NAICCON 2017: RAD LAN Party
The very first official LAN party I attended. I added the word official there because back in campus we had this sort of ‘unofficial’ ones where we would crowd in a friends room with our laptops and play CoD 4 till one by one we got tired or salty or both & quit. Now here I’m talking about LAN parties that are planned weeks prior which, apart from NAICCON, I’ve never heard of any other... well actually I did hear iHub had LAN parties and I have no idea what happened to them but anyway….
This RAD LAN party that NAICCON had set up was something else. Cheers to all those who were involved in planning for it coz the thing was no joke, and it was all free might I add, well it was for a specific bracket of time but I didn’t hear a single person saying they had paid for it. First of all, the internet they set up for us was insane! At some point I was clocking 400Mbps & there were like 50 of us connected to that network, how those mchawis from Liquid Telecom managed that I have no idea. Everything else was on set, it’s like the organizers accounted for everything, well apart from how cold it would get at night and parking but anyway, there was energy drinks close to the gaming area for when you were running low, I did feel like the drink booth also needed to sell some snacks but who needs food when you are gaming at 200Mbps?
I’ve decided to relay my experience in a chronological order so here goes:
Checked in at around 8:45am on Saturday the 29th of July, it was a simple process really, just showing your e-ticket from the invite e-mail they sent (which you had to do every time you stepped out & came back for security reasons) and you were set. By this time there were like 3 people who had checked in before me, there were a bunch of additional people on the console side but who cares about those peasants. 2 of the guys already there had these Asus laptops that looked insane, they also had laptop mounts and peripherals that said they meant business. I thought about my potato Acer laptop in my bag & just felt like crying so before setting up I decided to go & check what the console peasants were up to.
After I set up people now started coming in, before then & 10:00am I would see guys pushing trolleys & in them were these enormous, insane rigs! I was lost for words, green with envy, I tried to act cool but honestly I was in new territory here. Never had I met people who were more serious about their PC gaming than I was, I was legit anxious.
As I was staring at the glorious PC gamers with their rigs blessed by the PC gods themselves, I was told to move coz apparently I was in the competitive area. I felt bad coz that would mean starting afresh the hustle of looking for a power source but again I needed not worry, NAICCON had taken this into account & purchased extension cables for us. God bless their resourceful hearts. So after I set up on my new spot I decided to do a speed test &I was astonished, 300Mbps my fren, wut??
Shortly after people started walking around asking what people were playing, I discovered I was the only one there who’d planned to play CS: GO. If it wasn’t League of Legends people were either playing CoD: MW3 or Paladins (Poor man’s Overwatch) So I decided to download LoL coz I didn’t think my potato laptop could handle Paladins. Also, there was a flash disk going around that had MW3 provided by a mzungu from Gamersnights & I booked my spot in line for it.
As I was waiting to get these 2 games I decided to watch some MW3 friendly, local matches & I got hooked. I had to join in. So I went ahead & forgot about LoL got the MW3 flash & started copying it but there isn’t ever enough time when you are gaming is there? It was now 1:00pm & I had to prepare to go to work from 2:00pm till 9 so I just waited for it to finish copying & left, but I would be back.
And back I was, it was now 9:00pm & again had to show my invite e-mail when getting back in & this time I knew I was set for some serious gaming. Unfortunately this time round no one was playing MW3 for fun. The competitive matches had started & all that were not there to play competitively were either playing something else or having their supper, and also I had to move coz my previous spot was taken. The thought of just going home to my bed & pillow crossed my mind but I thought of the 200Mbps internet & I was quickly in a new spot.
I decided t if no one there was going to play MW3 with I’ll just go ahead & join some random servers where I met some Russians who literally shit on me, well not literally but it felt like it. Some TDM matches I had like 5 kills & about 30 deaths (lol) So like any other sane person, after more matches ending with similar results, I quit (Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?) The only comfort I could then think of was YouTube gaming videos and downloading as much as I could & soon enough I was running out of disk space (that’s how insane the internet speeds were)
When my laptop could take no more I stood up, went round & watched people play LoL, Paladins, Blur and after some time I managed to convince a handful of guys to play MW3 with me locally. Alas! My confidence was back coz I whooped those boys asses, and the funny part was they didn’t know who was whooping them. Kept hearing, “huyu ||timonn|| ni nani?” & would just chuckle to myself. After they got tired of getting their asses whooped (didn’t even last 30 mins) they quit & decided to go back to their games that I couldn’t play. It was now around 2:00am.
I started to get bored. I could feel the cold getting to my bones & was trembling like hell. My self-destructive nature kicked in & I was back in the MW3 online servers getting my ass whooped. This one guy I 1v1d got so bored whooping my ass & would send messages like, “please please please kill me” on chat. My confidence had never been so low.
3:00am now, looked around & no one had blacked out yet. Guys were chain drinking Monsters. No one wanted to be the first man down but at 3:50am (yes, I checked my watch) we had our first casualty. 4:00am I decided to crash myself & went on to wake up at 5:00am still trembling from the cold even though I was wrapped around my maasai blankie so I decided to end my misery, call a cab & go home to the warmth of my bed
Day 2:
I didn’t even plan on coming back the next day but lucky for me I was around Westlands after church & decided to drop by check how things were even though I didn’t have my laptop & guys were still at it! People were still awake at 2:00pm the next day playing Paladins & Insurgence. I was genuinely impressed by the commitment. We had like 4 people taken by sleep but what’s that to about 50 people?
Anyway, after kuchungulia on the gamers I went to the expo part of the convention, bought some merch & checked out some gear & peripherals from Redragon Kenya which were amazing. I am definitely getting my peripherals from them once I set up my rig.
After that I reluctantly left & thought to myself what a glorious weekend it was. 10/10 would do again.
