What is a lan?
With the invention of the modem, came the ability to transfer data to and fro from places far away such as America, and to have real-time chat with people from all over the world through the internet. One instantly popular application to take advantage of this was the 3D game. Games could now involve more than one or two people, who could interact with the same world and each person was able to play on their own computer, with their own mouse and keyboard configurations. The modem, as much as it was better than playing on your own, had its flaws with its constant problems of disconnecting or people wanting to use the phone while you were playing and other such common problems. You're also constantly battling lag and low speeds. LANs are the ultimate solution!
Lag in games, caused by the fact that the signal take some time to shoot around the planet, is a big problem - just like the delay you get on the phone when you're talking to somebody in England. You probably know that when playing an online game, a 50ping is good, a 100ping OK, and a 200ping bad. 400+ and you may as well just hold down a key and hope for the best - other players will be literally running rings around you. Well - standard LAN pings are between 0 and 8. Yes, I said zero!
LANs are also incredibly fast. Think your internet connection is fast? Probably not compared to a LAN! The proof? Here's some standard connections and their speeds (note the stupidly fast 100/1000Mb LAN speeds - that's what we run! ):
Which in short means, if you need the latest patch or mod for a game and it's a large download - it won't take long to get at the LAN!
What do I do at a lan?
Well almost anything you want really, within New Zealand and International law and our rules. You can play games, one on one or organise a 16 player lan game with people at L3. Hell, play a 40-person game if you've got a machine fast enough to serve 40 people and everyone wants to play! The possibilities with gaming at L3 are endless, and we try our best to support popular and new games. Do not play Counter-Strike. Counter-strike may be popular amoung the younger segment of people on the net, but not here. We have found that once people start playing Counter-Strike they don't stop at just 'playing', they get aggressive, and besides - Counterstrike sucks! We've found that when people circulate around a variety of games, playing racing, strategy, FPS and other games that they have a lot more fun - as does everybody else! Besides, most of the guys that attend L3's probably wouldn't be interested in the first place. See the forums for details of what's popular at the moment.
Another major feature of LANs is the file-sharing. If it can be downloaded, and somebody on the LAN did download it at some stage, then it's probably accessable and fast to get over the LAN. Needless to say - that doesn't make us a warez convention, and we won't take kindly to becoming one.
And best of all there are a whole lot of people that probably enjoy a lot of the same things you do. Well, you've got at least one thing in common once you're a LANer... Mill around, have a chat - you'll probably make another few friends easily.
Why should I come to a lan?
If you've read through the above, and still don't 'get it', then come along and have a look. We don't charge spectators - and you'll only need to take a quick peek before probably thinking about bringing your computer. If you've tried that and still don't know why, then you're either Amish, dead, or reading the wrong website...
