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It's that time of year again for Quakecon! Quakecon is one of the largest FREE LANparties in all of USA and probably the world for that matter. Quakecon is an annual event hosted by the people who make Quake (id software) and a bunch of volunteers. They do play more than just id software games in the BYOC, but the official tournaments are usually only for id software games. Anyway it's a pilgrimage that any gamer should make at least once in their life and it is a ton of fun. This year is an early year as the Quakecon event is being held from July 31st- August 3rd. As I said the event is free, and if you plan on bringing your PC for the BYOC then early registration starts at 9pm ET April 30th. They will fill up all BYOC spots, but spots usualy open up as few gamers can play throughout the entire event, and some even fail to show. Head on over to the quakecon website if your interested and would like more information.
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I had heard rumors, or stories from a friend of a friend that Cox Communications would be upgrading their two top end residential internet tiers. So naturally I took this news with a grain of salt until last night when I received a plain old snail mail letter from Cox. Basically the letter said price for service was going up (nothing new there) and that the Preferred Service Tier was going to 12Mbps while the Premier Service Tier is going to 20Mbps. The faster speeds shoud be really nice when coupled with speedboost. The letter stated the the new speeds would be hitting in the coming weeks. I don't know exactly how long a coming weeks is supposed to be, but I figure within a month or so we should see them hit.
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There is a fine little article here about Cox Communications and what they are doing to delivery better internet and entertainment services than ever before. In short Cox is taking many different approaches to improve bandwidth effeciency along all of their communication lines that will in turn allow them to provide to their customers better service than ever before. They have already taken a major step in the right direction by having over 70% of their Markets networks upgraded to 1Ghz speed. This is going to allow Cox to bring 25Mbps downstream and 4Mbps Upstream internet connection. Cox has also recently added Food Network HD, HGTV HD, CNN HD, and Animal Planet HD to their HD Channel line up. Can't wait to see what other kind of improvements are on the way with switched digital video, mpeg 4, and Cox's own 18,000 Dark Fiber backbone all in the works.
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A bunch of t he NOLAFF staff members have managed to have nothing to do this upcomming Friday night so we figured we would host a Team Fortress 2 battle. Come and play on the server and give us a run for our money (a.k.a. Get the beating you deserve)! This will be going on all night so feel free to jump in and out of the server as you see fit. So if your up for the challenge then you know where to find us!
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Just in case you live under a rock (or Fema trailer) Valve's Orange Box has been released. Once your done playing all the levels in Portal (and you get your cake) come and join us on the NOLAFF Team Fortress 2 server. The ip is nolaff.com. That should be easy enough for anyone to find, but we are posting it here as we would like to play against some of the NOLAFF regulars. See you there.
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Cox has deployed Switched Digital Video (SDV) in Virginia in the hope of releasing more bandwidth to deliver more HD channels. SDV works by only "turning on" watched channels. Currently Cox delivers all their channels all the time wether or not anyone is watching. This takes up bandwidth and is wasteful as even if no one is watching Lifetime network the channel is still being broadcast. With SDV the channel is only broadcast when someone tunes into that channel. With the amount of bandwidth that will be saved on a regular basis from unwatched channels Cox will be able to deliver more HD channels. Since Cox test/delploying this technology in Virginia we should hopefully be enjoying it soon as well here in New Olreans as we are the 3rd or 4th city to get the latest in Cox Communications digital technology (That is one "good" thing Katrina gave us).
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With NOLAFF 22 less than 24 hours away I figured I would do a quick FAQ about the event tomorrow and what you will need in order to be prepaired. It has been awhile since we held a LANparty so for the most part this FAQ is meant to be a simple refresher. - What time does the event start, and where is it at? The event will start at 9 am, but we will be there earlier than that setting up the network and tables. If you would like to help setup you can show up earlier than 9 and give us a hand. The event will be held at the Days Inn.
- How much is the entrance fee for NOLAFF 22? The entrance fee is $15
- What do I need to bring? Since this is a BYOC(Bring Your Own Console) LANparty you will need to bring your console, a t.v./monitor(The VGA cable adapter for the 360 will turn just about any computer monitor into a "t.V." and most LCD monitors have component inputs), and all the plugs, controllers, extra batteries, mic, and speakers. You will also need your game disc and a 25 foot network cable.
