ExtremeLANKC

ExtremeLANKC was first created by myself, DeathsDoor back on June 24, 2004. Who as a gamer was just like anyone else who attended LAN parties. This was back in the day when LAN parties was something you heard from word of mouth within the gaming community. After attending a few events I got hooked on going to them and became a fan of the social atmosphere it provided.

After a couple of years of having no events as several LAN groups were just failing, I decided to sponsor an event to be ran by another LAN group at a store front on 76th and Metcalf. My friends who owned the former Computer Depot (Now Direct PC) allowed me the use of some empty store front space in their building. There was around 26 participants that attended this event but the night did not go as planned so I ventured out on my own thus creating the idea for ExtremeLANKC. This event is now known as ELKC 1.0.

There was a young man named John who attended the event and he was in agreement that the night was not what he had expected either. We went on  talking about the night as his parents came to pick him up. John went on to be my first server admin, PC Admin and web admin. He spent 14 more events with us before work and school became too overwhelming forcing him to take a break.  Recently, he has come back as an active staff member. He is also given the title of Co-founder for the work that he put into getting us going.

Another person that put a lot of time into helping me was Catalyst aka my son Chris. He attended all events helping with anything that he could and was the workforce behind getting most of our events up. Catalyst is inactive right now but he held the position of Console Admin. Our original staff was just the three of us DeathsDoor, John, and Catalyst as we were the three that got things going at this location. We had 5 events at this location before we moved things into my basement when attendance dropped and we decided it was time to do some regrouping.

Funny how things worked out for us as we had two events in my basement. While most LAN's are held in basements and garages we may not have started there but we had more fun at these two events than any place else. The fact that we knew each other and had more time to game was what got us back on our feet. We quickly realized what we needed to do to get going again and we decided it was time to venture out again.

We tried a place out in Liberty which was a complete flop as it rained so hard that day that the streets all around us flooded. The only person that came was Ray aka Yarcod as we even had to wrap his pc in trash bags just to get his stuff in. There was all 5 of us at this apartment meeting room playing all night as there is no such thing as a wasted night when it comes to gaming.

Our next LAN was held at the Super Inn in North Kansas City, MO just off I-35 and Parvin Road. We had a banquet room which was where we first started getting some growth. Our first event there we had 28 or more people there and our second was even bigger with 36 or more there. We had just added Halo 2 to our lineup as our friends from Insomniac Gaming teamed up with us. This lead to our final event at this location as our attendance for this event was 56 or more and we were blowing breakers all night long!

Over the years we have has some wonderful staff that lent their expertise in different areas. These guys were gamers like me who took on the additional tasks that I gave them and willingly did so for the sake of providing quality events for our gaming community. The appreciation for what they have done for ExtremeLANKC is something I have always tried to show as it takes a special person to do what they have done.

We have had some colorful staff over the years and none stands out more than Chris aka aZombie! Everyone remembers Chris for his crazy skills in Net Admin. This guy was a whiz in hooking up our network at the times when we crashed seriously all the time. We had a location that had a Wireless connection and he was the man when it came to setting this up. The motel had so many issues but Chris seemed to work right through it. Tristan aka Nekomaho was another guy who brought a lot of humor to our events.

Our Staff during this time was Ray aka Yarcod, Adam aka Yaddam205, John, Chris aka Catalyst, Matt aka Maverick and of course myself DeathsDoor.

Next in our moves was to the American Inn again in North Kansas City, MO also on I-35 and this time Armor Road. We spent 6 events at The American Inn. We had some growth here as well as we started selling out our events and lots of people from all over were coming. We had just gotten our very first 100 person LAN sell out during this time and things were really starting to look even better for our gaming community. More sponsors were brought in as we had ULTRA, Cooler Master, Alienware, Thermal Take, ATI, nVIDIA and several others join in.

Combined with console our pc section was quickly being squeezed out as we really got a big following on the console side. We were having problems with the electrical requirements just on the increase in console players! We added a electrical panel into the banquet room with 200 amps just to keep our events going. There was many games that we were playing at this time as BF2 came out with Quake 4 on the introduction as well. Our lineup of CS 1.6 actually got pushed out by the introduction of CS: Source into the mix. Even Unreal Tournament 2k4 was brought out as a big following of  Death Match players were still hanging on.

It was during this time when Red Bull asked if we would be interested in hosting one of the biggest events in Kansas City which became known as our Coop LAN aka ELKC 18.0 if you were keeping count. This event was attend by over 225 participants and we had the semi-finals for our Battlefield 2 tournament which drew in 11 teams from the 4 state area. We also had the biggest console event as we had over 60 players just from the console side of the house as well. This was event was a first as we had 5 LAN groups working together to host all of our tournaments.  This concluded with Operation Topeka in which Red Bull provided us with the event of a lifetime which was held in a Titan II missile silo out in the middle of no where near Topeka, KS.

