Building a LAN Center

[Jby]

You might have already finished your list but here's quite a few popular games that I have sitting on my desk right now:

-Counter strike
-Quake
-RTCW (&RTCW:ET) Old but still a classic
-COD (1&2)
-UT series (&Tactical Ops)
-Battlefield
-Operation flashpoint (another old one but personally I loved it)

I think you have to have something like AOEIII or Generals in there for the tactical side, or pot luck in my case.

 

[Travis18]

a

top 10 played from xfire.com with over 4.1 million users.

1. world of warcraft
2. counterstrike source
3. call of duty 2 muliplayer
4. counterstrike 1.6
5. battlefield 2
6. guild wars
7. woflenstein enemy territory
8. warcraft 3 frozen throne
9. call of duty muliplayer
10. call of duty united offensive multiplayer

 

[Tordenskjold]

dawn of war is a pop rts for LAn play.. and even games like cs1.6 still get played even when css is on the pc's

 

[Mr_Threepwood]

WoW in a lan place would be dumb.

Heres the games you need:

1. CSS & CS 1.6
2.Warcraft 3
3.BF2
4. Just install all the Steam apps you can, half life 2 death match owns

 

[BioT3ch]

My friend owns a LAN place and the computers have WoW.

CSS, BF2, UT2004, Quake 3 are about all you must have. If you do CoD, do CoD 1, its much more popular than CoD 2 for online play.

 

[mikesgroovin]

Thanks again everyone for the information. I gathered a lot from xFire and GameSpy as well.

I would like to aquire a little info about consoles now. Couple questions:

How many of you own....

Xbox?
PS2?
Xbox360?
GameCube?

I keep gathering from folks that Smash Brothers on the GameCube is HUGE. I read a few articles here and there. But, still, I'm not convinced. Frankly, I would like to refrain from buying a GameCube (and all the controllers, memory, etc) if I could.

 

[Frank Jaeger]

I own a PS2. I have no plans to buy any other console except for the PS3 when it comes out.

I personally would never buy a Gamecube just because of the tiny cheap feeling controllers that they come with. Plus the games that interest me can only be found on PS2 for the most part.

 

[Mr_Threepwood]

Well, super smash brothers is a very fun multiplayer game if you have 3-4 people playing it, but I wouldnt buy a cube just for that. As for the controllers, dont get me started, the cube controllers are by far the best out of the xbox and ps2 and cube.

Id say stick with the PC games, get some of the ones suggested (Definitly cs/css, you cant have a lan center without these). Also you should get a non FPS game though, which is why I recommended warcraft 3. Theres a lot of free custom maps for it which makes it fun, to name a few.

Footmen frenzy
Defense of the ancients
tons of tower defenses
RPG minigames
much more

 

[mikesgroovin]

Yes, we do plan on having about 60 PC games to choose from, including: RTS, FPS, RPG and MMOs. As for the console games, I here a lot of chatter among friends and typical people that go in on NCAA pools. They love playing Madden football and other sports games on the PS2. I know that i've heard them speak up on Touraments that always seem to fall through. I plan on holding sports tournaments like this on the console every once in a while as well.

Yea, I think that I'm just going to hold off on getting the GameCube until I hear people ask for it. $225 for the 3 controllers, Cube console and the game itself is good for a 3rd loveseat for people to sit on while playing these consoles.

 

[mikesgroovin]

WoW in a lan place would be dumb.

I personally don't like this game one bit. I've ranted on about it enough so I won't again.

One might think that in a LAN, WoW would be a careless choice. However as I watch some of these folks on LANs with web cams...I jot down their username, hours remaining and game they are playing. There are several folks that come into this store and play WoW religiously. Since the game takes forever just to do anything, you are looking at about 30% of a players time wasted while playing the game, 30% of time....that they PAY for. So, in order to log in one night and run a simple BWL or MC raid in an average guild ... you're looking at 3-4 hours of average raid time. This doesn't count the 1-2 hours extra that you are just farting around a major city (or flight time) while you are waiting for other people to get ready.

(Here is one of the places I'm talking about. People are always playing WoW here.)

Just because of that fact alone, I think that MMOs are a great idea inside a per-profit LAN. MMOs are extremely addicting and they consume more than the required time a player need to do something, because you HAVE to wait for other real players more than likely. Heck, even if you do nothing but PvP inside the Battlegrounds. Some of those queue times are incredible...while you are in queue what are you usually doing? Farting around waiting. Meanwhile, LANs make more money.