NIC - June 23, 2001 - Review - Pictures
The first ever Network Invasion Charlotte LAN party was hot!  No, really.  I mean it was HOT!  The air conditioner wheezed and sobbed as the temperature soared up to nearly 90 degrees, despite being set at 45.  That didn't stop the party from being loads of fun!

The NIC staff set up the room on Friday night.  (Thanks guys, you done good!)  The party started Saturday morning at 8:00.  We had a few eager beavers, CurDog and RaGe (the baddest father/son fraggin' combo I've yet to see), that showed up a bit early, and being the nice guys they are, they helped FreeBeak carry the servers; most of the other players showed up in the first hour, although OPi3 didn't arrive until 8:30 PM.  The game servers were up and ready right off the bat, so people were able to play as soon as they got set up and plugged into the network.  There were very few network problems, and no power problems at all.  Thanks again to the power and network teams!

Tournaments
There were three official tournaments at the party: Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, and Quake 3.  The first two, CS and UT, ran longer than their alloted times, and the Q3 tourney had several people drop out.

Team	W	L
H8.SYS	4	0
NIC	2	2
No Name	2	2
Spank-us	1	3
CCGA	1	3

Counter-Strike
Five teams signed up to play CS, so we held a round-robin tourney; each team played each of the others, best record wins (single elimination in case of a tie).  Team H8.SYS crushed everybody (except team NIC, which managed to win one of the halves), and won the tournament hands-down.  Darbosama, kid_kinetix, Mofo, and PistolGripPump each won a 10-pack of blank CDs.

Unreal Tournament
The Unreal Tournament tourney got a late start due to CS running long.  Several players entered the competition, which was fast and furious.  You can see the double-elimination tourney bracket here.  To briefly summarize, badguy defeated |Deus| (the CCGA UT champ), and went on to become the winners' bracket champ.  |Deus| routed the competiton to become the losers' bracket champ.  The championship game was a truly amazing display of UT finesse; in sudden-death overtime, badguy defeated |Deus| to win the UT tourney.  His prize was a PC-Tote.

Quake 3
The Quake 3 tourney was originally scheduled to be double-elimination, but since it was getting late, a quick poll showed all in favor of changing it to single-elimination.  A few people dropped out of the competiton, which also made the play faster.  The bracket is here.  In the hard-fought final game, Overkill defeated RaGe to win the tournament.  However, since our policy is that staff members don't win prizes, the Everglide mouse pad went to RaGe.  Overkill was later overheard to say that he was afraid that he was going to have to tell his wife he was beaten up by a 12 year old.

Prizes
In addition to the prizes given out to the tournament winners, NIC gave away several other items.  From the six tourney winners, one name was randomly chosen (by my daughter picking a number 1-6), and badguy became the winner of a case of Bawls.  There was also a drawing for a Microsoft Game Voice from the first 15 non-staff players to pay the entry fee; Ntents took that one home.  There were also several door prizes: four MechWarrior 4 games, another Game Voice, three Wicked3DTM eyeSCREAMTM light driver CDs, four Diablo II action figures, and three Tomb Raider movie posters.

Pictures
Event pictures are here.

Miscellaneous
One group of players spent most of the day playing Tribes 2.  We're looking into trying to set a server set up to support it.  If there is some other game that you want us to host, be sure to send FreeBeak some mail.

After the tournaments were finished, the players that remained all joined the Counter-Strike server that was running the new maps.  We all agreed that the new maps rule!  Check http://countermap.counter-strike.net if you don't have them.

Thanks
Network Invasion Charlotte would like to thank, first and foremost, all of the fine individuals who came to our party and made it a roaring success.  We would also like to thank our sponsors, in alphabetical order: Bawls, Everglide, Mountain Dew, PC-Tote, and Wicked3D.  While we're at it, we would like to thank Bad Mojo, LouZiffer, Lunk, Smeg, and Time2Die of G2 for all the advice they have given.  We hope to continue to bring some of that good ol' lanparty luv'n to Charlotte.

Mistakes, typos, and other such things are probably my fault.  Send me a gripe if it bothers you.

Quitcher