No idea. Who took the photo?
Re: rAge aftermath
No idea. Who took the photo?
Re: rAge aftermath
Don't know. Was with some girls working at rage
Re: rAge aftermath
There were about a million girls working at rAge. If you don't even know which company they represented, then you're out of luck.
Re: rAge aftermath
It was a group of 4 or five girls. They took a lot of photos with different guys and then took name and email adress and description.These girls: http://www.nag.co.za/wp-content/uplo...ge_2011_46.jpg
Last edited by DarthCat; 06-10-2011 at 06:15 PM.
Re: rAge aftermath
If anyone has any complaints or concerns regarding the LAN please send them to me so that we may try to improve next year. Suggestions are also welcome. GeometriX is correct in saying we improve every year. Sadly we do not have unlimited / all the resources available to us but we are willing to try to improve every year. Please do not send complaints about sub standard food at high prices as we have NO control of this, all the food is handled by the dome and we can not tell them what to sell or what prices to charge.
The LAN part of rAge is Not a huge money making venture, it is something we do for the community which costs a huge amount of money. The networking equipment alone is worth +- 5 times what we make on ticket sales. there are a lot of other costs involved that some people may not be aware of, so the comments about NAG banking money are so far off it is scary. That being said we do however consider the 2011 LAN a huge improvement on the 2010 LAN.
Re: rAge aftermath
Cleona while we are not fully aware of what happens in the background, we only see what happens in front of us.Originally Posted by Cleona
Having said that, I will have to disagree with you regarding your statement.
Last year's rAge LAN seemed to have a better execution than this year's LAN. I seemed to recall last year that in my section there was a problem with our PCs getting a DHCP address. In no time at all there was a HP tech there who connected via serial cable to the swtich, typed in a few commands and then we were sorted in less than 5 minutes.
Also having the VCWEB server running made no real difference as it was barley updated nor was there any replies from the admins on the forums regarding issues.
Gamers can be a patient lot if they are told regularly what is going on.
Re: rAge aftermath
I loved every minute of the LAN this year at rAge. I HATED the damn clap thing everyone was doing! Gawd it was cute the first few times but after doing it a million times a minute it got old fast.
Team fortress 2 worked fine with steam for me the whole weekend, and I even got to spawn rape for the first time with Griff3n by me being the medic that healed his chubby pyro ass :D
Also, the Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution presentation was epic! Vultures were as annoying as ever and the Sony stand simply rocked the house this year along with the BF3/Telkom stand
Re: rAge aftermath
Telkom. The over-excited announcer said you can expect to wait about a month for the photo, no idea why. Not sure how important a picture of you with said girls is, but you can expect a pretty long wait if the photos do arrive. (I heard this while playing BF2...)
Re: rAge aftermath
Must always wait for telkom :)
Re: rAge aftermath
Hi
So let?s start with a bit of feedback from our side, before tackling some responses and ideas.
Most certainly a year that presented its fair share of challenges. Not really going to go into details, but it may help to know that of the issues that were expected and raised, still have not been answered by the appropriate responsible persons. Thus normal issues, and then some for spice.
From our point of view, the following was great:
Intel provided servers as requested on time, and beyond specification.
HP provided a stunning array of network switches (R2.6 million roughly)
The Dome were quite accommodating with regards to tight schedules and setup
MWEB were very assisting within their abilities and boundaries to resolve the internet connection issues.
Things that were less than great:
Had a power failure on block C. Took roughly 1.5-2 hours to fix. Cable installed from subcontractor most likely failed under load, since no load conditions did not provide any indication of the impeding failure. Although 160 people lost power initially, roughly 80 were back up in no time. The remainder had to show patience, for which you get thumbs up. Thanks for the patience and understanding on an issue that was almost impossible to prevent.
The internet sucked. Here were a couple of factors at play. The initial line that was requested, costed roughly R1.1 million for line rental, bandwidth excluded. Obviously this did not quite fit into the budget. Then eventually ADSL lines were deemed the only reasonable solution, given time, our infrastructure and the niggling budget. Telkom unfortunately did not shine in the provision of service in this regard. Some of the lines were being looked at after 23h00 on Friday. Because of the testing, and MWEB DN secure, additional lines were locked and became unusable. So Saturday afternoon most lines were up, unfortunately not performing to expectations. 10M lines were forced to sync at 4M-6M. With these lower speeds due to high SN ratios due to distance to exchange, and continued irregular performance, the resulting performance was certainly less than stellar. We circumvented some issues for the NGL by installing a dedicated line to their cluster and sharing the most stable routers between them. That unfortunately meant that the LAN suckled second on a tiny ADSL aggregate supply.
