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Its funny this as the announcement of the open beta also co-insides with the UK LAN i39 held by Multiplay http://www.multiplay.co.uk/ where they are holding the first tournament for the game with a potential prize fund of £6250 approx $9400 which is sponsored by S2.

Having no LAN play worked so well for Hellgate: London I can see why Blizzard would be aching to leave it out of D3

But, the whinging arcade owners may have a good observation here which is Nintendo's strategy to target the non-gamer audience with easier controls and cheaper price points may be taking away the passing trade from Arcade gamers (I'm guessing if you're a hard core gamer, you'll spend your yen on a console).

There's something better on the horizon, and it's called Hellgate: London. The company making it are Flagship Studios, led by Bill Roper. Having seen the live demo given by same at i30 about three weeks ago, I can safely say it's going to be good.

This seems like a good time to mention something I ran across again a few days ago - Quake Done Quick. These guys finish the whole of the original Quake, on Nightmare difficulty, in 12 minutes and some seconds. Incredible.

Check it out: http://clanservers.multiplay.co.uk/?p=/ftpfiles.ph p%3Fpid%3D%26fid%3D953 (BIG .avi)

or mirror

I submitted this as a story back on June 4. Since it was rejected (too verbose?), I posted it to my /. journal. My main question to other folks relates to how this would compare to using a regular ramdisk. The main deficiency with a ramdisk is that you'd have to reload the contents every time you reboot. Here's my article, with all its links:

Giga-byte Technology recently came out with a DRAM-based PC card that operates as a SATA hard drive. The product, iRAM, uses power from the motherboard to keep memory active when the system is shut down. During power outages, the product uses a on-board battery to retain memory for up to 90 minutes. The iRAM card is being talked about in the news (InfoWorld, itWorldCanada, engadget, PCWorld, multiplay forum) as a means of booting Windows faster. That is, you install Windows onto the iRAM drive to take advantage of the RAM's faster read-access time. Just hope that you don't lose power for more than 90 minutes.

Is boot time really that important, since many computers are on all the time? A ramdisk might have better uses, perhaps for caching frequently-accessed files such as databases and webservers. Or, if you insist on having faster bootup, instead of putting Windows on the iRAM disk, why not just store the hibernation file there?

I implemented a RAM-based database for an internet tool in 1998 to alleviate the read/write load on my local hard drive. It turned out to be a simple solution for the problem. At the time, it was just a matter of using a DOS-based ramdisk driver (ramdisk.sys). On application startup, it copied the database files to the ramdisk. During operation, everything was read/written to the ramdisk, and periodic backups were made to the physical disk. There are some inherent risks, such as loss of data during a crash since data isn't immediately written to a physical hard drive, so it may not be a great solution for a mission-critical production database. The iRAM product would make this type of database even more stable, in that the risk of loss of data is much less.

That was a while ago, so I thought I'd look into setting up a ramdisk in XP for some amusement. Follows are the results of that search. It seems that the options are relatively sparse beyond the DOS-based driver. A few freeware and commercial packages are available, though. One key factor beyond price is the size limit of ramdisk.

Microsoft's ramdisk offerings since Win2k are limited. Included with the XP OS is a ramdisk sample driver that "provides an example of a minimal driver. Neither the driver nor the sample programs are intended for use in a production environment. Rather, they are intended for educational purposes and as a skeletal version of a driver." Installation isn't simple enough for most users to benefit.

Alternatives include a shareware ramdisk, AR ramdisk (archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20041011170408/http:/ww w.arsoft-online.de/products/product.php?id=1) (freeware, 2GB limit, discontinued, available for download here), a freeware (64MB limit) and shareware (2GB limit) version here,

The I games by Multiplay in the U.K which are 1000 man lans have a no file policy

They have a system that cans for network shares and locks the connection out of the network until it is disabled. If that share had any copyrighted material they might throw you out.

Saying that, just hand round CD's and DVD's. Or even USB2 HDD's. Theres way round it, inless they have a guard on every row.

http://www.projectorgames.co.uk/ has developed a system allowing up to 256 players in one game, on one PC/screen. They've currently got the system running at the LAN party i'm at (http://www.multiplay.co.uk/i21) and it's quite popular

Check out the UK's biggest lan event - multiplay

600 people attending a lan over 3-4 days and it happens a few times a year. I went to one myself - great experience apart from the bathroom / shower facilities. They even organised domino's pizza delivary straight to your desk :D