed names to the comical "notadouche", everyone had a very good chance to take at least something home with them when the LAN ended.
This is another thing that Derek has put a lot of time and effort into as well. There is always a large table full of posters, shirts and stickers all provided by the companies that sponsor the event, as well as a goodie bag for each and every person who signs up. These bags included candy, company stickers and numbered AsylumLAN stickers. It's these stickers that are clearly the most desired out of the freebies.
While I personally enjoyed the tootsie rolls, it was nice to walk around and see AsylumLAN 10 stickers on peoples PCs. It kind of puts things into perspective. Here we are, walking in on our third LAN and there are people who have only missed a handful of events in the 6 years that the party has been around. That's a lot of LANs and for each one, the staff and organizers have worked diligently to make sure that there more plenty of attractive prizes to go around.
Speaking of being around for 6 years, no birthday party is worth attending without a little cake and ice cream and if you could get past the god awful jokes about how the cake was a lie (a slightly overused term from Portal, if a 2 week old game can be overused that is) the line for the snacks was more than worth it.
Getting 2 large cakes, each adorned with the AsylumLAN logo, Derek and Kimberly wanted to make sure that the birthday went noticed by anyone and everyone. As it turned out, the cake actually was a lie, at least one of them were, that is. As it was being transported to another table, it slipped and fell, making a God awful mess but entertaining all that saw it regardless.
As the 30th AsylumLAN wrapped up, Derek make the depressing that AsylumLAN 30 was going to be the last LAN held at the fairgrounds. At least in the current building that is. Jokes aside, he explained that in order for the event to continue to grow, it needed to secure a larger venue and he was able to do that. Just up the hill at the fairgrounds, there is a much larger exhibition hall that will suit AsylumLAN perfectly fine in future events.
As we packed up our gear, we took a few moments to say goodbye to everyone that we had met over the weekend. Sitting directly behind us was the UT 2K4 clan, the Gummie Bears. More than once, we looked over their shoulders and watched them dominate pretty much anyone brave enough to step into the same arena as them and when it was time to go, I determined that if possible, I would like to sit around them again. Of course, we took the time to announce the winner of our overclocking contest and while he wasn't present for the announcement, David Truby took top honors with his Cinebench 10 score of 16906 with a 4.4GHz overclock.
While we were announcing the winner of the OCing contest, staff members were walking around voting for the best case mods and ghetto mods. Taking top honors this year in the case mod competition was the Nintendo mod. Featuring a 1GHz+ Celeron and a DVI out NVIDIA 5200, the mod was a sight to behold and one that everyone enjoyed. For the ghetto mod, a planting pot won. Hidden under a plant, this mod was difficult to distinguish between any other potted plants... minus the cables running out of the bottom of the pot of course.
At the end of the day, we came away from the LAN much the same way we have come away from others. We were truly better people. The AsylumLANs aren't about winning and losing, it's about coming together once every three months and forgetting about everything and losing yourself in gaming. Sure, things get quite competitive at times but I would be willing to bet that almost everyone there cares little about taking home a trophy, but rather, playing games with hundreds of their new found friends.
As AsylumLAN ages, and with it continued prosperity, we hope to remain in the background, quietly supporting the event by writing about the games and the fun in the hopes that it will bring at least a few more attendees to the next event.
Speaking of next events, anyone interested can show up this coming February, the 16th through the 17th to be exact, and join Derek, Kimberly and the rest of the AL staff for what we all hope will be the latest in a long line of great LAN parties. Until then, keep gaming. You never know when you might have to prove your worth at a LAN.
For a candid pictorial of our trip to AL30, you can check out our forum thread from last weekend. To discuss this article, you can post in this thread!
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