My time schedule sucked and I wasn?t able to spend enough time nurturing the forums. Who nows, maybe next year I?ll get a couple of extra hours from Santa.
So now for your point of view.
?Can't say much for the LAN as I wasn't there, but the show was pretty cool apart from one problem: the layout. ?
Now this will be a very difficult issue to handle. From one point of view you do not want the expo to seem empty with wide open spaces, people quickly jump to conclusions such as nobody is interested and therefore they will not come again. Peer pressure still rules. On the other hand attendance is not presold and cannot be accurately predicted. I believe attendance grew more than anticipated. Then we have the 2lt Coke bottle issue. We have three liters of excited gamers, 5 liters of day visitors, but only 2liters of space. We looked at utilizing the auction area at the Dome, increased the LAN to the max on the mezzanine level (fun walking to that end with your PC), utilized the banqueting area for Telkom (other banqueting was booked out). The expo increased in floor space from last year, therefor the LAN had to decrease main arena floor space. Thus all in all we do not have easy solutions for next year. We most certainly are working on ideas, if you have brilliant ones that considered at least some logical complications, pm me.
?My only gripe was the uber bright lights late Saturday night for the okes on ground floor, whereas Friday night was perfect - thought that was weird.?
The difference in lights was due to exhibitors having ?functions?. Once the show closes, so does our ability to control the lights. Will however make a point to leave this on the agenda for next year to try and have it scheduled and executed before responsible people leave the building.
?I would like to bring up the subject of age restricted games though. Next year the exhibitors might need to be a bit weary about allowing children (9 or 10 years old from what I saw) play games at their stands that are age restricted 18+. Sure if they get their parents consent it's fine, and personally I couldn't give a flying unicorn, but there might be a **** storm about it somewhere down the road. Nobody likes a **** storm.?
Valid comment and I agree. Will add it to list of items to take cognizance off.
?As per usual rAge was awesome, other than the network lag at the LAN and the Food being crappy and expensive (its a good thing there are plenty of restaurants around), I really enjoyed it, can't wait for next year.?
Food has been discussed to death, so I will just say be glad that you do not feed a crew for rAge. Network lag needs a bit more definition to properly address it. Please consider that joining servers hosted by people being leeched to death, will cause your game to lag such as evident by this posting ?The LAN was fantastic, minimal drops during the six games I played in the DotA comp - three okes DC'd towards the end of the 1st game, but it could have been the host since he gave us a heads up at the start.? Should the network refer to the internet, well kind off explained that already. Should it refer to slow copy speeds, then consider thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's......, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's, in addition to the fact that he/she might be experiencing HDD slow down due to high read/writes or the fact that you download speed has been limited by the user. In addition I might add that I personally (nor any of my staff that I am aware of) received any complaints in this regard. Thus pm me with details so that I can try and understand, and if applicable try and improve where possible.
?I'm not sure but I felt like the LAN Queue took longer this year (Only two guards to check the bags?), I was in the row for about 4 hours, not nice in the hot sun?.. the DC server that went down a couple off times.?
Not sure when you arrived. Maybe just a clarification. Officialy we open at 10h00 on the Friday same as the expo. Since we are such awesome people, we try and open before that should circumstances allow. Thus if we assume that you arrived at 6h00, checked in at reception at 10h05 before going to your seat, you have waited in the queue officially for only 5 minutes. I do believe that the perception that the queue moved slower was mostly because many gamers showed up earlier than previous years and made a 4 person wide queue, not single file. Although only two guards checked the bags, this was done to control the entry crowd and did not affect the throughput at the power test station or ladies checking you in. Thus maybe a difference in when people arrived, but the check-in process did not perform worse than other years. Consider this post:
?Queuing for rAge. Arrived at 4am. Already 200 ppl ahead of me. Millions of rands worth of personal merchandise resting on the Tarmac?
