Background (skip this if you're not interested in why)
As many of you must have noticed, the standard of organization of qhlan hasn't been the same the last 5 years or so as it used to. This is mainly due to three things.
1. Most of the old Qhlan crew quit lanning (got married, moved away, busy with jobs etc)
2. Galaxen (where we had qhlan 3, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 7.1, 8, 8.1 and 9) was no longer an option.
3. I myself have had a lot of stuff going on giving me much less time and energy to pull stuff together.

When it became painfully apparent that we couldn't get a lot of things done in time for Qhlan 13 (getting the website up in time etc) I started to think more seriously about the future. I've been saying for a few years now that "by the time of next Qhlan I will be less busy and be able to do a lot more" but that has never happened, and I can't guarantee it will in the future either. So I've come up with a solution which doesn't depend on as many unknown factors, and which will solve most of the problems we've had for the last couple of lans.

Hazard
Since Qhlan 3, we've been working together with a lan organization called hazard. We help out at each others lans, lend out equipment etc.
They are holding 2 lans of their own each year, week 9 (sportlovet) and week 44 (höstlovet), with an attendance between 150 and 300 for the past few years. They are now expanding a bit, with dedicated "progaming" sections for Counterstrike and DotA at their next lan, and a prize pool of 76 000 SEK (~7 500 euro).
They have a really good venue (a big school 15km south of Stockholm which was renovated for 20M euro a few years ago) with room for about 500 lanners, great spectating areas, showers, heating and ac =), good electricity/Internet connection etc... all at a pretty low rent.
They also have an active crew who really cares about the lans and make meticulous preparations. Their website is at http://lan.nu/ or http://hazard.nu/

Future QHLAN setup
I've been discussing with members of the Hazard associations board to hold future Qhlans as progaming sections at their lans. We would get our own section of seats (our own hall, if there's enough interest from the QW community) and would run the tournaments and of course get you guys to come, but that's pretty much all we have to do.
Their webpage and signup system is a piece of cake to set up for a new lan, so we could actually have everything up with dates and signups more than half a year in advance.
If their next lan (in two months) goes according to plan (and theirs usually do) we can probably get a prize pool of 25 000 SEK (~2 400 euro) for QW, possibly even larger, if there's a _lot_ of interest.
The dates would most likely be 4-7 november

What can YOU do?
1. Give feedback
a) Is it a good/bad idea?
b) Dates good/bad? (we most likely just have the choice of week 9 or week 44 if we go with the Hazard setup, but feedback is still good)
c) What would be a good entrance fee? Is 300 SEK too high? too low? just right? (higher entrance fee of course equals bigger prize pool etc, noone's doing this for profit =)
d) Other thoughts
2. Spread the word, invite every quaker you see, nag your friends to come... the more the merrier! ^^
3. Volunteer to help - the whole concept of lans rely on people just like you working in their spare time to make it happen
4. Sign up and attend yourself of course
5. Offer rides to other people if you're going by car
6. Getting extra sponsorship for the event
7. Keep playing quake and keeping the community the greatest there is for any game
7. Anything else you can think of =)

I can sometimes be found active in #qhlan on quakenet.

// Lornelin

This is surely the way to go for us, the cooperation with GEv at the past two QHLAN's has shown that this is not a problem at all, and we benefit quite much by it. Going bigger, at a venue that doesn't change each time, would surely be a step in the right direction. Also the change of dates, makes it a lot easier to go for foreigners!

Having a dedicated crew for handling the network, the shops and selling us Billy's and Gorby's menus with some Powerking on the side, is so awesome.

All we have to worry about is playing quake! \o/

Map of the venue | Pictures of the venue | Stage for spectating | Seats for spectating | Dedicated shop

-Notice that Peppe tries to flee the scene

sounds cool, reeeeeeeally cool.

