Action from the Hushed Casket 5th Anniversary LAN

It’s 10 PM on Saturday night, October 6th. The temperature is 81 degrees Fahrenheit, but my central A/C unit has been running non-stop since noon. There are 38 people in my house playing Halo 3 multiplayer in four separate games on 26 Xbox 360s, most of them connected to high definition displays. In my office sits five gamers I’ve never met. Two exhausted gamers sleep in my living room amidst the commotion. My electrical meter spins like God’s own anti-son-of-a-bitch machine. This must be the THX 5th Birthday LAN.

Someone LAN'd on top of my laundry machine

NDA-breaking cell-phone video from the event

Setup for the LAN began on Friday just before 4 P.M. JDogg arrived with 32” LCD HDTV in tow and Willdabeast wasn’t far behind toting his own version of the same. Slayer arrived at the same time and set up his display near the kitchen. They were the first…the first of many.

Later that evening my two weekend houseguests arrived: Goku from Chattanooga, TN, and Enraged Gnome from Macon, GA. We got their setups installed in my guest bedroom, including Goku’s obscenely large and crisp CRT HDTV and Gnome’s leet 5.1 headphones. By then EA, Disavowed, and Mintz had also arrived, so we constructed the necessary network architecture and commenced a mini-LAN, purely to test the equipment. It all held up for several hours, so we declared it fit for duty.

Goku and EnragedGnome

Mintz and Disavowed builds CAT5 cable.

The next day, Saturday, the real LAN began. Oculus, who is just this guy, you know…arrived promptly at 10 AM to kick it off with his 42” LCD and Dell 2407, each connected to an Xbox 360. Shortly thereafter everyone else began to arrive in droves. We further expanded the network architecture to support the new consoles and duct taped cables to the floor for minimal trippage. Seven CAT-5e wall outlets throughout my house are networked to a closet in my office. We connected each outlet to a 16-port Netgear Switch in the closet and put a 4 or 8-port switch on each outlet to service multiple Xboxen. My Belkin router and Linksys cable modem were trunked to the central switch to provide internet access to all. When the LAN arose we were all logged into Xbox Live and each of our custom games was tracked on Bungie.net. Pwn!

From L-R: Willdabeast's 32" LCD, Oculus' 42" LCD, Smokey's 21" CRT, ICANHAZCHEEBURGER's Big Macs, dirtyJ's 15" LCD

a small ISP

One custom game lobby (all games were played on LAN but stats appear on B.net)

We started with MLG team slayer. I found it to be a bit stale, actually thinking there were too many battle rifles on the map (which sounds looney). Then we tried a THX-tweaked team slayer variant with 125% weapon damage and BR start. It was fun, but 125% may indeed be too much. An assault rifle can lay waste to you at 50 yards if you are low on shield. The team slayer tweak I liked best was as follows:

- 110% damage
- BR start
- AR secondary
- no airborne vehicles
- no radar

I actually prefer radar, but the majority like it disabled, so I can live with that. We played numerous team slayer variants throughout the evening. TS was probably the most played gametype, followed closely by Rocket Race at Valhalla and Sandtrap.

THchiX gaming in style

It’s difficult for me to be sure what other games were being played, as there were generally three games being hosted at any one time and sometimes four. I think I saw EA, Gnome, and Goku playing more objective-based games. During a break in the action we paused to cut the THX birthday cake. I said some words and Foulbreed cut the cake into ridiculously large pieces. I suppose he hadn’t eaten dinner yet. We passed slices of cake around the room, Office Space style, but unlike poor Milton everyone managed to get a piece.

Another THX birthday cake

Cake cutting ceremony: FoulBreed and Midnight

Then the LAN continued, except for Mintz who went to eat dinner with five married women. The estrogenated effects of this were later noticed when him and Slayer were seen throwing a Pampered Chef party near the raised turret platform in “The Pit.” Foulbreed and Reverend talked smack to each other from across the house, and we briefly discussed civil law as we tried to determine how FoulBreed’s ownership of Reverend affected Rev’s belongings.

Mintz leaves the Halo 3 LAN to go to dinner with 5 women. Genius or I-D-10-T?

Someone left the pre-game lobby open and these guys showed up

Holy Shit dropped by, and we took turns hating each other as we each alternated driving the other around Valhalla on Mongeese during Rocket Race. I had to forcibly remove Shyzza and Torrent from co-op campaign on my 30” CRT HDTV. Skull hunting is acceptable late at night when you have only 2 friends on XBL—not at the biggest LAN party of the year.

Beanor, Torrent, JDOGG (huge Alabama fan), and Xray (small Tennessee fan)

2.1M pixels...or is that 640p?

By midnight the crowd had thinned to about 12 conscious gamers and 14 hours had passed since the LAN had kicked off. Correctly surmising that it would take a while to get everyone packed up and on his way, I called an end to the LAN around 12:15 A.M. We tore down in record time, and everyone pitched in to clean up like I’ve never seen before. At 12:45 A.M. my house looked almost normal again. I do have some closing thoughts, but they fit more of a “random thoughts” style than into paragraph form.

I threw a LAN party and a small used car lot happened

- All games were played on our LAN. But if you were logged into XBOX Live while at the LAN your HALO 3 game stats got uploaded to Bungie.net. MLG is going to love this. Too bad there aren't any LAN achievements.

- To the gamer who put my microphone completely inside his mouth: BattleItch saw you and the mic cover has now been disinfected. Please don’t do that again.

- Goku and Gnome were the lowest-maintenance house guests I can imagine.

- I think the LAN improved my Halo 3 skills. It definitely made me learn the maps.

- Critter, you should have stayed longer. We could have gotten you onto a TV.

- I have Reverend’s CRT TV. I don’t want Reverend’s CRT TV. Goodwill does want Reverend’s CRT TV. Goodwill does pickups on Fridays. You figure out the rest.

- I have someone’s 4-port Netgear hub. Unlike CRT TVs, I actually do want networking hubs, but if you come to pick it up I will begrudgingly return it to you. I shall never remind you about it again.

- On Sunday I gave Goku, Gnome, and EA all the leftover soda and snacks they would take, leaving me with more soda and snacks than I know what to do with. Damn you and your cakes, Little Debbie!

- I want a UNSC cap like Xray. I do not want to vomit like Xray.

- Little plastic tables from Wal-Mart are going to be clutch for BYOS LANs.

- BYOS LANs are going to be the wave of the future. People that had a 360 and screen to themselves required almost no external coordination after initial setup.

- Thanks to Dirty J for making my router talk to EA’s switch and granting us XBL access.

- Thanks to Disavowed for making an ethernet cable for the LAN, and then fixing the ethernet cable that Mintz botched. It’s OK, Mintz. I’ve botched many just the way you did.

- The parking plan worked pretty well, but it’s still extraordinary how far the cars stretched in both directions.

- It's been a great 5 years.

- I can’t wait until the next one. I’m just glad it’ll be at someone else’s house.

- Pictures from the event can be found in on our Flickr site: http://flickr.com/groups/hushedcasket/pool/

- Incomplete LAN roster can be found in the old LAN planning thread.