I am aware of the DC server that was not stable throughout the event. After getting back to our accommodation after midnight on Saturday with no sleep on Friday, Ivan drove back to resolve the server crashing due to a windows error.
?LAN was not as fun as last years, just have the feeling that they did not put enough effort in the organization of the LAN. Was not as fun and interesting as 2010. I must add that the network was more unstable. BUT not unstable enough to keep me away next year! :)?
It doesn?t really matter how much effort goes into the preparation, because only the result counts. Thus you may find it interesting that planning for this year started directly after breakdown last year. Same as I am busy already with planning for next year. Got a bit more than 40 hours sleep during the last two weeks prior to rAge trying to resolve issues that were not in our control. Less fun maybe because some of the usual server admins did not make it, neither did their replacements. Less fun maybe because we did not have sufficient prizes from sponsors to allow us to have fun like last year Saturday. Unstable, again please pm me with details, better still make me aware of it at the event so that we may try and address the issue, or at least explain it in case we cannot solve it.
?Thanks to the awesome team managing the LAN - as usual (this was year 6) it was great... awesome... your effort, most behind the scenes, is noted and appreciated..thank you from my clan!!!?
Thanks. Maybe it may be useful to know that last year we had three staff in hospital. One person?s foot gave in and had to be operated, another had to get his knee drained, another was treated for spider bite (from our storeroom at rAge), and another had therapy for two weeks to get the feet operating again. rAge really puts a lot of strain on people, both physically and mentally. An infrastructure has to be setup within 3-4 days for more than 2000 users, with the expectation that no flaws will exist since there will be no time to fix it. I am proud of my team and truly appreciate their effort and dedication. I have been involved with other events, and I believe rAge has some of the most dedicated crew members around.
?The parking sucked though - too many fights - the dome management team must really jack up their management protocol - ..?
Although this won?t help, we suffered at their hands too. This will most certainly be one of the issues I will raise again. Last year seemed to be better, and this year it seemed to slip again. Please bear in mind that although paid for by the event, we do not manage this aspect.
?This years LAN was excellent, the few minor issues were sorted out fast and precise.
I cant see why people will complain that the LAN wasn't as "fun", because its not the admins that have to make it fun, its the people your with! The expo has definitely improved, and as stated was crowded, but maby its not just the layouts fault but the increase of people coming to the expo? All in all it was another epic rage and will be there next year for the 8th time and to see the rages 10th year anniversary celebration!?
Guess we had some luck afterall. Although I agree admins do not provide the fun, we are responsible for putting the mechanisms in place for gamers to achieve the fun state. Some of these mechanisms did not materialize due to various compounding issues. With next year being 10, a ?revamp? will definitely be on the cards for the approach and handling of everything. We will however not abandon what works.
?I agree the admins should not be expected to make it fun, but i don?t think that is the complaint? I personally feel that organizing a lan is not just setting up tables, running network and power cables... no... It is a great start and i have to admit that those three elements were spot on!!?
We win some?
?The lack of communication started even before the lan started? We never received an updated list of what games will be hosted and I understand now it is because you did not host any game servers for the open lan. We asked multiple times on the forum for an update. At that point a VC could have informed us that there won?t be servers hosted and that we need to host ourselves. Not a problem, would have just liked to have it communicated beforehand.?
We lose some. Please consider our communication :
? How do I know what servers are up and running?: Servers hosted by us will be up for the entire duration of the event. Whether people will join them, remains to be seen. Therefore, we will not advertise general servers on the big screen.? As well as
?Of course you'll be able to host your own servers. The NAG Open LAN is pretty much like any other LAN, except there will also be dedicated servers for the more popular games, to help speed things up and keep things uniform. But if you want to jam some Freelancer or Diablo 2, that's entirely up to you.? Or maybe
?I basically use this list to try and ensure that the most voted for games receive priority in getting them to work. Thus some people really like game x, but it only has one vote. Game y and z have 50 and 80 votes. Thus, when I start to run out of servers or bandwidth becomes an issue with online authentication, I have to cut some games. My personal preference is certainly a poor reflection, and for that reasons the poll. Should the game be on the list, it does not mean it is automatically in. Also remember that games that allow you to start servers locally will always be hosted by players that want to play the game. Our servers enforce some basic settings. Online authentication and servers are considered on merit since we do not have enough bandwidth for 2200 people to go wild and have great performance.?
