m3 was a great experience. four days of continuous quake, but more importantly four days with great quakers.
5:55pm, May 23, 1997. I loaded up my pentium 100 into a cow spotted gateway box and put it into my dad's old taurus. We drove (well he drove since I'm only 16.8) to New York City, a short hour drive from Long Island. We parked the car and lugged my precious box to the Pseudo Online studio on 600 Broadway. Once inside the six story building, I pulled my pc into the small 3' x 5' x 8' elevator and pushed the old button labeled SIX. About five minutes later (slow elevator), the door creaked open revealing Pseudo's spacious loft.
I walked past the plastic (and transparent) walls and joined about eight other quakers waiting on line (err off line) to register offline (but on the line). The guy in front of me apparently was Phoebus, of phoeb.com. A few minutes later, I arrived at the brown desk where a man wearing a blue shirt and sporting glasses greeted me. Bastard. He took my name and I signed a legal waiver (if I fragged myself it's not their fault), and got a nifty M3 badge with a doggy chain. If a person's badge had a small hole in it, it meant that he was old enough to drink. My badge was whole.
I said goodbye to my father, and someone else said goodbye to their computer. A poorly made/set up (ms frontpage?) table promptly crashed like windows 95, taking a few computers with it. I gently set up my computer in the corner of the secondary room (err place). I sat next to two guys who I would later find out to be Paddywack and the Liberator, two good players. The room was mostly empty though, I was number 33 out of the expected 100+ people. Soon I was fragging like a LPB, in fact I was a LPB. Calling someone LPB just wasn't as fun. I joined a 16 player game on death32a. Saw Loonyboi (of QuakeLab: Multimedia) as well as a few other people I knew just from the net, proceeded to administer manbeatings. After many fragfests, the evening blurred into night.
That night (or was it Saturday?) Mace Royer paid a visit. Donning yellow robes with a trademark hat, he proceeded to scream like a crazy man welcoming us to M3. He threw candy like a happy camper throws grenades on DM5. I picked up a piece of candy which hit the head of the guy standing next to me. Yummy.
After enough giblets, it was dinner time. I left the sixth floor quaking area and headed downstairs in a rickety wood staircase. After too much quake, the food looked pixelated and I soon forgot what I ate. Wandering around with food in my plate, I went into the sleeping room and found about ten quakers huddled around a man who I had met (in real life) a few hours ago while registering. Blue. I fragged some more (upstairs), but soon my eyes began to drop in resolution and my movements became lagged. I grappled my way downstairs and found a deserted and comfortable chair to sleep on.
The next day, Saturday, I woke up and had a traditional breakfast of Donuts and Coke. 6:00am. I went upstairs to find a few people milling around, one guy playing reapers, another sleeping at his computer. I saw one early game between two rangers: [R2]Robs who gave a sound manbeating to [R2]Hobbit on DM4. I pulled out my box of Sunny Doodles, and set my desktop wallpaper to a huge 700x500 dpi image of the glorious Sunny Doodle box.
After Sunny Doodling, more people woke up and more quaking took place. I got to meet (in person) Lithium (of preystation.com, Loonyboi, and Radpipe (of top 10 things to do at m3). More and more people arrived that day, including Paradox, Giggler, sCary, Levelord (from hipnotic), and Killcreek. Virtually everyone entered the first tournament on DM2: claustrophobopolis. The tourney was organized by Radpipe, who did a great job of setting it up. First round was about ten games of eight people each, the top three qualifying for the next round. I beat out the third player, Comm, by one frag, but was about ten away from first place. In the second round, I faced Giggler and six other great players on DM6, one of my weaker levels. I didn't make it to the final round.
Saturday was more quaking, power outages, network bugs, and frags.
About five times, my computer (and neighboring ones) ran out of power.
Luck made me choose the room and side which ran out of power the most times.
The network was wonky sometimes, it took me a while (with the help of
friendly neighborhood quakers) to set up my computer. More fragging.
