LAN Party Help.

[WesM63]

Hey guys,
The guys at data eclipse (place of employment) and I have planned on throwing our first ever Public LAN party, I call LN's professionals assistance.

We have most of it planned out such as:
Place (Data Eclipse's Wharehouse)
Power (Curtisy of Dan, CEO)
Tables (Church Rental)
Chairs (Church Rental)
Cat 5 (Curtisy of Dan, CEO)

But what we need help on is like cost to get in, how many servers etc.

Were thinking of at least 100ppl attending.Some of the guys were thinking $10-12 to get in.Free food or not. Everyone must bring their own computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse. If something is forgotten a rental charge will be applied for use of our equipment. We plan on raffling off games. Also planned on having gag gifts, like person in last gets lessons from winner. We also plan on selling the games that we'll be playing and selling network cards for people that don't have one. I was talking to P0 last night and he say to have 6game servers, their will be 4 of us mod's or admins whatever you may call us. We have talked about having an area to put ppl that cheat, like a blanket and Nerf baseball bats so they can get their "frag" on with other cheaters.

The major prob that I see is food. If we offer free food were gonna spend at least $200 of pizza and $50 on pop/water. Should we raise our entry price or lower it and make them pay for food and drinks?

We plan on taking a loss of at least $1000, but to my boss this does not seem to be a deal. We recokon that if we lose money the first time with inital cost of switches etc, we should make out the forthcoming times.

As always any LN.com member in the area at the time will get in free. We have not yet scheduled a date as we need expensise planned out before we take it to the head honcho.

Any advice would be greatly apreciated.

[Alex]

Is 100 a bit ambitious for your first event? Thats a lot of people, and a lot of computers without a dry run. I'd say try half that the first time, if not less! (KISS - keep it simple stupid!) bear that rule in mind at ALL times!
The other main tech issue is power, 100 pc's draw a hell of a lot of power (this is why the event I was organizing never happened, hired a local nightclub, power supply turned out to be about 6 domestic extension leads! DOH!).
But, if you've got all that covered, good luck and get on with it mate!:D

Alex

PS: Frag a few for me!

[mdzcpa]

I agree...the numba one concern is power. Plan this very carefully and over supply the juice. Downtime due to power loss is very bad for your guests.

Servers. For 100 attendees, I would shoot for at least three with five being best. Depends on what you are running game wise though. Having close to a 20 to 1 ratio works best with large LAN games.

For newer games that have "dedicated server" options, you only need a decent CPU (XP1800 or above) and 512 of memory. Skimp on the vid card and sound card as you don't need them for dedicated servers. A decently fast HD is nice too so maps reload quickly. Many dedicated server games can hold well above 24 now, so you won't be running multiple games on the same server often. Instead 3 to 5 servers would be best giving many options to players with great playability.

Food. Needs to be free. Charge more a the door. Collect once and forget about handling cash after that. It's the only way to go.

For a 100 person LAN gig, with free food and pop, $15 is the way to go. That's a "common" charge for food and gaming.

[WesM63]

The guess of 100ppl is high, but we are hoping for that high of a turn out. Any other advice or ideals.

Power is not a deal, the wharehouse has 4 lights in it and is/was suspected to be an office so... power is ok.

[Surgeon General]

Originally posted by WesM63


Power is not a deal, the wharehouse has 4 lights in it and is/was suspected to be an office so... power is ok.


I amnot sure what this mean. Are you having the Lan Party in a warehouse that once served as an office? I think you would do well to check the breaker box and see what kind of juice you have flowing into the space. Not a lot of warehouses are set up with the power needed to run 100 or so computers. Also if it was/is an office how big of one is it? Did it have a lot of equipment running at once?

Also never forget safety issues. Make sure your table layout allows for a quick exit if something happens and that it also has good traffic flow.
Make sure that you set up a designated smoking area, weather it be simply anyplace outside the building or a designated area outside the building.

When you atart the event make sure that you tell everyone where the exits are in case someones overclocked rig sparks up and you have to evacuate :D

since this is your first lan party I think you might do good to cut out anything that you don't really need like the cheaters are. If people cheat simply cut them off for an hour or something. All the people really need is computer, food, drink. Everything else is extra.

[WesM63]

Hey SG,
Sorry that was bad wording. The wharehouse was ment to be an office, so it's wired accordingly. We turned about 1/4 of it into our wharehouse and the other 3/4 is still rentable. It's 12,000sq ft. So I think it will be big enuf.