And as a bonus I even offered server access:
?As I stated earlier, if you really like a game, let say UT2004 and want to use one of our servers to host a dedicated server with your community's favourite mod, then contact me. I cannot play all the games with all the mods. As such I rely on feedback such as this.?
?Nowadays you need an internet connection to play your legal games that you bought and registered online via steam or whatever. Servers should have been hosted and the internet should have been sorted out long ago. There must be fiber connectivity in that area... Can?t be that hard to get a decent fiber line from Neotel for the weekend. I?m sure you can afford it or they would even be happy to sponsor it... ?
It would seem that you have much greater pull when it comes to convincing companies to give their hundreds of thousands of rands away with no positively quantifiable measure of return on investment so that people may afterwards speculate about why the service was not up to their expected standard ( 30 10M ADSL accounts cost roughly R60 000, no equipment or staff cost considered). Consider that we are already very lucky that HP dedicated their equipment for the network, Intel provide servers, you got some goodie bags etc. NAG really try to get you guys/gals the best they can.
Unfortunately the recent recession hasn?t fully lifted its effect and the marketplace is still very weary. Companies are thinking twice before spending money. Also consider the impact of something trivial such as power. It affected a lot of companies (obviously individuals as well) and will most certainly dent the rAge budget. Yes we pay for the electricity consumed on top of the venue hire. Thus if you have access to these sponsorships, let us know so that we may follow up. If you are able to get the fibre for a lot less than R1.1m , let us know how. If it was up to me, I would be testing next years rAge internet now, unfortunately it does not always work the way we want, evident from this post:
?We are working on the internet connection. The speed, bandwidth and latency of the connection cannot yet be confirmed and as such we cannot guarantee the availability and performance of the internet connection. (From the orders placed currently, the internet will certainly be much better than last year. Unfortunately, the confirmation of what the supplier considerers to be available, at what speed, has not happened yet. But it will be better than last year.) Keep in mind that we will do our very best to ensure that it works at acceptable levels. We might be very stingy on what can and cannot be done.?
?I went to a VC on Saturday night asking what?s happening with Steam and Quake Live. Both need internet connection but steam kept on crashing when I try and launch a game and Quake live just did not work at all. The VC responded with a ?I have no idea? and ?It?s Telkom hey?? I appreciate the fact that it?s not the VC?s fault and that the Telkom ADSL lines weren?t working properly but there was your first mistake?. Multiple ADSL lines for 2200 gamers is not the best way to do it. You probably fishboned it?? It?s quite expensive and very unstable.?
Since we have only been trying to get the lines up from Monday, since the request to test it before the event was turned down by Telkom, stating I am not sure when it will be resolved late Friday night after calling CTO, managers, department heads etc at Telkom may be considered a reasonable answer to most. Using multiple ADSL lines not the best solution, we kind of agree, unfortunately circumstances do not allow for better alternatives. And no we did not fishbone it.
?In NAG?s defense, I see this kind of thing happening quite regularly in Gauteng?. Cape Town lans are far better organized and communication is way better. It is just sad that you will never get 2200 players in an open lan in Cape Town?. I expected a bit more from a R300 lan ticket.?
Guessing having the same venue on a monthly basis with the same crowd may be a factor too, other than the mountain of course. It would be a fair assumption that not everybody will be happy, not matter what you do. I can only advise that you consider whether you are willing to risk another R300 before buying another rAge ticket. Games will depend even more on online next year. Soon LAN will mean internet for a bunch of gamers. Should you have insights and ideas as to how to improve specific aspects of the LAN, please feel free to pm me, good advice is always considered.
?I would like to make it clear that I still had fun at the lan and that it?s a great concept. I just feel that it could be something so much better.?
And we agree.
?The arrogance of the bald VC crew member. I cant stand that guy. His lack of interest in any issues that we brought up was astounding. Some VC crew members seem to hink they're doing us a favour when providing "assistance"?
