Happy (belated) New Year! This year for RochesterLAN, pending a few personal things first, my goal for the group is to get newer players into the competitive side of the game and have an environment where they can test out the competitive waters and network with other players. As a result, we'll be doing specifically one event this year where Steam gift cards will be awarded in some capacity (nice bonus for players to come out and play, not enough for highly competitive people to fly out).

A couple of housekeeping statements as well- I will be always keeping the Discord and this Steam Group in sync with each other in terms of news and events happening that players may be interested in, hosted in part by us or otherwise (mostly otherwise). I know a lot of younger players don't really use Steam Groups that much anymore, but I want to ensure that people that have preferences are able to abide by these preferences instead of getting forced to use Discord.

The intent of this group was to give people who were interested in playing CS on LAN, even if not particularly at a higher level, a way to do so for the immediate Western New York area in order to really enjoy what in-person gaming has to offer instead of over the Internet. Personally, I lost sight of that when I first rebooted this in 2023. As a result, I do want to clarify that we do not have anything in the works for things related to getting Fragadelphia computers involved for big LANs at venues in Rochester, nor having tournaments with sizable payouts. We need to have the players first before we can consider anything like that, which means that it's important to facilitate an environment welcoming to new players in every facet of being new. We'd still appreciate and not say no to people coming to events no matter their skill level.

RochesterLAN has always been about local CS and it will continue to have that focus without any shred of doubt. Recently however I have been more willing to facilitate discussion and even assign community managers for other games that are best played with however many people are needed at LAN (TF2, Quake, HLDM, etc).

On November 23rd a few of us are going to Great Lakes Gaming to play some de_train, here are the details:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/RochesterLAN/events/6467826493922738277
If we have more than 5 people, I will sit out and if we have more than 6 people I will start a 2nd queue.
If we get 10 people somehow, we'll run some 10mans.

Dates: Sept 21st-23rd
Location: Webster Fire Hall
Tickets: https://www.tixr.com/groups/lanfest/events/roclan-fall-2024-96303

This event is more so a BYOC LAN Party event which from what I can tell has no specific tournaments or anything of the sort, but is a general place to play classic LAN games. I'm trying to go to get a crew to play TF2 and UT2K4.
To reiterate and provide more information, there's another "RocLAN" group that is not affiliated with this group. For a while before the slight revival due to CS2 last year we gave this person access to this group to post about their events, so I figured I'd signal boost this on their behalf.

There are two separate LAN centers that are being hosted outside of the YMCA that, going forward, are available to people. The reason I am getting the word out is because I think open LAN centers with free play, especially at a place like the Y, are extremely important to potentially get new players for Counter-Strike in Rochester. Here is the link to the company: https://metroesports.gg
https://metroesports.gg/locations/schottland/
https://metroesports.gg/locations/maplewood/
I think down the line, I will want to check them out a bit and see what they have to offer and potentially go down there on a weekend morning to play a bit of Wingman or something. I might drop more information as I make more plans.

Good afternoon everyone,
We now have a Faceit hub where we can all play together online as well! We can start to play about once a week or whenever. Here are the details:

LINK: RochesterLAN hub[www.faceit.com]

Map pool: DustII, Nuke, Inferno, Overpass, Season, Cobblestone (old), Train

Non-standard rules:
Overtime money is $16k instead of $10k
Infinite pausing, just for usability sake.

Captains: If you join and have the 'Event Attender' role in Discord, you will be added to a similar role in the hub that gives you priority to be a captain.