For our first event for 2015, things were not looking good. With news of a category 5 cyclone heading our way really put things in prospective. We decided to continue with the event and work out ways to overcome the pouring rain. Setting up for this event was a huge struggle. We totally underestimated how much the rain affected the ability to get everything done and imply getting all the gear to the venue and unloading was a major problem. Large size gazebos were erected to try keep some of the gear dry. Not only did the weather pose a threat to all our equipment, it also made setting up a very dangerous work environment. With everything set up around 3am on Saturday morning, it was time to hit the the hay before a huge day ahead of us.
Doors opened right on the dot of 8am and we were accompanied with torrential rain. This was not a good start to the day. We were expecting a relatively low turn out due to this and also adding the amount of road closures was not going to help. By 10am the hall was looking rather full. People just kept coming and coming. We believe this has defied all odds and truly believe that LAN Parties still live on.
GGF over the years have evolved to more than just a gaming event. We believe GGF provides a unique experience for gamers including a variety of attractions on the day. Besides the BYOPC area at GGF we also have.
This event we had Josh from ASUS Republic of Gamers in Australia fly up and help us out on the day. Josh has also been working close with Nvidia to provide more support for GGF. We cannot explain how much ASUS and ASUS ROG gear we had on display. After receiving a complete ASUS pallet load of gear at GGF HQ earlier in the week, we knew we had our work cut out. On display from ASUS were an abundant amount of monitors and 4K monitors (some not even released yet) enough video cards to drain the power from a small city, the latest ROG G751 gaming laptop, the yet to be released ASUS GR8 micro gaming PC, ROG SLI bridges and enough ASUS ROG peripherals to fill a truck. It was great to see how involved ASUS are with GGF and even better to see companies like these supporting LAN Parties.
Server Challenge was back again which is hosted by Gibztech and Western Digital. We provide a complete interactive server rack where participants race against the clock completing challenges. For example, inserting 24 HDD cages and plugging in network/fibre cables from a wire and cable manufacturer. This event WD jumped on-board and provided a huge amount of hard drives for the competition.
One area that GGF has started to boom in recent years is the sponsor display area. We’ve lost count of the sponsor displays we have set up at each event. This event we saw displays from:
Most of these systems have been modified by the GGF team to really bring out each display and to showcase some of our skills.
Other areas included our 1v1 hot seat competitions where GGF provide all the PC gear required. Simply rock up and play. This is great for gamers who don’t currently have a PC at the moment or are currently re-building or upgrading their system. And for World of Warcraft players, we heard that Gold4Vanilla offers WoW TBC Classic Gold for Sale.
We also introduced an Audio Surf 2 competition this time which was utilising the latest gaming gear from ROG and ASUS. The main focus of this set up was the game running on the latest ASUS ROG G751 laptop which was powered by an Nvidia GTX 980m. Also in this system was an ASUS 32″ PA328Q 4K monitor. One of the very first to run 4k over HDMI at 60Hz.
Returning again for this event was Felix from Hardwired PC. Felix always puts on a great display and this time they were showing off their racing sim, custom laptops and one of their latest builds including a wicked custom paint job.
Lastly we’d like to thank all the GGF supporters and sponsors. Without them GGF would not be possible. We had a huge array of prizes this event which you can see below.
And of course with prizes, comes happy winners.
