If you've never been to a K9-Con before, indulge me for a moment and picture this. Imagine yourself on a breezy Bay Area day. Outside, it's just as it normally is, a little chilly, and you see people who look vaguely familiar unloading thousands of dollars in top of the line gaming equipment from cars and vans. Twenty minutes and a few huffs and puffs later, your own box, monitor, mouse/keyboard, and headphones are sitting inside a convention center on the West coast with nothing to do but spend billions of cycles Quaking that weekend. You chat it up with a couple people around you, and meet up with a couple players you've known for months online, but never met in real life. You head out to the hotel that night, maybe grab a couple beers with your online chums, and head to sleep with dreams of quad whoring and making people crater as you laugh viciously. Are you ready for K9CON?
Hordes of gamers all showed up to get an opportunity to prove their mettle in fair LAN play. K9con only allowed pre-seeded and invited teams to register before the general public. The floor was spread out so even the local "Joe Schmo" team of newbies gets to compete right along side the superstar teams like [9], k0z, and K9. That year a much higher concentration of the most elite teams competed for bragging rights.
K9con has continued to be a Silicon Valley tradition for two years now, as the premiere gaming LAN party for first-person shooters. Traditionally, they reserve space for the hottest and strongest gaming teams in the world to come together and compete. At K9-Con you'll see, meet, and even play representatives from the world's coolest companies, showing off their wares, and the worlds coolest Quake Clans showing off their skillz. Other sightings were Starcraft and Diablo. The event featured a huge 80" big projected screen, and the network-wide access to a T1 for online connectivity needs.
Some of the biggest names in the developed Q2 scene showed up to prove a point. The tournament pitted top west-coast Q2 clans against each other, including UV, S, VD, A, and K9. Clan Abuse went down in history as the next team to capture the glory.
This was the year where many Quake stars showed up. These players included; most of K9, Freak, Rosco, Icewolf, and Mike (EG), B2, Geiger, Frick, Thresh, and Unholy (DR), Mastakilla (RB), Immortal, Makaveli, Boss, Dredd and Skew (LGC)
Back when the clan K9 was still LA, our decorated leader, Alcazar, held the LA Lan Party #1. Invitees included big-time stars like B2, Bitterboy, Thresh, Bry, Cleaner, LittleDragon, and Reptile. The clan tags at that event were definitely old school - LGD, AM, DP, POST, LA, and XP among them. The attendees played everything from Quake to Diablo while munching on snacks and taking turns at the billiards table and playstation.
