“Oh boy.”
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
“Hahaha we had that coming”
There are eight of us here gathered in Zephy’s small living room, having a LAN party. A LAN party is not really a party in the traditional sense – it involves guests bringing their computers to a single room so they can play computer games together while face-to-face. Five of us are crowded around Zephy’s average sized kitchen table, trying to find space for several thousand dollars worth of electronics. The table is cluttered with three 19 inch LCD monitors, two labtop (one of which is an Acer Ferrari), and an assortment of mice and wireless keyboards.
The table isn’t enough. Emonu is sitting on the floor, keyboard in lap, monitor set on a shin-high Ikea table. UrsaMajor’s laptop and mice are balanced between an adjacent chair, an old textbook, and his lap. Walking anywhere is difficult due to the Ethernet cords, power strips, and microphone cables that litter the floor.
In fact, walking anywhere just got a bit tougher as the power blew out. Apparently 8 computers and 1 hairdryer were too much for the circuit to handle. We now fumble around in the dark, cell phones flipped open to provide light.
Welcome to the TGS Lan Party.
TGS is our guild in World of Warcraft (WoW). TGS stands for Teen Girl Squad (a reference to the Strongbad flash comics which makes fun of stereotypical teenagers). Since we are a group of real life friends and friends of friends, we have the luxury of knowing that everyone is pretty cool. The idea of a TGS social met a warm reception from the guild, so lunch and a LAN party was planned.
We meet for lunch at a Japanese restaurant in [location]. Everyone is there except G$, our “guild master.” As the one who runs the show, many are disappointed he could not make it – apparently without explanation. However, we later find out later that he overslept (though lunch was scheduled at 1:00 pm).
As our food arrives, conversation naturally gravitates towards WoW, as we make jokes about “executive decisioning the order since I am raid leader,” “ninjaing the Hamachi,” or “drawing aggro on the wasabi.” Tasty tells us that besides his desktop, he has received (for reasons no one can understand) four additional laptops. He brought one of these laptop with WoW installed just in case someone’s computer broke.
My girlfriend at the time was with me, and fortunately, she seems to be having a not-so-horrible time. However, you can imagine it is tough to keep track of 8 people most of whom you have just met. Compounding the problem, everyone is referred to by both their real name and their Warcraft name. “Hey Tauren, can ya pass the Soy Sauce?”
After lunch, we all head towards Zephy’s apartment in a multicar caravan. I stop by my own apartment to pick up my computer. By the time I arrive, everyone has just finished setting up their computers. This leads to the described-earlier mass of electronics that liter the room. My girlfriend looks… stunned. To be honest, so am I. I have yet to see so much computer equipment crammed into one place. I even forgot my Ethernet cord at my house, but both Tasty and UrsaMajor have a spare. I set myself up on the dining table.
My girlfriend actually has tickets to a film festival, so we take off for a couple of hours. When I come back (girlfriend choose to leave…) everyone is working through a dungeon called Upper Blackrock Spire. In true LAN party fashion, we order pizza and cheese sticks for dinner, not wanting to miss WoW time. Right after we finish our pizza Zephy’s roommate, “Meghan,” returns. It looks like Meghan and a few of her friends are preparing to head out to a party. We hear many barely concealed scoffs as Meghan’s friends walk into the apartment and see what we’re doing, but shrug and go about our business. In fact, everything is fine until the whizzing of a hairdryer can be heard in the next room…
This is when the power blows out.
I’m no good at electronics, but it appears the hairdryer may have been the cause of the problem. A quick search reveals that hairdryers eat up around 1300-1800 watts, while a computer uses less than 300 watts. By this comparison, at least 6 computers need to be running to equal one hairdyer!
Well at this point we are sitting in the dark. We try resetting the fuse for the room, but we aren’t sure if it works. What are we to do then? Well, Daikon comes to the rescue by building a multimeter from random junk in Zephy’s place. Yes, he shows us that his EE degree from Stanford is really not going to waste by using a LED light, two paper clips, and some current to prove that our fuses really do work. This is actually useful as we now know the problem is that the fuse in the basement blew out, so we have to call the repair guy. Zephy understates, “we were using quite a bit of power,” but manages to convince management to send someone. Not knowing how long this repair is going to take, we decide to actually do something non-WoW related and watch “Inside Man.” We do that, grab some pearl milk tea, and by midnight most of us are back where we started – sitting in front of our computer in Zephy’s room.
We decide to play some Warsong Gulch, which is basically a 10 versus 10 capture the flag battle. We have never played with a full team before – you need to play with random people on your side if you cannot form a full 10 person team. In addition, we have instant communication. Instead of typing, five of us are together at the LAN party, and the rest of us are communicating through a voice chat program known as Ventrillo. And somehow, we are unbeatable.
Winning these capture the flag matches turn out to be quite addicting. Part of it is because we are a group of friends working together. In WoW it often feels that people with superior gear (which they can acquire through spending more time in the game) are just unbeatable. However, we are able to win games against them, making us feel like we actually earned our wins through skill rather than time. We crush anyone who is disorganized and unprepared. As an example of the addiction, BigPika, who has apparently not slept in a while, logs off around 4 am. Despite playing Warsong Gulch for three and a half hours and it being almost daylight, we are disappointed he leaves. After all he is our only priest! Just a few minutes later, though, BigPika is back on. He explains, “I stabbed myself with a vial of adrenaline so I can stay a bit longer.” He doesn’t try to leave again until the rest of us do.
At around 5, Warcraft starts becoming funnier than it should be. “Tags” sees an opponent named Taks. He decides Taks is an imposter and repeatedly yells at us to “pwn his face.” While defending our unattacked flag, G$ and I start pretending we actually are teen girls (to us, this means Justin Timberlake, “ohmigod,” and the mall), putting bystanders through a lesson in bad acting.
Near 6 am, there are only nine of us still around. We invite a 10th random person into our Warsong group and Ventrillo channel. Besides us, who is still up at 6 am? Well, this guy lived in Australia. Hearing the giggling mess we are all in, he asks us what we are high on. We truthfully answer “cheese sticks.” Then he hears Zephy laughing over Ventrillo and types “lol I heard a girl… who was it?” All of a sudden, we are all claiming it is us. “It’s me,” says Daikon. “I am the girl,” I say. “Me,” says BigPika. He also tries to find out our ages, but gets similarly little information. “Single digits!” “12.” “16.” “Hermione Granger’s age.” G$ points out we weren’t even true to the “teen” part of Teen Girl Squad. “Come on guys, 12 is not even teen yet. It is pre-teen. Tween even. We are TEEN girl squad. Can’t you get that right?”
As it is approaching 7 am, the sun is rising, and the morning light triggers the tiredness of staying up so unnaturally. The LAN party starts petering out under the heavy haze of sleepiness. Tasty has brushed his keyboard out of the way, and he lies asleep on the wooden kitchen table flanked by a mouse and wires. Daikon and Tags are deciding whether to just sleep on the floor or take the five minutes to unroll the futon. I double-check to make sure I am awake enough to make it home, though it is literally only a four block drive.
I manage to make it home, and when I fall on my bed, I do glance over at the clock. It reads 7:17 AM. Sleep comes quickly, and it is 3 in the afternoon before I awake again.
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