Legit Reviews

For all of you located in the St. Louis region take note ... Warfactory has partnered with the St. Louis Science Center's Cyberville Gallery to bring you some high quality tournament LANs. This is similar to the tradition that MFA formerly had in the same venue, but we're working on some new twists. Here's the scoop:

Date: Saturday, September 24th, 2005
Time: 10:00 am to Midnight
Location: May Hall in the St. Louis Science Center
Food: Included in cost of the event (specifics TBA)
Cost: $20 in advance, $25 at the door

(Please note, paying in advance for this event gives you DOUBLE the chance to win door prizes!)

Tournaments:

1.) Quake 3 Arena 1v1 Deathmatch
2.) Battlefield 2 5v5
3.) Counterstrike v 1.6 5v5

Prizes are looking good and will continue to take shape as we gain more sponsors. At this point, we have some top-notch dual-Opteron servers donated to us by Enterprise Consulting, we've got the backing of the St. Louis Science Center, and other sponsors such as Alienware, Geeks.com, Bawls, and others are beginning to report in.

There are a total of 100-120 spots , but they're being filled quickly. If you're interested, please check our site and sign up soon!

Thanks,

killdashnine and the Warfactory Team

Legit Reviews is planning on being on hand and doing a workshop of some sort while we are there. Our schedule changes so much it's hard to plan something in advance. We will hopefully bring some prizes and do a chat on hardware while we are there.

Well Stuart and I might drive up for that, just wondering what is limiting the number of people to 30? is it server capacity, switches?? Because we have 2 dual xeon servers and networking equipment in TN.

if you look at their site i believe capacity is 100, but they have 12 pre-pays...

Where is the $20-$25 going? That is a pretty high price for a local LAN party. If it fills up that is $2000-$2500... are you going to have cash prizes for the game winners?

Unfortunately, I'll be moving to my new house that weekend... (and squeezing a golf tournament in on Saturday morning... )

Well if we do come up can we trade labor for a place to crash? It would be 3 of us, Me, Stuart, and Josh a guy from work.

Let me check with the wife on that one... with us being in the middle of a move, both the place we are moving out of and the place we will be moving to will be a total mess... But on the other hand, with occupying two places that weekend, I'm sure there will be floorspace available, so we'll see. Either way, if you come up, we'll at least have to bring you out to see the new place.

did you need any help moving or is the extended family going to be in town helping? hehe

infinitevalence wrote:Well Stuart and I might drive up for that, just wondering what is limiting the number of people to 30? is it server capacity, switches?? Because we have 2 dual xeon servers and networking equipment in TN.

If you guys are coming as Legit Reviews Staff you needn't sign up on the attendance list unless you plan to participate in the tournaments or the LAN proper. Just let me know so I'll be expecting you.

Apoptosis wrote:Where is the $20-$25 going? That is a pretty high price for a local LAN party. If it fills up that is $2000-$2500... are you going to have cash prizes for the game winners?

As compared to QuakeCon, the money is a bit high, but until we grow a bit more and find steadfast sponsors (e.g. we get a Marketing Department) it's reasonable. The main draw to this is that it's going to be a lot bigger than our previous LANs and is in a considerably nicer place, plus we have three tournaments to fund. Our price isn't any more than the Laclede's LAN when you figure in their $5 tournament fee and we only raise the price at the door to encourage everyone to pay in advance.

First place for CS/BF2 is $50 Gift Certificate to Best Buy for each person. I'm assuming the Q3 prizes will be the same but we're still working out details. Beyond this, we of course have to cover the cost of the building and food for the event, including miscellaneous items. Trust me, we're not making anything off doing this.

We're working hard to find a lot more sponsors for this event and to build partnerships that will help drive down the cost considerably in the future. My hope is to drive the admission fee down considerably, but this process takes a while.

We're working on 2nd place prizes too, but that depends upon how many people actually show and what kind of sponsorship we can get ... that's why we want to get a lot more pre-pays.