- What games will be played? We plan on featuring Gears of War, Guitar Hero 2, and Halo 2. There will be more games than that being played that can include racing games like Forza 2, Project Gotham Racing, and other popular multiplayer games. With a console like the 360 it is real easy to switch from one game to another so I suggest to just bring your entire game library.
- What about food and drink? We have an open policy on food and drink at the lanparty. We will have Bawls energy drinks for sale at the lanparty. The main thing that we ask of you is to not leave a mess. Just use common sense and clean up after yourself a.k.a. throw your garbage away.
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Like almost everyone I know that has an HDTV the only grip/complaint that we have about our HDTVs is that there is not an adequate amount of content. I find that I'm so spoiled by the picture quality that HD brings that to watch anything not in HD is painful. This is even more painful when during football season you go to a friends house to watch the game only to find out they don't have a HDTV set (Or even worse, they have an HDTV set, but are watching a standard definition feed of the game). Well turns out that the folks at Cox (at least the President of Cox shares our pain) want to by years end have the CAPABILITY to deliver at least 50 HD channels. I stress capability because their are licensing issues, and they may not have all ironed out contracts to carry programing. Not to mention that last I checked only 42 channels or so even have HD feeds ready to be carried of which Cox carries a good amount. However the next year or two are going to have a ton of new HD channels coming along which include the weather channel, and all of the various HBO, and Cinemax channels.
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NOLAFF 22 has a date booked and set in stone for Saturday June 30th. This event is going to be held at the usual hotel location at the Days Inn and is located at 3400 I-10 Service Road, South, Metairie, LA. 70001. So far this event is going to be console only. Since it is very easy to switch from one game to another for consoles I would suggest just bringing your entire game library, but so far the main games that will be played are Gears of War, Halo, and Guitar Hero. We are open to suggestions but the rule of thumb is majority rules. You can post any suggestions for NOLAFF 22 on the forum topic.
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For those who may not know Blizzard has had a countdown each day for the past week and a half describing the wonderful games they have made over the years. The countdown was active for a big announcement that Blizzard is officially announcing Starcraft II as the next game to be released that they are activley developing (So much for the console Starcraft: Ghost game). Any Starcraft fan like myself is extatic about this announcement, however in typical Blizzard style there is no release date announced other than the famous, "when it's done" statement. The game is currently in Pre-Production Alpha stages so who knows how much longer it will actually be before we see this baby on store shelves.
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The HD-DVD add-on drive for the 360 just got an update that makes the unit that much better. If you haven't gotten into the next generation of DVD players (HD-DVD, and Blu-ray) and you have a nice BIG screen HDTV you may want to give them a look. The picture quality will really bring out the full capabilities of what a HDTV can do and simply looks increbile. Next week there is going to be a ton of "must have" titles released including the Matrix Collection, and hopefully these movies will do for HD-DVD what they did for DVD. The HD-DVD add-on drive is the cheapest way to get into the next gen DVD player market (if you already have a 360). To get the update simply put a HD-DVD disc into the HD-DVD drive and click the update button once it comes on the screen.
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I've confirmed with our host hotel that they have finished all reconstruction and that the ballrooms that we use for NOLAFF are once again opened! What we now need to know is what would you guys like to play? We have done everything from PC, XBOX, XBOX 360, PS2 and Duck Tape the new kid. I've started a forum thread to discuss this. Let us know what you would like to see and we can get started with the planning! As always, these events are for you. If you don't voice your suggestions, don't complain!
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The Xbox 360 update for Spring 07 is almost here and several new tweaks and features for the 360 will be introduced. Microsoft will be introducing tweaks to the messaging abilities of the 360 and even releasing a new thumb keyboard for messaging. Should help make the "Live Anywhere" service that much better. More improvements on background downloading, and even more support for h.264 and MPEG-4 video formats are among some of the other improvements. For a full list of improvements just follow this link.
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As you can tell from the title of this post the 360 version of Guitar Hero II controller works perfectly in Windows. So you know what that means? Plenty of extended play value via Guitar Hero II controller and Frets on Fire! For those who do not know Frets on Fire is an open source game the is pretty much identical to Guitar Hero except that for the most part it is played on a keyboard, but can easily be changed to now work with the USB guitar. The real bonus is that this game has an entire on-line community that helps to add new tracks, and it's fairly simple to add additional songs that neither Guitar Hero game may have.
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Gaming Target has an updated list of console exclusive games and the rules by which all games were judged as being exclusive or being denied the label of exclusive. After the count the 360 has the most "exclusive" titles and easily beats out the PS3 and Wii.
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