Seems that we cannot like everybody. People will have differences in opinions and approaches. Does it is to be expected that some people may rub you the wrong way. One has to consider though that the bald guy (Michael I assume) takes care of night shift. That means between 23h00 and 7h00. The logic is that normally after 23h00 one would expect fewer technical issues. On Friday I was there through the night, so I presume that you experience relates to Saturday. As always, I can only comment that should you feel offended or mistreated by any crew member, find me during the event so that we may address the issue when everybody is available in order to allow for the opportunity to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. I cannot at this point of time fix that which lies in the past.
?The poorly designed vcweb site and the lack of proper announcements with regard to the gaming competitions and what game servers will be hosted.?
Personally I found the website quite useful. I would thus appreciate pointers on where to improve, or at least specific areas that were lacking in your opinion. Stating poorly guides me nowhere. Please read this and other post regarding game server postings.
?I can guarantee that NAG feels that the open lan was a success as the money made is banked... Gaming should never ever be looked at from a business prospective. I?m not saying you can?t make money out of it but the approach needs to be completely different to a typical business deal. Over promising and under delivering has always irritated the living crap out of me.?
I do believe that you may be optimistic with regards to the profitability of the LAN. If it is not run like a business, then I guess it just won?t work because there will be no deliverables, no timeframe, no responsibilities, no clients (guessing the idea comes across). Not all businesses are after 200% margins and world domination. Thus NAG do not consider the success of the event according to the balance, or lack there off, in the bank but rather on may other fronts. Gaming has been given a showcase, people were exposed to it, normal non IT people if you will. Parents were able to see that their child is not a special needs case, he just likes gaming. Contacts have been made. Exposure given, and off course a couple of gamers got a glimpse of Lara Croft. See NAG loves gamers.
?Maybe lower the price untill you have everything sorted out and then charge your full price again... Paying R300 for a lan ticket where things are still having to be tested and worked on on the first night it launches is a bit ridiculous?
Tested may be the wrong choice of words. Fixing that which was not supposed to be broken, might be more applicable. Selling rAge tickets at R200 would obviously alleviate the high demand for tickets because true connoisseur gamers will not buy tickets at such a ridiculous low price, because it would be evident that the LAN is intended only as a proving ground, and not a real LAN. I do believe that this approach may need further consideration.
?Not once did i see a VC on the floor make a trip to see if everyone is happy or if they need any help. I definately wasn't approached by anyone represented by NAG?
Assuming that one has to be seated, and that after Saturday night the point of asking would be mute, it allows roughly 24 hours to enquiry about the state of everybody. Given these parameters it would require a gamer being queried every 39seconds, assuming they are awake, not busy gaming, not in the expo, not on a smoke or toilet break and actually looking up from the monitor to see the approaching question. We generally found that most people are willing to inform us of a problem they believe we can assist with. I believe this to be a generally accepted trend. Next time try and look for me, not that hard to spot and generally making my way through the LAN. Should you be willing to approach me with your issue, I will most likely give you a response or try and assist if possible.
?The point i was trying to make is that you cant expect to charge someone R300 for something that is in testing phases. Having 30 ADSL lines is just stupid, im sorry. The technology to combine those lines as 1 massive line is completely flawed. I have done it myself. Rather take that money and get a fibre line for the weekend.?
Although the technology is flawed according to you, so is our ability to fit your fibre into our budget without affecting the ticket prices. I may find it interesting to get the details of why you tried a failed technology after doing proper research, thus please pm me should you have the time and inclination.
?The problem is that none of the organisers listen or communicate properly before, during and after the event.?
Fortunately this post is just a quick reader, or maybe not.
?il give u guys a thumbs up but would like the nag staff jsut to bare in mind for the next venture to plan a bit more get everything working correctly as i would have really liked to have played my MW2 with the mates?
I appreciate the frustration and fully understand it. I can only offer my apologies and let you know it was not lack of planning or trying. I am quite willing to start testing next week (need a bit more sleep this week). Unfortunately big companies do not bend according to our timeframes.
?Gaming is not just something people do to pass the time anymore. Gaming has become a sport and should be treated as such?
When is the last time you had the honor to attend a school organized sport event. For that matter even the national championships. Just kidding, just found your choice of reference funny due to their notorious ability to screw up timelines, ignore planning and just f? things up. Or at least that is my experience.
