On Saturday, some friends and I had a LAN party at the house. Most of my friends don’t play EQ2, but we were playing other games at the same time. Our game list included Unreal Tournament 2004, World of Warcraft, EverQuest 2, and the center of attention: Guitar Hero.

First things first, everyone that came got hooked on Guitar Hero. By the end of the night, nobody had any usable fingers remaining on their left hand. It turned into a competition for the highest scores as some new players moved quickly through the more difficult songs. The beer and Crown didn’t help either. It was quite a sight to see, particularly David and his tribute to the Beatles by strapping his guitar almost to his armpits. The only thing more scary was his insane body movements while trying to somehow get some masse off the guitar.

Trollmeat jumped into WoW and got into the tail end of an MC raid, which there wasn’t much to see at that point. But Ambroze got on at the start of an Onyxia raid and we got to see how that went. First, they went after a world boss, but realized they didn’t have the force to take it down. After that short diversion, they went after Onyxia and took that bitch down on the first try. While he didn’t get any gear, Ambroze managed to get head from Onyxia to start a quest for an uber ring. Very nice.

After a short wait to get in (well, ninety minutes after the start anyway), I got pulled into Deathtoll for the Tarinax fight. It was a messy a night, many guilds were doing the same raid and lag was brutal. But by the time we got to Tarinax, several guilds (Fortitude, others) had already given up on the giant skeleton dragon and called it a night. But Mob Squad stuck to it, tweaked the strategy and managed to get a good pull resulting in a solid takedown. It was a great victory, our second defeat of the big beast, and it felt good since so many other guilds failed earlier. Several guildies got their claymores and other quest updates. The folks watching had a blast and couldn’t believe how HUGE the dragon was on screen. It was serious fun.

We also played several death matches of Unreal Tournament 2004, damn that’s a fun game. Nothing like 176 frames per second at 1920x1080 to keep the gameplay smooth. 1080 you say? Yes, I brought out the 37” screen and used it for gaming all night. Talk about serious neck strain while looking from left to right, I’d say that the screen was too big if it wasn’t so damn gorgeous to behold. I can definitely see using one as a regular gaming display if you could afford it.

The night went late, probably 2:30 AM before everyone headed out. But the Savastano’s Pizza, along with some tasty beverages made the night a complete success.