This month's hub was a resounding success! Lot of great gaming action was had by all, with a return to the classics (Diablo 2, Dungeon Siege) and cutting edge new stuff (Vietcong) being the highlights. Lots of people, lots of buzz and long lines for $3 pizza in the middle of the night.

With such a great Hub under our belt, 2003 is off to a rip-snorter! Roll on March!

November's Hub saw the welcome return of pizza, at the heavily discounted price of $3 for a half. This will be a permanent feature of future Hubs at LAN Place and will likely be included as a selectable option when paying for your connection/monitor. However, it won't hurt to bring a few coins along just in case.

This Hub we also ran a Gameplanet and LAN Place sponsored 1 on 1 competition using the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo. We started with a quick Deathmatch to rank players and then the top 8 went on to play in knockout rounds until only 2 combatants remained. Despite previous good performances, p01s0n_p1e was soundly beaten in the final by Mr., 8 frags to 1 on Antalus.

*** Congratulations Mr.! ***

A Gameplanet voucher for the game of his choice is winging it's way to him.

We want to know what you, the punter, wants to get from "The HUB", the gaming event.

Head on over to the discussion forum and let us know your thoughts. Help us to help you.

The wonderful people over at gameplanet have given us not one but TWO copies of the amazing new Battlefield 1942 game: -

This game is quite possibly one of our most anticipated games ever. Swifty and I used to play countless hours of the earlier "Codename: Eagle" (which this is kinda like a sequel to, by the same developers) and Spoon1 spooges on about the demo any time you should happen to be talking to him (see the previous news item for an example). What's it all about?

Based in World War 2, in addition to running around shooting one of the many guns available at people in standard FPS mode, you can also leap into any number of cars, jeeps, tanks, planes, boats, etc etc etc and weild them in your rage against the enemy. Picture this - you are in one of those classic normandy beach landing craft. One of your mates is controlling it, as you begin your assault on the beach. Human controlled artillery is raining down, human controlled aircraft are dive bombing you and your buddies (again, other humans) are shooting at the planes with anti-aircraft fire. Should you make the beach in one piece, there will be infantry, machine gun posts, tanks etc all waiting for you. And all this with AWESOME net code and up to 64 players!

You can see why we are excited ;)

We haven't decided how we are going to give this away yet, so if you have some good ideas, go mention them on the discussion page.

- Got in late.
- Set up PC.
- Played the Battlefield 1942 Multiplayer Demo.
- Wiped blood from eyes.
- Packed up and went home.

Seriously, this game owns me completely. I have no idea what went on for the rest of the Hub-goers, the other end of the room could have burnt down for all I knew... Expect to see a lot more of this game at future Hubs, especially seeing as the full version is due September 13.

So... what did happen at the last Hub? Have your say on the discussion page.

We have a new sponsor. The wonderful, splendiferous, magical, marvellous, super duper and just downright fantastical people over at Gameplanet have put together a nifty sponsorship package, starting from this very hub! :D! How great is that?

This month's prize is the incredible Neverwinter Nights: -

Taking the role playing game genre to all-new heights, NWN is the first real D&D game on the computer - you can play through the amazing (and long) single player campaign alone or co-operatively, and you can use the Dungeon Master mode to enable someone to actually DM the game, as it happens. Nothing like this has ever been possible - and you could win it for free! :D!

The exact method to be used to determine the winner has not yet been decided - but it wont be skill based; at least, not in the traditional "i are leet at quaek and j00 are n0t - gimm3!" way... stay tuned for more. Just be assured that, if you turn up, you are in with a chance!

... is closing fast! :-o

Have you registered yet? There are still places available - my guess is that they will all fill up soon, so don't leave it to the last minute! :D!

We hope to unveil a new sponsor this month - I can't say too much now, but I can say that there will be some prizes - all you have to do is show up to be in with a chance :D

The old hub site was crap, so I replaced it. This one is much better - simple, clean lines and a nice php interface for the organisers to use to update it. It has a working discussion forum too - something I have been meaning to do for quite some time now. Sorry about the delay :/ You get that on the big jobs...

I whipped this entire site (all the code, graphics, the works) in about 2 hours - so it may have some glitches. If you find any, please let me know as soon as possible.

In the meantime, take a peek around while I whip up the admin frontend for us organiserey peeps.