Info: What Is A LAN Party? - Overclock.net

**Sin100** · 07-24-06

A short/basic explanation

Quite simply, it is a bunch of gamers who meet up together, hook their computers up in a local area network, and play games until their eyes hurt.

I think it was Doom that mainly brought network gaming more to the masses. Gamers realized that owning their buddies was much more fun if they were within verbal abuse range :)

Local area networks do not suffer from lag as much as wide area networks such as, if you were playing someone from America and you where in the UK, the lag would be slightly if not much worse than if you hooked up to someone literally 10 meters away from you on a LAN! plus being in close physical contact to your teammates and enemies allows verbal communications, greatly increasing the enjoyment of multilayer gaming.
Nothing quite replicates the thrill of trash talking your opponents in person after a fairly glorious victory, hehe :D

There are several important things you must consider when you begin to plan your event. Items include the size of the party, when it will run, where it will be located, plus miscellaneous things like entrance fees (if required) and promotion of the event.

While LAN parties can usually be as large or as small as you want, most people will find that with less than four players there isn't the same level of excitement and competition as with larger parties.
A lot of fun can be had with say 8-20 players, but any larger and the problems with setting up the event may be beyond your capabilities unless you are experienced in running such events.
Larger events are also fun, but they no longer become one-man jobs and you will probably need some knowledgeable friends to help keep the event running smoothly.
Very important to remember one thing about large and fairly large LAN party's, is there enough electric in the building to supply all the computers? obviously this can be a problem!!

LAN parties can also be used for filesharing, sharing your movies, music, patches, pictures and just about anything.

I hope now you have a greater understanding on what a basic LAN party is.