Event: SV Frag 2 - LAN Party Event Date: 01/14/2006 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 02/16/2026

In late 2005 / early 2006 I was contacted by Gamekiller and Exar (who I believe was now going by the handle Priest, or Volras). You may remember them as the guys who ran the original SV Frag LAN event.  Apparently Gamekiller had a venue connection, and they wanted to meetup and discuss plans for throwing a big LAN event. I had just graduated college and had absolutely nothing going on at the time, so it was the perfect project for me. 

We met up on the terrace of the Valley Fair mall. Volras showed up with sweat on his brow, he was clearly in a rush to make the meeting on time (he also mentioned he got a speeding ticket on the way there). As we sat down, we discussed the details, came up with a plan and assigned action items. It was very organized and business-like (even more so than many of the business classes I had just finished taking in college). 

The day of the LAN would be January 14th, 2006. We departed and each got to work on our assigned tasks. I did promotions, marketing and sponsorship. Volras worked on the website and database, and gamekiller planned out the power/ networking equipment and worked with the venue. The venue turned out to be some kind of e-waste recycling warehouse type space. It was very raw with lots of industrial bins full of all types of old equipment and scraps of metal.

I rallied all of TMC behind the event, and reached out to AG LAN and their attendees. We got around 100 people set to come to the event. It was shaping up to be quite an event. We gathered equipment, scrounged up CAT 5 cables and anything else we could find to use. 

TMC had a number of qualified networking type admins, who we organized into an official admin crew who would be in charge of helping attendees and ensuring the network ran smoothly.  Other TMC members were in charge of other duties such as setting up tables, running cable and cleaning up before the event. Many TMC members stepped up and helped out and made it a true group effort, which was great.  

The day of the event I remember from the day of the event was that it was the same day I had a job interview with Antec, which I did right before heading over to set up the LAN. I remember citing the experience I gained from planning the event as part of my qualifications for the job, which the interviewer was impressed by.  I went straight to LAN to help set up. I arrived in my slacks and tie, got changed and grabbed a broom. Gamekiller was using a forklift to move the bins of scrap around and create a perimeter of e-waste that walled in the LAN area.  Some of the other TMC guys showed up and began setting up tables and sweeping while Metalslug stood around, made jokes and generally distracted everyone. 

Leading up to the LAN we were doing a cross promotion with AG LAN in SF. We offered group discounts for attendees who wanted to buy advanced tickets for both events. We also coordinated tournaments between the two events, where the tournamewnt winners at the AG LAN the month before would be the North Bay Champions, while the Tournament winners at SV Frag would be the South Bay Champions.

We ended up with about 100 attendees at SV Frag 2, which was a great tournout. The tables, chairs, network and power were all setup an ran very professionally. We had quite a bit of sponsorship prizes as well. We even had a DJ table and PA system setup. It was almost like we actually knew what we were doing.

We set up the admin table where the people admistratrating the network, or running other aspects of the LAN could sit and where guests could go to report issues or ask questions. Metalslug immediately set up his machine in the admin area and declared himself an Admin, as he was always eager to grab authority and influence he hadn’t earned. I decided to allow this to play out as I knew it would bite him in the ass, which it quickly did. Once the LAN started, he quickly found out that being at the Admin table meant attendees were constantly walking up and asking for help with network issues, or asking other admin related questions that he clearly didn’t know the answer to. Being averse to actually doing any work he quickly cleared his PC off of the admin table, much to the entertainment of all of the actual admins.  

At one point there was a Karaoke contest. The main thing that I remember of this contest was Mameman's rendition of "Mother" by Danzig. To this day, for better or worse (definately worse), I still think about this every time I hear that song.

The LAN itself, while a bit rough around the edges due to it being put together on a shoestring budget (meaning no budget at all) went really well. Unfortunately it would be a one time deal as the venue was not a place we could use more than once. Try as we might, we were never able to find another affordable venue. 

At the time there were plenty of corporate LANs happening, as well as AG LAN, and many house LANs, so there did not seem to be as much of a need to host another one anyway.

 

I don't know where the pics came from but I assume Kuyaglen took them: