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It had to happen eventually, and I've decided there is no time like the present. As of now, all those who participated in the March DFWLanParty, may now consider themselves attendees at the final DFWLP. After more than 2 long years, Sharaz is ready for LAN gaming retirement.
I have to say, its been quite an adventure. The diabolical plan that became what we all know as DFWLanParty was originally hatched out during a LAN party that my friend Funky Monkey had at his office building, hosting for a large showing of players who call the MyGameWear.com forums home. So Quinton and I show up to the LAN, and almost immediatly ol' Sharaz is thrust into "make a LAN party mode", since Funky doesn't seem to know anything about how to make all the computers talk on his network. So long story short, with how well I was able to pull off the background tasks at the particular LAN, I decided that I should definately do this on a monthly basis. That was August of 99. By November, I had a website (thanks to the orignal DFWLanParty sponsor, Hollan Holmes) and was distributing the probaganda necessary to get the frst party off the ground. I test fired a few private LANs of larger size at my house, since I already had experience with some smaller ones, and in January of 2000 we kicked off the very first publicly registerd DFWLanParty. I think we played Quake2 and Quake3 test or something. Action HL beta 2 I think was out then. The very first player to show up at the very first DFWLanParty, was Crue. Tigerdan, my roommate at the time, answered the door,and... well, lets just say the "American Pie" trick is now a fond memory that we re-live at Crues expense nearly each time the 3 of us are together. Crue became such a dependable attender, that his Knowledge of PC networking caused him to be named the first offical DFWLP Staffmember on the list. Soon after, we added Escher to the list as DFWLP staff too. He was mainly in charge of being the forum monkey who put the word out to the public, but also none of you were lucky enough to ever have to be thrown out on your head by him either. Consider yourselves lucky :) Riboflavin assumed a staff position for a time, helping with networking issues, and being a judge in tournaments, helping with tough calls (such as what we call the "why did we have a 2v2 q3 tourney?" incedent). Last, the most recent addition to the DFWLP staff list was our very own LAYGO, whos love for the game we call Counter-Strike led to a more smoothly run and managed CS Tournament, which became a very popular monthly attraction over the months.
Other key players who definatly deserve a mention, are Inf and Quinton. These troopers have been at more than 95% of all the LANs, and even more importantly, have juggled the server hauling duties between them like clockwork. When one could not show, I could always count on the other to transport the behemoth we know as the DFWLP Network, and our beloved ZEUS. They have assisted in every buildout and teardown... arrived early and stayed late. There are tons of guys who stayed late on many occasions to help with the clean up too (especially if they were unlucky enough to not have driven themselves, and their ride was running late) who helped tear down and get us out of there on a decent time schedule... too many to try to thank because I would only do many injustice by erroneously omitting their names. You know who you are, and you have my (and the DFWLP Staff's) thanks.
Then there were the sponsors that made DFWLP a more exciting event to attend. HardOCP.com, Creative Labs, BAWLS Guarana, Fishys DVD Store, PhoenixCIS, MyGamewear.com and RedPoint Graphics were all instrumental in making DFWLanParty an event many people traveled across Texas and Oklahoma to attend and hopefully bring home some cool swag. And many of you sure did. :)
But most important, were the players who attended. DFWLanParty would not have left the mark it did on Dallas LAN Gaming that it did without you, as obviously, without players, there are no games to be played. To all the players who attended DFWLanParty, Thanks for comming. I was very happy to be able to create something that the gaming community enjoyed, and it was my pleasure to be at your networked service.
In closing, I'll just say to everyone:
GG's
--Sharaz Jek
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