The first thing that impressed me was the elegance and style of the Hilton. I've never been inside one, and frankly, well, I'm a farm boy really. I'm uncomfortable in such settings. This place was really nice though. (The main restaurant kinda sucked though, when you walk in and hear "Do you have reservations? It's time to head for the hills with your hand on your pocket book... But what do you expect? It's the Hilton after all. More on this later.) Once we tracked down the event room (which was a very sweet massive room on the second floor of the hotel, definitely the sweetest venue I've ever seen.) and introduced ourselves to Cableguy and Havok, we started carting our gear up. Believe me, it's a damned good thing they had an escalator, because lugging up a 17", a 19", and a 21" monitor, along with 5 machines, and all the assorted cables, peripherals and other crap you need really isn't much fun at all. In fact, it's a massive pain in the ass as well as back. We stacked all our crap against a wall as the setup was still underway. (Most of the cabling had been run, but there was still no power to the tables.)

We asked what we could do to help, and as everything was under control we just sat on our cases and yacked for an hour or so. After badgering the staff repeatedly about work we were soon hauling tables, putting cloths on those very same tables, running RJ-45 cables and sticking ends on said cables. Excellent. Once all was done, it was about time to start the check in. Naturally there was a massive line, so being clever I started to set up my gear, then signed in once the line up wasn't there anymore.

Organization at the party seemed very well done, there was lots of help available for those who needed it, and little confusion that I noticed. There were a few network issues on Friday night, (some sections of the room just dropped on and off) which were quickly resolved. Pings on the network seemed a little high, but I was steady in the 40's for the entire weekend.

It's always cool to see a room full of empty tables start to sprout gamers and machines, and to walk around and talk to people about what they've done to their cases and just what's under the hood on that bad boy of theirs. There were some very sweet case mods going on at the event, although the vast majority were just the old "Cut a window into the side of the machine, install lights" variety which is starting to get pretty old as far as I'm concerned. The room very quickly went from being quiet to being filled with a dull roar from a large number of gamers happily yacking and setting up their gear. After dinner, we returned and finished the setup on our machines and gear.

I should mention that this point that the ball room was located right next to the washrooms, and the bar/restaurant and smoking area. Uber convenient, just a 30 second walk to all your amenities of life, and a 30 second walk back to a room just loaded down with gaming goodness. Very, very sweet. Like I said before, an excellent venue, the WAG guys scored big this time around.

There was a surpassingly large turn out on Friday evening, I'd say somewhere around 150 players as a guess, by the time we took off around 2 am or so tons of people were fragging away. Regrettably, I'm old and feeble and need my sleep in order to continue my gaming. After getting up really late, and having a relaxing breakfast (and sitting around yacking with Pappy while his e-mail downloaded at 32.1kbp. Yes indeed, dialup sucks. Gah.) We returned to the party to see even more people had arrived during the night and everything was well underway. By now the lights were down. Way, way, way down. In fact it was pitch black in the room. I like to have it sorta dim at a LAN, since it's much easier to see your monitor without all the glare. But if it's too dark people have problems. Such as eye strain and nausea. (Saturday during the day. Gah.) It's also hard to socialize when you can't see your own feet. Rune and I continued setup and Rune finished the machine that he brought for Pappy to game on. *Sigh* Here's where things kinda went south, (nothing to do with the party, just the old FRAGtopia curse kicking. Damn you evil magician! DAMN YOU!) and I learned that Pappy is a much, much more noble man than I.

Pappy, who came to the party with the intention of a little coverage for PQ... And a whole lotta gaming, through a series of unfortunate events really didn't much gaming in. First off, our friend the computer that Rune built had Win2k on it. Pappy uses a weird little gaming device called a "Nostromo" that is apparently better than sex when it comes to gaming controllers. It also doesn't work with 2k, unless patched. (Remember the Internet access we mentioned before.) Also his Logitech mouse didn't work. And the machine locked up solid. *Sigh* 6 hours later, 2 Windows installs and a crapload of patches the machine was still locking up. Midway through the frustration of machine issues we gone out to the aforementioned Tres Nice restaurant at the hotel. After leaving there and having a great dinner at a local pub, we returned to game! After pulling some RAM from one server machine, and a soundcard from another the machine was up and running. Pappy sat down and played some Quake III CTF and DM. An hour a half later he wasn't feeling well, so he headed to bed. After a few more hours of CTF and some Death Match I headed for bed early. Poor Pappy had other weird issues during the weekend including Interac being down, lack of time, and Runeitis. We got another 3 hours of gaming in on Sunday, and then it was time to pack up and head home.

After we got Pappy back on the train (with 2 minutes to spare) on Sunday I came to the conclusion that Pappy handled the weekend much better than I would have if I was him. In fact I likely wouldn't have gotten onto the train. I would have jumped in front of it. All the poor guy wanted to do was play some games. Hell, it even said so on his little badge. "Player" it said. None of us really got much gaming in over the weekend, and I have no idea where the two and a half days went. I came to game, and I ended up spending alot of time sitting around talking. And frankly I had a better time than I would have just sitting in front of my machine gaming. :) It's really, really nice to see old friends again and spend time with them. I felt really bad for Pappy though.

Anyhows, I talked to a bunch of guys at the party. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Surpassingly enough I didn't get owned as badly at Quake and Wolfenstien as I'd feared. Tournaments went on throughout the weekend, but I just didn't pay much attention. Personally I'd rather play pub games than tourney, but for those who are interested the results of the tourneys they're are posted here. (Thanks Skeez) Kuku (Second place in Quake 3 1 on 1) also has a demo here.

FRAGtopia donated 2 copies of Wolfenstein, which were given out for sportsmanship and attitude. (Enjoy them guys, and thanks for being, well, good people. It's nice to see people just having a good time!) We also donated some Dynamix cd holders, a copy of UT for the PS/2, a copy of Tribes 2 and a copy of Homeworld: Cataclysm, as well as a crapload of Counter-Strike posters. Thanks to Sierra Canada for some of the software.

Overall a good weekend, a great venue, great organization, and a really lame report by Marauder. Ah well, it was a weekend off, whatchagoona do. Thanks to the WAG staffers for organizing the event, (and it was nice to finally meet Cable, who's a very cool guy btw.) Everyone who attended, and Pappy for not killing myself or Rune. Don't get the wrong idea, we'll be attending the next one... And everything that went wrong to us was in no way the fault of the WAG guys, they did an amazing job. Next year there will be more gaming, and more preparation done this time around on our part. Oh yes there will be...