We were invited to move our events to Union Station of Kansas City! This was our home for over a year and a half as we held some of the biggest and baddest events there. Time Warner of Kansas City came in as an Event Sponsor as we held what became known as MidWest LAN War there. We split up this event to include Wichita LAN Party as a co host with the first of our semi-finals in Wichita. The event concluded with both semi-finals and the finals being at Union Station. With the combined participants this event had over 300 that attended all three events.

Our current staff which includes our very own Sam aka SamtheNuker who has been instrumental in keeping our events up and running. He had been a welcome addition to our staff as he was another gamer who just like when I first started out new to LAN party's.  Another returning member is Brett aka BC Trainers who was our Network Admin back at Union Station. Then we have John who is returning to help us get back to our basics in gaming. Mitch aka HeadShot will be helping out with our pc section keeping things going. Also we will be having Garrett aka Status who will be helping us out on our console side. Thanks to all the guys who step up to help keep our events running!

After all the dust settled we came to the realization that we needed to bring our events down to a level where we could once again make our events all about what we had our original start, having fun. Money hungry became the bad element that entered our events as a few people came in with the mentality that it was all about how much money you left with at the nights end. I won't spend much time on this but I will mention that LAN party's are all about having fun, meeting new friends and competing in tournaments to test your skills playing the games you love to play.

We moved our events back to The American Inn and have been there from ELKC 33.0. This was a move back into the space that we had built up our membership to a comfortable level. We wanted to downsize our events to make them more fun and concentrate on gaming. We have had our ups and downs as the economy slumped making us take some drastic changes to our events. We have done this by holding more open gaming tournaments and having fewer cash tournaments. This has worked well in the last couple of events.

Our next step was our move to Olathe. Over the years we had several requests to hold our events closer to some of our participants and we have been looking at different options. This will be a move to bring gaming to members of our gaming community. Our MidWest LAN Wars events (now Midwest LAN War) will be at our North Kansas City location at The American Inn. We are still in negotiations for a Kansas City, KS location and have that in the works as well. So stay tuned to what we hope to do in continuing to bring the finest in PC and Console gaming to Kansas City!

After a year of events out in Olathe I decided to bring the events home. Sam and I did a whole year of two events Console Night and PC Night per month! That was two weekends per month of setting up and breaking down for each event. We were wore out and needed a much need break! Thanks for all the help everyone provided as we had someone step in from time to time. Ray was also helping when he could as he started a new job and came when he could. Even John and Brett came out of retirement to help when they could. We had a blast but it was time to bring things home for some much needed R&R.

What I did was setup in my man cave down in my basement of my house. Which to all who came was the ideal place to be. There is 50 Mbps down/ 1.5 Mbps up cable modem here and everyone was more than happy with having plenty of bandwidth! I had built my house just for LAN's in the basement and there is 1,200 sq ft of space here. Plenty of room for us to keep from bumping elbows all night long.

I did monthly events here and at first it took some word of mouth to get people to come out as living all the way in the country its quite a drive. However it was only a few months later and we have been getting 12-15 people regularly and our high is 19! Not bad for a bunch of PC addicts huh!

I gave it a year to get back into the gaming world. I traveled to a few LAN's across the midwest as Sam, Ray and I traveled to LAN War in Louisville, KY for 3 days of gaming. It was not what I expected as there once again was no organized play and even though it was good to see about 1,000 gamers in one room it was a disappointment. I traveled to Quakeconn in Dallas, TX as well to see how this one was and this event had nearly 3,000 participants attending. NO Internet! Wow! I was so bummed out as there was a steam update that I was not able to get and never connected to any of the matches that were going on. I only went for a day and I was totally bummed. I also attended another Netwar in Omaha, NE. As usual there was 190-200 participants at this event and what a surprise that the admin were once again, not involved with the crowd. I played some good games and had fun with my friends but tournaments were not well organized and I missed the only tournament that I was interested in playing.

This lead me to think that I had learned enough to get back into holding events only on a quarterly basis as opposed to monthly. I would also do only the Midwest LAN War events for everyone so people would have a good enough break to come back each time. That was what I thought worked best at the events I visited. Now I also learned that having Internet is a must have to be at a LAN. That as well as making sure everyone had access to when events were and what time they started. Key things to make sure is available for our events. That is why I am really anxious to have our next event Midwest LAN War 2011 Spring Event! This will be our official come out of hibernation event.