?So how is it that on rAge day Steam does not really work and it was not just me. Fine so now Steam works. Sorry sir you can not play MW2. IWNet can not call home. Or in the middle of a Steam game your Steam connection gets lost. Too bad so sad.?
Not sure I understand 100% your question. If I use arbitrary figures to explain, I require 100Mb/s for all the traffic. I only have 90Mb/s ? 105Mb/s. So when I have 105, everybody should be doing ok. When I only have 90, something must give. If it is a data transfer such as a file, no problem. Put it in a queue to be serviced when bandwidth is available again. Gaming does however not take kindly to this treatment and when the lines saturate due to fluctuating performance of the limited lines, you get dropped. How do we resolve this, get a big enough pipe, on time working according to specifications. How do we do that within the constraints of time, budget and rules sets? I give no guarantees here, same as I cannot guarantee Eskom will not switch our power off.
?So what then happens? Piracy for the win. It was a last resort. Not something I am proud of doing but dammit I wanted to play a game with out the internet needed.?
I have to say Amen. I bought Witcher 2 though steam. About a 10G download. Add the downloadable content, another 5G. Thus the bandwidth to download the game cost be more than the game. I tried with several institutions to get ?local? internet servers, unfortunately that did not work out. Will try again for next year.
?Last year there was not this problem. So what is the difference between last year and this year??
More dependency on internet. Last year we had less bandwidth. Next year will be worse.
?I do not go to rAge, like some people, and leech. I go there to play games, check the expo, over spend at the expo and make/meet new friends.?
I like and agree with your approach. My apologies for not being able to make that a very pleasant experience this year.
?Also how hard would it be for MWeb to put a "steam" server there for the weekend? and then only it would really need Internet.?
As I said I worked on solutions, with no joy. Should anybody have the means to pull this off, I will be in your debt.
?Also having the VCWEB server running made no real difference as it was barley updated nor was there any replies from the admins on the forums regarding issues.?
Updated I assume with newsflash and not other content. We did post on the forum, we had admins chatting through DC++, but if the message does not change, it serves no purpose to flood it.
I hope that about covers most of it. I would appreciate if it could be kept civil. PMs also work if you feel the need to have a stronger opinion or just an opinion. Not going to check all the spelling now, way too late for that fun.
Re: rAge aftermath
lol this to much to read on a Sunday morning...
Re: rAge aftermath
Greetings all.
I have been following the comments and agree that there is merit to most arguments (except where the point has been missed by people talking on behalf of... whoever). I personally was t rAge for my 7th or 8th LAN, and it is something I look forward to. Last year was the first year a friend and myself took our daughters with to rAge, last the girls called it "the social event of the year". I unfortunately am not much into the whole load DC++ and leach thing, I prefer to play games (I am a gamer). I too am one of the people (13+ in our group) that have all the games on STEAM. As with my buddy, Golt, STEAM has cost as a small fortune as our kids do not pay for their own games, so between us we have basicall supported 8 STEAM accounts with games to play, as to teach the kids to not pirate - lead by example. Ok, so where am I going with this, well here.
The VC guys are getting a lot better each year. Why do I say this, when technology changes they adapt. They try and pre-empt what hardware is needed. I am sure if they had the budget our experience would be "Awsome".
I did spend some time on Sunday speaking to ShadowOrphan and was privvy to some of the technical issues they suffered. But I cannot fault the dedication of the team (especially in hind-sight). Perhaps there were incidents experienced by some lanners where the friendliness of the individual was questioned, but in my experience, the dedication cannot be questioned.
If we look at the expo and what was done, many give-aways, competions and goodies were "thrown" around. I would like to say that we need to try and get big business to sponsor our rAge experiences and ideas on how this can be done must be shared. The gamers alone are 2200 people who go to the lan to leach and play games. The number of visitors that visit the expo is +- 80 000. So as can be seen, we are a relatively small number of people, with passion for our "sport" that will definately rival some of the most dedicated athletes. We need business to understand this and we need to provide an incentive for them to sponsor our weekend. We need to look at partial sponsorships and combined sponsorships. DRM is killing lanning world wide, but if you live in a 1st world country, bandwidth is not that big of an issue. I am busy looking into things from my side and will communicate with ShadowOrphan when I have some solid info.
