CCGA - May 2003 Review

The May17th 2003

Carolina ARMAGEDDON Review!

Hi Fraggers!

What's this? A review of the last Carolina ARMAGEDDON!!! Gasp, they do exist!

Let's see if I remember it all since several weeks have gone by. Sigh. Real life intrudes on our virtual one too much. Anyway, on with the typing...

Our new location turned out to be very nice for us. Of course it rained, but being in a hotel that has a covered unloading area does have it's advantages! The CCGA Crew setup most of the equipment Friday night. In fact, Spectere and Umpa stayed at the hotel to work on servers all night long. Boy did it payoff! The servers worked without a hitch (other than one bad keyboard issue) and the pings were as low as they could possible go!

We had another first, no power issues! Our electrician did a terrific job running 15 new circuits into the meeting room. We ceiling mounted those bad boys and it worked out perfectly. Not one power outage the whole party. Next lan, we'll have even more work done, so you won't see any cables tied to the ceiling at all. Just some cables coming down on the side walls. We have official permission to wire the rest of the room with more power and network cables, all in the ceiling!

So back to the day. People started showing up as early as 7:30 am, but the party starts at 9:00 am, so it was out to the lobby to wait for them. What did greet them was a very good breakfast bar, for only $3.00 a person. That really started the day off right! New place, good food, and new faces at the party.

Once the door opened, signups went very smoothly, all total we had about 40 fraggers for our first party at the Quality Suites. Only two no-shows, and one person cancelled at the last minute. Next party I predict we will sell out the party, topping at 50 fraggers.

About the only hitch in setup was a bad network drop near Spectere. New cable, some quick re-routing, and all was well. That brings us to the second hitch of the day. The AC unit near Spectere died on us (notice a trend here, no more electronic thingys near Spectere next party :) ). The hotel has profusely apologized for that and has since fixed the AC unit. A couple of fans, some open doors, and things were bearable, if a little warm on one side of the room, and cold on the other. Next party we will be more prepared with box fans, just in case.

Now on with the fun stuff. Games, man were there games! C & C Generals, CS, UT2003, DOD, Freelancer, and the biggie, BattleField 1942. It sure was great just to walk around and see all the different games being played.

Freeplay went on till about 11:00, when the tourneys started. The Battlefield Tourney sure was a tough one. Not to run, not work, but to survive. Everyone agrees that the gamers that showed up had to have been some of the best players we have ever had. Most every match was down to the wire, all through the day. Team TARD won in the winners bracket, defeating Team RoC.

Team RoC came back to win the losers bracket, then had to face Team TARD again. This match had to be one of the toughest I've ever played in. Nail biting, adrenaline rush, in your face competition at its best. RoC one the first match, handing Team TARD their first loss. The next match between RoC and TARD was watched by just about everyone in the room. The tickets kept coming down, the frags going up, and the clock kept ticking away. In the end the RoC team won a Minor Victory over the TARD team, by a margin of 2 kills. Yes, 2 kills. It was really that close. At the end of the match, both teams agreed that it was one of the best tourneys they had ever had the extreme pleasure of playing in.

The C & C Generals was a little less frenzied, but great all the same. I'm not sure of the number of players in the C & C G tourney, but it was at least 10 or 11 players. The matches were either very slow, with players turtling, or the fast kill-them-at-all-costs rush that all RTS games are famous for. In the long run it was Redneck that took home the top honors, defeating the infamous [CCGA]Spectere after an intense match. Knowing Spectere, he will be honing his skills that make sure that doesn't happen again.

Just so I won't forget, even though we have left Golf Village, we haven't left Paluso's Pizza behind. They delivered to the hotel all their tasty goodness, steaming hot. MMMMM, PIZZA!!!

After the tourney's, players returned to freeplay again, with most people playing either BF1942, or Desert Combat. Saw a few people even playing on a Xbox hooked to their PC. Cool. Freeplay lasted till the Awards Ceremony, which was about 7:30 PM. I won't list all the prizes given out, but I will highlight a few. We had t-shirts from Hackerthreads, hats and mouse pads from Alienware, Nvidia shirts and glow-in-the dark thingys (cool, we used some of them on the floor for lighting). The very sweet Smoked Acrylic case form Outside the Box, and also a set of noise canceling headsets form them. Our most favorite sponsor, ModMan of Design My PC showed up, with lots of pre-ordered case mod goodies for peeps and a few prizes too.

We are happy to say that the economy is turning and sponsors are opening up their treasure vaults once again. Every person there went home with a prize of some sort, even if it was a copy of Sanity. Good news, we only have 5 copies of that game left to give away! Where's TROLL???

After all the awards and prizes were given away, we had a contest to see who could fold the car sunshields from ATD and AMD the fastest. 4 people were chosen to compete 2 at a time. It was hilarious to see them try to folder those suckers. You would swear they were spring loaded and coated with oil. After all that fun, it was back for more gaming till about 10:00 pm.

Cleanup went fast, and many thanks to all the fraggers that helped out. It takes the crew about 4 hours to set everything up, but with all your help, we were out in about an hour.

Thanks again for another great Carolina ARAMGEDDON!

Join us August 1 and 2 for our FIRST overnight LAN party!

Carolina ARMAGEDDON!....ARE YOU READY?