That sounds awesome! and the date's are better as well =)
The price is perfect also =)
So count me in!

sounds really nice, hope more people will think so as well!!

hi,

i was considering the option to go to the next qhlan. now that i read this, i can say that this are good news!

dates: almost every date is better than 2-5 Jan. best news!
entrance fee: as i wont win any prize, i vote for a lower entrance fee, at least for foreigners

i would like to know the location of the event, to check hotels and transports nearby.

keep us informed!
hugs!

300SEK is roughly 30E.....surely you can afford it....

Ooh, the information is out!

Well, the dates 4. - 7. November are a bit bad for me (regarding that I have school 4. - 7. Nov).
Week 9 would be better for myself regarding that I don't have school on those dates, but that's far too early for QHLan 14 (2010 week 9). However, I think that I'm minority in this case, so I think those dates are good for most visitors.

I would find entrance fee of around 30€ pretty nice. Too low entrance fee is away from the prizes anyway, and that's not very viable option. Something over 30€, especially over 40€ would be bit high then.

I wasn't on QHLan 13, so I can't really go throwing out improvement ideas. The Party Management System could be improved though. Schedule, QTV links, stream links, demos from past matches and so. It wouln't be that huge thing to deploy (if you compare it to all those other things you have to do, in order to organize LAN), but be very nice for spectators outside LAN and also for QHLan visitors / even competitors. Instead of yelling those dates around, it could be a bit easier to keep one well organized PMS up-to-date? =)
Organizers are there doing it voluntarily, but something like this would be rather easy, but significant change to make.

Fredrika Bremergymnasiet, 13645 HANINGE
There is the location.
And this is great news. Count me in!

Eh? All information was on qw.nu frontpage and in .qw message the minute they were available. What exactly is it that you propose?

Im not throwing accusations, it was just an idea.

But yeah, there wasn't proper schedule, who plays against who on given time. At least I didn't spot one.
At the start of the QHLan there wasn't QTV up, but luckily you guys got it sorted pretty soon
I didn't have the possibility to watch all games live, and it would have been nice to have also those demos posted after the matches were played (as I see, for example, 1on1 demos were posted 5 days later).

I meant it would be nice to have kind of an centralized party site, where all that info could be posted. Like, links for every tourny and their schedule (kind of what you had on qhlan.quakeworld.nu). There you could see, who has gotten eliminated, when are the upcoming matches played and so on. When match is about to go live, QTV and video stream links could be added to that page. When the match is over, there would be links to match demos and results.
Wouldn't it be easier for the admins too to have one who is responsible for updating that PMS, and then all information party visitors / spectators outside lan need would be gathered there? =)

Right now the info is spread all over, IRC, qw.nu blog posts, qhlan.quakeworld.nu. Instead of going to pms.qhlan.org and checking schedule, "Ahh there is rikoll vs zero on 21:00CET (QTV link here) and LocKtar vs zero played 20:00CET (results here) (demos here)", now it's mainly hanging around on IRC and checking QTV: "when does it start? is this finals or semifinals? VODs anywhere?" were the actual questions Ive seen around

I'm not of course demanding anything, but since you're looking for something to improve, I think something like this could make it easier for everyone: be it tournament admins, actual tournament players themselves, party visitors or those spectating games outside actual LAN.

It wasnt any problem for us who played on this lan, but that has to do with no 4on4. So we had allot of time for 1on1 and 2on2. When i comes to next lan where i gues 4on4 is the main part of the lan it would be nice with a set time for each game, so ppl know when to eat and when to play 1on1 and when to play 4on4. Gues its easier for the specs when we have a set time for each game to.

I'm not attacking you for that, I'm just asking for a more in-depth explanation, and I guess that was what I got


Yes it's true that there were no schedule for the group games, except for when the group stages started, there were however a schedule for all finals and semifinals, posted 12 hours in advance.

Regarding QTV, I came a day later than planned due to the weather (had to wait for a flight instead of going by car :/), when I arrived I set up QTV, as Eter who was responsible for the servers were caught up elsewhere. However that was still before any tournament games were played.

Regarding demos, this was unfortunately out of our hands, as CHTV's uploader was broken, and Phil no longer had access to the site. It didn't get fixed until after QHLAN ended. I however uploaded and linked all 2on2 playoff matches directly on qw.nu, right after they were played. The 1on1 demos uploaded on CHTV after QHLAN did include commentary mp3's.