Apoptosis wrote:did you need any help moving or is the extended family going to be in town helping? hehe

The family will be in town helping... lol... we probably got it covered.

Hey Gang,

With ~ 1 month to go, seating is filling up. This is looking to be a good one.

I'm all signed up. Between the Science Center and the Legit Reviews workshop, I may run into a little information overload! I guess to much learning never hurt anyone.

This time i plan on actualy playing some games unless i end up doing a live laptop mod....

ah this sucks. I have to go to a wedding

We're down to nearly two weeks now and have a pretty decent number of folks on our registration list (121 this evening). If any of you in the St. Louis area are planning on coming, there's still a chance to beat the rush and avoid the waiting list via PayPal.

We're looking forward to hanging with the Legit crew at the Science Center.

i don't think i'm gonna go. $20 is too high for a lan, in my opinion (by the way, the last laclede's lan lanparty was only $12 and was a total success). hopefully, the next one will have more in-demand game tourneys and won't cost as much... i'm going broke damn you, gas prices!

More in demand tournies?

Originally, there was going to be a source tourny and a bf2 tourny. Then more people demanded 1.6 so we switched. Then people demanded a 1v1 tourny, and the consensus seemed to be q3, so we added a q3 tourny. We have the bf2 tourny because we wanted something that wasn't 5 years old.

How more in demand can we get?

personally, the quake thing sounds dumb to me, but i understand some people love the hell out of some quake, so whatever. i am still a firm believer in evolving as gamers and not holding onto games that any asshole with a mediocre computer can load up and play.

by "in-demand," i was referring to the sponsor/hardware/games connection. sorry for the confusion.

you guys are gonna have a successful lan, again. i'm glad unfortunately, i just dont think this one is for me. i still can't justify paying $20 for gaming.

i'm not trying to be a pain in the ass... apparently, i'm the only person who feels this way (either that or i'm the only one with balls enough to speak up). i wouldn't worry about what i post if i were you (unless, of course, increasing numbers felt the same way... in which case, you might wanna incorporate some of the ideas into your next lan... just a thought)

audiophile wrote:i don't think i'm gonna go. $20 is too high for a lan, in my opinion (by the way, the last laclede's lan lanparty was only $12 and was a total success). hopefully, the next one will have more in-demand game tourneys and won't cost as much... i'm going broke damn you, gas prices!

While we'd love to do a free LAN, the bills have to get paid somehow. The unfortunate reality to ANY small to medium LAN group is that you have to reach a certain critical-mass before sponsors will heavily invest in you. That threshhold is ~200+ people. Warfactory is poised to break that barrier within a year or so, but needs support of the community to get there.

If you check out LANParty.com you'll see that groups that are similar to Warfactory have generally equivalent admission. AsylumLAN is like $25. The Springfield Gamers Association is $15. Stompfest is $25. LANExtreme is $20.

Overall, prices for LANs are across the board. Laclede's LAN has a good deal on their location, but they've always intended on having smaller, more fun events (unless things have changed recently). They'll be a little cheaper because they can afford to be.

Beyond everything, I think you've mis-perceived the overall ROI for this event. Included in your $20 is a long day of gaming, food and drink, and participation in three tournaments, all of which have (more or less) cash return on win. There's a substantial amount of overhead at this venue, but as we have ~50 people paid and 120+ signed up, demand is obvious. If your concern is tournaments, you're probably still miffed about the decision to side with CS 1.6 over Source, but that was the result of a lot of delibaration and gamer demand.

Also, this event is in the St. Louis Science Center. Much of our overall cost comes from location. Fortunately, we've been establishing new business relationships that you should see reflected in pricing for future events.

I didn't mean to write a tome here, but LAN Parties are expensive to run. It's true that QuakeCon and other VERY LARGE LANs can be free, but you have to think that marketers use these events as key delivery avenues for their products and then, you're responsible for getting a hotel room and (possibly) a flight! Heck, I think every small LAN I've gone to at friend's homes have cost me at least $20 anyway after I pitch in for pizza, buy soda/beer, etc.