I will try my best to add value to next years NAG LAN, even though I might not get a ticket as things go, I will see what I can do to improve it, instead of complaining about it.
And just for the record, after my experience with MW2 there is absolutely no way on this green earth I will waste 1c of my hard earned cash on MW3. This also implies that if any of my kids want that game, they will have to waste their own money on it.
VC guys and girls. Thanks for your effort and energy over the weekend, even though I was not a happy gamer, upon reflection I realise that all of you did what you could and made a difference where you could in order to make it as pleasant for as was possible.
Many Thanks and Regards
Soap
Re: rAge aftermath
1st off - EPIC LAN IS EPIC!
2ndly - I was thoroughly impressed with megarom and having that private screening, made the whole expo feel like a legit top notch event, it was really impressive to see the big companies there, I think that is largely due to the sponsor though.
3rdly - Why is every one complaining about the internets? I was downloading steam updates on sunday morning at an incredible speed and never once had a problem playing TF2 or any other steam type game. I even managed to get onto an IS TF2 server before DC++ inhaled my bandwidth.
4thly - I was quite sad to see that there was no representation of Skyrim at all? Unless I just missed it...
5thly - I have to agree with who-ever mentioned it, the layout had me confused most of the time, losing my bearings often... have u ever thought of having a circular design?
You know, something like this
With the stage in the center or even a semi circle type thing with the stage or Nag Stand in the center. I think that will add a sort of flow to the expo.
6thly - Promotion girls where top notch, not very promotiony though, but a good break form the sweaty LAN men.
7thly - I LOVE RAGE SPECIALS!!!
8thly - What was the point of having two BT Games stalls? And there where some stalls that didnt do anything new, WHATSOEVER!! Eg Fontoza... They just did excatly what they had last year... seemed kinda like a waste of space..
9thly - Can we please have some cheap road signs on the roads near by? or like on the highway? for the guys that dont know the area well.
Even with all my criticism it was a good expo, all around success, looking forward to what you do to top it next year :)
Re: rAge aftermath
This is called being a douch boet .
No one else s fault that you got romped in games.
don't come have that attitude . The tickets were bought and they attended. We attended. We had fun we joked and tbh think that my team is more down to earth than most of the people on this forum.
Not once did we egotize our win . Not once boet. This mentally has to change for gaming to grow in this country. Gaming is big in EU because the casual gamers wants to be like the pro gamers. And thus it grew. :D
Re: rAge aftermath
Now, how do I get more involved in eSports? I reckon the only way my gaming will be accepted as a valid pastime to my parents, family and most of my friends is if I can show that it actually is something serious. :/
/maaaajor off topic, apologies
Re: rAge aftermath
First off, I'm not your damn 'boet'.
I don't care if I suck in games, I lan to have fun. I'd rather pay R1k for a ticket than to have telkom taking them. Just because you are good at a game does not mean you should be given preference to attend while hundreds of guys who went through the trouble of trying to secure a ticket on 1 August get turned down. I don't have a problem with guys competing in e-sports, I have a problem with those that have the same entitlement attitude that most gamers despise in jocks. Cyrus has always been a prick, I don't care if we would've lost the damn dota game in 2006, getting us dq'ed & saying that we would've lost anyway is the manner of an egoistic jerk. "but that was so long ago": he hasn't changed, that's why no-one who went to school with him even talks to him anymore.
Saying casual gamers want to be like pro gamers is a big misconception. They don't want to 'train' 24/7 to beat the rest. They just want a quick win with the glory and prizes that go with it, while still having fun playing.
Lanning is a social event, having so many 'hardcore athletes' there ruins the experience. You can learn a lot about how an event at a lan should be run from the guys at the strategy comp, hats off to those guys.
Re: rAge aftermath
IVe attended allot of lans for fun. Just recently i went to a lan in Vanderbijl park where i was easily better at cod 4 than any one at the event. Well that is if you don't count my team mate Rora. Now me and him chatted with every one at the lan and then spent about an hour helping about 40 different " casual gamers " with their game setups as they were running cod4 in a way that was not going to help them competitively. I get the same "casual gamers" at every event that wants my config and setup. Now either All those okes are wrong or you have a misconception of how casual gamers do things.