That might be a good solution and if any of the QHLAN crew wants to put in the time to update such a PMS that would be great. I will however keep creating content and posts for qw.nu, as the whole point for me to do updates on the tournament is to attract more visitors to qw.nu.

Because when QHLAN is over and the PMS site is no longer updated, qw.nu will still be - and newcomers looking for more, will get it there.


As you probably already have noticed, I disagree with you on that. I'm pretty sure we didn't do a single .qw message with info that wasn't first posted on qw.nu, so had you just followed the frontpage, you would have gotten all information available. Every time I announce any changes, I first do it on qw.nu, then I do .qw with a link to the qw.nu article. If it's worth mentioning on ESR, I then post there.

The reason we didn't have a schedule for games outside of the playoffs, was that the Hungarians sleept in late, so the rest of us played the games that didn't involve any .hu's

It's true that some coverage was left in the blogs, but that is what they are for, user added content/coverage.


I'll give you that better scheduling of the tournaments would be the way to go (if next qhlan will be bigger), and a better overview of what is going on should be done as well. If this could be posted in advance, it would be great. (then there is just the problem if sticking to it )

But for this LAN, with just 25 dedicated players, I choose to have a loose schedule for allowing fun mix games and irl socializing when people were up for it. And then put energy in scheduling the playoff games for the spectators at home.

And please don't take my posts as an indicator of me nothing appreciating your feedback, because I really do, I get very little feedback on most of the coverage, so every small bit is very appreciated.

However some of your points just seemed like you weren't really paying attention, or just looking the wrong place. (but that would be my fault I guess )

Judging from the pictures linked in Zalon's post above (which i didn't notice at first) the facilities looks really clean, modern and nice. This definitely sounds like a good idea which hopefully will bring QHLAN back on the map for real again.

sounds like a smart idea, only bad thing about it is that now there will be less LAN/year then before (for me atleast)

I guess we could always pull of an extra LorneLAN or something instead Melkor... =)

How is transport from Skavsta to Haninge?

there are several carts dragged by donkeys leaving skavsta each hour for haninge!

Sounds promising...

By car:
http://hitta_skavsta_haninge.qh.se/ (skavsta -> hazard/qhlan, 60-90 minutes)

By bus:
http://www.flygbussarna.se/PageFB.aspx?page=5262&lang=EN (skavsta -> stockholm ~80 minutes, 99 sek)
http://www.sl.se/ (stockholm -> hazard/qhlan ~30 minutes, 45 sek)

This looks really hot, I would just like to see a big 4on4 tourney playoff games scheduled during this lan. Would really motivate more people to come I guess.

I will definetly attend, the prizemoney and veneu looks really promising, hopefully as many as possible will come next qh/hazard.

That is something noone can really promise, as that is up to the players....

I think it's a great idea. Dates are fine, certainly better than just after new years for internationals. Prob prefer november as I do not want to wait too long to make my triumphant return to sweden.

300SEK seems fine to me, isn't that what the QHLan I went to cost? I can't remember. Bigger prize pool doesn't really interest me as I'm never going to win anything. Heating sounds cool but also if you could specifically remind _me_ to bring a fucking sleeping bag instead of an ultra thin blanket that would be great.

Haha driz, and yeah, the one you attended were 300sek as well

haha

I'll do some commentating on matches
yeah so many forget to bring sleeping-material so they end up doing this

For me this is all awesome news. The shitty date was the main reason I never went.

The concept of it being a 'multigaming' lan is a bit of a turn off though. I'm genereally not interested in any other games (and/or its gamers), but as long as we have our own room (or at least our own area within a room) where we don't have to mingle with 15 year old DotA players, I guess I would be fine with it.

soma, kiddies have grown! they're 18 now and can buy their own cigs ;D
(small detail for everyone, you'll notice these kids standing outside dressed all silly and smoking! it's super fun )

emo kids ?