That afternoon, a young fourteen year old red head girl arrived. Phoenix
of clan PMS. Later, I watched her deathmatch Killcreek on DM5. With about
five or six quakers, a sound dude, and a camerman (from MSNBC?), I watched
the two quakers duke quake it out. Phoenix took the lead
early, but Killcreek (also sporting the SpaceOrb360) found the joys of
discharging (the lightning gun that is). After about five discharges in
the Cistern water, Killcreek got the Pentagram of Protection and discharged
again with only one person being fragged: Phoenix. Ten discharges later,
(and a few other normal frags), Killcreek took the lead and won about
18 to 14 (+- 5).
In other games, Honus of clan Gib won the first tourney, winning an Orb and an autographed mission pack. At the same time, the DM4 one on one tournament was beginning. Fraglimit 20, timelimit 15. One of the best games I saw was sCary vs some other guy. sCary was easily dominating, even though the other guy was still a good player. The score was about 14 to -3 partially through the game. I stood behind sCary, surrounded by about five other quakers watching. On the rare occasion that the other guy scored, people would cheer and clap. sCary mumbled that he had "psychic powers" and proved it. He said quietly "kill yourself kill yourself", and soon theotherguy jumped into lava. Another time, sCary was waiting in the rocket/red armor room, and just jumped randomly like he was using a skippy-voodoo doll. Theotherguy jumped into the lava again :)
The winner of the 1 on 1 tourney was Honus again. He first played another of his clan (Ronbob) on DM6, and won. He played teleporter footsie but also showed his great skill. In the final round, Honus played another clan Gib guy: Kurtz. Honus won again. Honus showed what rocket jumping can really do, jumping across the grenade ledge in DM6, vaulting to a strange place above the red armor on DM6, or just evading fire, grabbing the quad, and gibbing on DM2. Soon after the final 1 on 1 game was Quakecast.
Quakecast was a blast: no lag except my sleepiness, no stuttering except the drunk cast err sin cast. Girlbomb wasn't there, but plenty of other people were. I sat right outside the glass booth, (fish bowl as the viewers/listeners referred to it), right next to Lithium and Tony Fabris (of the BFG faq). As Quakecast began, the sober cast introduced the quakers. Paradox was damn funny, and started to talk about sin. He mentioned Sin whenever he could, leading to the "count how many times Paradox mentions sin" bet by JudgeCal, leading to a counting contest. Radpipe, Killcreek, Wanker, Joost Schuur, Levelord, Killcreek, Fargo (chat mistress), sCary, and others all were on the show, and drinking way too much beer to be broadcasting. Levelord earned the title of Levelf*k (as well as Beerf*k for running the Beer juice cycle). Strangely, the other guy sitting next to me won a SpaceOrb (ooh) for remembering that Levelord killed Candy the Llama with a throwing knife. Towards the end, the even more drunk cast babbled on late into the night. I was sleepy and went down to sleep on an abandoned sofa.
On Monday, M3 was winding down. I met the green haired Embrionic Pete
(of Quantum Axcess and
NAWC), and got to see Blue updating
his page with ms Front page. I also saw the DicKeyGrip
guys and the Film@11 guy talking trash (nicely though) about each other's
demo editing programs. I gave away some of my Sunny Doodles and packed
up my computer. Almost everyone had left already, but about ten of us
remained Monday afternoon. More left until the last four guys still were
stuck at M3. Two left for Virginia (or some other far away state) leaving
me with a guy who had a plane to catch at 7:00pm. It was 3:20pm. My dad arrived,
I said goodbye to the other guy and to M3. I lugged out my pc to the slow elevator,
ran down the stairs because the elevator was too small, and saw the other
last guy leave in a taxi. I finally took off my M3 doggy chain badge.
M3 was over.
M3 was the best (and only:) LAN party I've been to. Power outages, Sunny Doodle blasphemy, Three bathrooms (with under pressured toilets), and not enough sleep sucked. M3 did not.