I totally get where you are coming from and i believe in fair play. My clan has got 2 teams competing in cod4 laRd and RGM . Im part of laRd that won rage so we are getting offered allot of chances at sponsorship but i don't take them unless both our teams can get something out of it. yes we loose out on allot but at least there is no interclan willy waving contests.
Being a rage winner this puts me in you" egotistic and arrogant Esport athletes " group. that means i must go for the win no matter what. Cyrus runs Ventus gaming that thumped my team in a final in JHB for DGL last year. We were comfortably loosing and one of their players pc froze and we saw it before they did and called a tactical time out as they had used theirs already. Now I am a very bad looser I cant take it and Cyrus can testify to that and i moaned like a little girl at that comp but still we did not take an advantage out of it. We could easily have goten 2 or 3 rounds and get some momentum to swing the game.
On account of Cyrus. yes i don't agree with everything he does but again support allot of things he does do. regarding his sportsmanship. Ive only had one time to see it and what i saw ill tell you.
DGL had 2 cod 4 play offs last year . Prelim finals in Capetown and Finals in JHB. We romped Ventus ( cyrus`s team) in Capetown taking one of the maps 13 - 2 that is a extreme hiding. So he could only have been upset with us and i would've been too in his position. Come the finals in JHB the rules was constructed very unfairly that gave Cyrus`s team a massive advantage. cyrus was the one that contested it and agreed with us that it is not fair to us.
Now if a Clan leader does something to decrease chances of winning by wanting fair play. If this makes him a prick then yes , He is one of the biggest pricks i know then.
Ive had a team disqualified for using global chat at mpld not too long ago. Im not saying we would've won or lost the game but it was very close. They spammed binds every time they killed a lesser skilled guy we gave a chance on our team. Not being able to perform well he cracked under pressure and because of this i got them DQed on the no global chat rule. I have to add we did not do it for the win as we then forfeited the next 2 maps to give them the win.
Another time we played a mix game comp where we had to play dota. In our team we had 2 guys that has never played dota and it was agreed to that after the other team claimed we must play dota as they also had 2 new comers. This turned out to be a lie and all 5 of them were pretty good at dota. We were loosing but the fight wasn't over yet and a Furion backdoored and took a tower. I immediately saved the game and took it up with an admin and the ruling was a rematch that we won in the end. Does this make me a prick too?
lastly its called freedom of speech and I can call you boet as much as i like ;)
Re: rAge aftermath
Oh shi...!
Furion can be a bitch that way.
Anyway, this is a thread about rAge, not RAAAAGGGEEEEE!!!!!!!
Re: rAge aftermath
Well i dont have much to complain about, because quite frankly it was rAge and there are always some problems with the network at every rAge i have been too, but as usual the problems are sorted out quite soon, the internet issue's was a bumber but i understand that it was not the VC crews fault and those things happen, we do live in SA and Internet in SA has still got a long way too go, other than that i dont think there was much problems with the network where i sat at any rate.
My main issue this year was the parking gaurds, they were arrogant and unreasonable, i had a big issue with them in the evenings, apparently there was no parking available in the lanners parking area, they wanted me to park by the expo parking area that would be locked in the evenings, i told them i needed to leave later that evening so they cant lock the gates as i would need my car, they told me its not there problem, i argued a bit, then got fed up and told them ill go speak to the vc guys because they are being unreasonable, so i went into the dome and spoke to a VC crew member(very nice guy, very understanding, looked dead tired), he couldn't understand why the security were acting like that, so he came with us to the security and spoke to them, all of a sudden they seemed to realise they were being unreasonable and said they would have a gaurd on duty as soon as me and the vc guy pitched up.
Anyway, other than that i must say it was a very enjoyable lan yet again, I will definately be back next year, One thing i would like to add though is there is always a VC crew member at the entrance area that is more than happy to help out, even if they look like they are about to fall unconcious because of lack of sleep and from being over worked, i have been to rAge for 4 years now and every year the vc crew do there outmost best to help out when someone has a problem or something goes wrong, they are understanding and very quick at sorting out problems, I just want to say thanks again to you "The VC Crew" for all the hard work you put in every year into making rAge a Awesome and Spectacular event, see you all next year :P
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