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The article opens by saying LAN's chief advantage was "nearly eliminating latency" and closes by saying revival is as easy as sharing your Wi-Fi password. Wi-Fi and a wired switch are not the same thing. The one thing that made LAN parties technically distinctive is the one thing the revival pitch quietly removes.
Just avoid or throttle downloads while playing.
I resparked this, when I hosted this for my best friends wedding as a best man's gift for him. Was the same fun as when we were young. We kept going and started again visting https://www.northcon.de/ which is once per year in Germany. Many recommend to visit https://www.caggtus.de/ but we yet have to make this one happen.
One thing got harder though: aligning everyone's schedule. Life is happening, and this is fine. Wonder how long we can make it to NorthCon :)
In wired LAN mode you can play Mario Kart 8 deluxe with up to 12 players, or Mario Kart World with up to 24 players. (picture of original/SNES Mario Kart reminded me of this; note you can also play it on the Switch)
The article opens by saying LAN's chief advantage was "nearly eliminating latency" and closes by saying revival is as easy as sharing your Wi-Fi password. Wi-Fi and a wired switch are not the same thing. The one thing that made LAN parties technically distinctive is the one thing the revival pitch quietly removes.
The distinction they're drawing isn't WLAN vs LAN but WAN vs LAN. Remember that in the peak days of the LAN party it was an alternative to gaming on dial-up or DSL - even if you had a good connection it was unlikely the whole game had one. A reasonable Wi-Fi connection today is miles beyond the WAN connections of Y2K.
Needless to say this was before 9/11 and the flight attendants took it in their stride.
I was lucky enough to have one 3months ago :)
The demand is huge, and it's a gamble if you can manage to get a ticket or not, but it's totally worth it.
That's really the major thing that made LAN parties so special. Being in the same room is so, so different than online gaming together and hanging out on discord.
It also forces you to compromise when choosing games and maps, because you're stuck together for the night. You can't just sit out a game/map if you don't like it, you can't just hop on a different voice channel and play another game with other people. You end up playing games you're not as familiar with (and not as dominant in), so your friends will play your game with you later. This brings you into situations, where the person next to you frantically gives you the crash course in rush build orders while building their own base, making the payoff so much better when it actually works out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No modern LAN party discussion is complete without reference to kentonv's houses: https://kentonshouse.com/ https://lanparty.house/
I love this technically, but part of the magic was all setting up trestle tables, sitting in someone’s garage / outbuilding, and it all being a bit raw. I vividly remember cutting a hole in the side of a Shuttle XPC case to fit the fan of a GPU someone had bought over for me at one. That was all part of the experience for me.
As you said though, there was a certain magic those days...