How far will multiplayer gaming go?

Dcully

Just wanted to share with you guys the experience i had in October in US.
While visiting a friend in Santa Cruz in California we thought wed check out a Lan that was going on in a nearby Hotel[cant remember name].
After sweet-talking the wife we were off.
What a setup it was,1100 PCs networked and playing for various prizes.
Ive been to a couple of lans before but nothing of this scale.
Everything from CS,DoD,Return to castle wolfenstein,medal of honour,Quake3,Ghost Recon to Racing sims like Grand prix legends ,Nascar and F1 2k2.
It was out of this world ,my god these guys were incredible at these games.Im not exactly a newbie but when i had a go at CS i got my ass seriously kicked, as soon as i peeked my head round a corner it was blown off usually with first or second shot.
All the different clans were taking it all very serious playing for pride and glory more than anything.The winning clan talked about their recent sponsored trip to Korea to compete but failed to win a round.They went on to speak about how huge multiplayer gaming is in Korea and that they were totally out of their depth there.
On to my specialty next ,racing sims[im not that good at all but better than first person shooters]
I had a try of a qualifyting race with Grand Prix Legends which ive been a huge fan of the past 3 years and race regularly online,i faired slightly better than i did with CS finishing 4th in First Qualifying race but failing to make next round and finishing 12th in Division 4[20 drivers in each div] and 7 divisions.
We spent nine hours at this event where the action was going on all weekend.On the short drive home i was asking Brad where is this all going to end?He says it will never end and that in California alone there is huge events even bigger than this every weekend, [The mind boggles!]
Anyways i could talk all night about this guys just thought id share it with ya all

BKtje

Large lans like this are very common in Europe as well.
Drome for example in July will have 1500 people attending + spectators i think. (dont know that much about it)

Ireland is backwards, mainly cos high price of internet access so people dont really get into games.

Pugsley

Players wont stop getting better, even if they stop playing CS it will take them mere weeks to master another FPS as they already have an amazing aim, so they just get better and better. Its going to keep getting more and more professional until theres only a few hundred in the world who can even consider playing in a tournament.

Retr0gamer

I think the (cringe for using CS lingo) 'l33t'ism of CS at the moment is whats causing it to lose popularity. I used to play it a lot and had some great nights at DNC in the very very early days of CS. I stopped for a while and became crap again. CS is now very frustrating for me and a lot of noobs since theres always some one on the server who will totally dominate. I end up dead after about 1 minute. Not much fun.

I still much prefer lans. It's great being able to shout at the person who just killed you.

Placebo

Malasyian are at quite alot too . Its just pretty expensive here . But they do hace them all night things .

Bluehair

Originally posted by Retr0gamer
I still much prefer lans. It's great being able to shout at the person who just killed you.

Nothing beats a rousing rendition of "Who's yo Daddy?!" after whipping someones ass (no matter what the game).

Plus when playing team RTS it's great to have each team in diff rooms discussing tactics/timing of attacks as you do it etc..

Sand

Online - I can see it probably competeing with passive entertainment like TV and winning - I barely watch TV anymore tbh, wont be PCs really pushing back this boundary much farther but internet enabled consoles playing derivitive mass market games ..... simplified controls for CS (example) on X Box (example) with some sort of small monthly charge = lots and lots of money - fps players arent used to the idea of paying to play , but it will almost certainly be a reality to pay for servers and continued support. I mean people actually pay to play everquest, a glorifed chatroom - you think you wont pay a similar monthly charge to play whatever your poison is?

Online fps seem to be divided between the twitch DM/CTF shooters and the slower, "realisitic" games - which can be pretty much described as CS and some others. Thatll probably continue for some time to come - but i reckon in time mmorpgs which sell themselves as fps such as planetside will begin to eat into the realistic player pool

I reckon online fps will be swamped by not only mmorpgs but stuff like online Champ Man, which will no doubt spread like wildfire, football games, maybe some sort of strategy wargame - most likely an RTS with some sort of team or faction element to get communities going - let alone the freaking sims online which will no doubt be the biggest online game ever etc etc.

LANs themselves cant grow that much bigger imo - as broadband and internet gaming becomes more popular/available you dont *need* to travel x amount of miles to play a multiplayer game - itll also see the closure of a lot of inernet cafes/lans as well imo - and if you want to go for laughs with some friends youll tend to arrange a smaller lan yourself - Clans all across Europe do it, inviting some friends from other clans too.