OK, so i've been to Respawn v1, v2, v3, and now v10. I have been to lans for many years and i can honestly say i've only been to one (>100 player) lan that sucked more then respawn v10 did for me.
Games:
-Played CS Source, TF2, Flatout, and Trackmania which all seemed to have a decent amount of people playing at any one time.
Network/Power/EMS:
-Power was up throughout the time i was there, network seemed fast (although 3-4 of the ports on the switch at my table didn't work, until zardoz did something to the switch iirc?)
Comps:
-I entered the Flatout and Trackmania comps. The flatout comp was run very well imo.
-Trackmania was a shambles - no one even finished the track after a whole hour because the person who ran the comp (lord phobos) seemed more interested in 'showing off' his self made track then running a decent competition. Immediately as the server went up, literally everyone in the server expressed how much of a retarded choice the track was for a comp. Sort of like running a Counter-Strike competition on fy_iceworld. Well done, thanks for wasting an hour of our time.
Other:
-Some of the admins weren't approachable at all and didn't want anything to do with you when you had a problem/query.
-The person sitting in the admin area to Miniwalks' left went off at me for 'interrupting Miniwalks game' when i asked Miniwalks where i could find Deadman. I'm sorry but saying 'over there' and pointing is hardly an interruption. I have no idea if this guy is actually an admin or a 'friend of the admins' who thinks hes a fucking champ because he gets to sit in the admin area, but he was sitting in the admin area infront of a computer, that's good enough for me.
For the record, what this person said was "piss off can't you see he's playing a game" or something a long those lines. I am shocked that an admin would say such a thing to a player.
I pay $25 and drive 40 minutes to go to a lan and be helped by the LAN staff, not to be told to fuck off because you're too busy enjoying yourself.
-Tables were packed in too tightly, only made worse by idiot players who thought they could block a whole aisle for 4 hours while they had a chat.
Overall, i think respawn falls down in many aspects, and some of the staff have a lot to learn about 'customer service' from higher quality lans like 3xtremeLAN. They need to learn that they are running a lan, not a show-off power-tripping popularity competition. Yes admins, this means taht you may have to do hard work, play less games and help people out, omg no wai!
Personally i don't think i can be bothered to go to another Respawn ever again. It's too far away for me, the service sucks, the venue isn't anything special and for 150TB+ on the DC hub, there wasn't much quality content to be had, mostly junk. Also don't even get me started on how allowing NON-HASHED clients is ridiculous in this day and age.
edit:
To quote someone who may or may not have been involved with respawn lan in the past:
QUOTE
yeah.. it weirds me out that admins think they are allowed to play games... thats how shafted got shafted
theyve been to a lan.. helped run a lan but have no concept of business, customers, customer service etc... all the important stuff.. they are just really lucky that half the gamers dont care
Respawn Lan 10 Feedback
TMM Respawn Lan 10 Feedback Jan 18 2009, 10:09 AM
Jan 18 2009, 10:09 AM
