Hosted LAN all the time, but that was many years back. Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft 2, Dungeon Siege, Titan Quest and Freelancer were some of the games we would play. Hookedup multiple computers through a router and had anywhere from 2-4 people playing at once depending on the game.

with a mandatory braai inbetween matches I hope ;) Yeah the younger kids already started scaring me more than the older ones in highschool. Respect was thrown out of the window within the space of less than 3/4 years :P

I always wanted to lan diablo 2, but never got a proper chance. I wanted to trade some items with the hopes of somehow completing a green set. :P

Heh the lan bit in front is important, otherwise its just a party, and I hate parties! Its as if everyone at a party is putting on a facade. I prefer it when a handful of friends come together, we make a big fire, and sit around the fire drinking beer and talking about sci fi, games and cult movies. :D Or hunting stories if anyone has any good ones, like the time a lion grabbed this one guy out of a window, or the time this one guy shot a giraffe between the eyes when he was aiming for a bushcat. (that one was actually very funny (in a sad way) because it happened at night and they realised a bushcat doesn't make the ground shake when it falls out of a tree)

I have 3 aging desktops at home and regularly meet 80% of my high school friends (in my early thirties now, I don't know if it's cool or pathetic, but A+ for consistency :P).

So yeah, we LANed the hell out of those things, but compatibility with newer games is becoming an issue.

One of my friends got a modern laptop so I can just get him the games I want to play on LAN for his bday and I've somehow managed to make my old(er) laptop stable enough not to crash too often for an evening of playing games so we're limited to 3 players for anything beyond the middle of the 2000-2010 decade.

Technically if we go to any of my friends' place (they all have modern desktops), then we can be 4, though we're limited by whichever games I got them for their birthdays (whenever I really want us to play a game on LAN, I arrange to get them a copy for their birthdays when a good promo pops up, it's a bit self-serving I know...).

I was recently a bit disappointed with the relatively high graphics card requirements for Hammerwatch (cmon, my aging desktop can run Flatout, but not that game? It's kind of obvious the dev didn't bother with even the most superficial optimisation).

At this point, I'm in the process of turning my aging desktops into an Openstack cloud so I guess 4 player limit for LAN games will become the norm until 1-2 more friends get powerful laptops (unfortunately, except for playing LAN, they don't really need laptops).

Yeah we do LAN parties once in a while.. or did, I'm not sure about the future of that.

What pretty much killed it:

-Four player co-op. A limitation from the console side. We usually have 5-6 people playing and we like co-op. Almost all games, even Worms - the cornerstone of LAN gaming, is limited to four players (well it's not co-op but you get the picture).

-Online requirements, all games do not offer LAN option. You have to login here and there and make an internet server to play local LAN. Too much of a hassle.

We play some strategy games that allow more than 4 players, some old shooters like Rainbow Six.. it's getting old to play the same games. And there's no new ones.

So true, and when the servers go down, the game is pretty much broken without the knowledge of the creating your own server. LAN should ALWAYS be an option of play for any game with multi play.

That is one of the reasons lan parties were so much fun. If it wasn't for lan parties, it would have taken me years before I got into music.

I'm having one right now actually, but we're relegated to playing older games since most of my friends can't afford new games.