Sure, this is coming at you a little bit after the fact, but... we had to wait for the bills and count the Scrooge McDuck-size piles of loot. Loot for the kids, right? Don't think Doodi horded it and used it for something else. Anyway, here's the grats and gifts.

Screw you, bad economy! Screw you in the mouth!

It took Doodi a while to figure out how to plug in his abacus, but final tally is in. Chi-LAN 2009 was a success. We raised $987.68 for our little buddies at Child's Play.

First, thanks to each member of 2old2play. Sure, not all of you could make it this year, but each of you make this community the type of place where we want to spend our hard-earned dollars hanging out with each other in real life. That is not something that can be put on a balance sheet.

Secondly, thanks to the generous companies who supported the LAN with great donations. They send us awesome prizes year after year, and the raffle easily puts us from "uh crap... looks like we are pimping out DSmooth... AGAIN." to "Here's a cheque, Child's Play: now help out those wee gamers!" Here's a list and, again, a heartfelt thank-you.

• PopCap
• 2K Games
• Southpeak Games
• Harmonix - The main prize: Two Rock Band 2 Bundles, and two Track Packs
• Activision
• Bawls energy drinks
  

Thirdly, thanks to the folks who actually ran some of the tournaments. In particular, we want to thank XSSmoke for putting up the $1000 prize for the Frags Away Halo tournament. Caesar and Taxisquad ran the tourney (fairly)smoothly, and Caesar putting up 4x1600 MS point cards.

Dahji  took the top prize.

The Final 8 that advanced to the finals, from left to right: Midnighter, killthrash, royal, dahji, emminentt, drost, beldar and mutus letum.

The AoW Clan Tarts did an great job with the Gears tourney, and thanks for them for the $200 cash prize. Here are the top three teams:

j-cat , Rau, UMC1, luciferspearl, normalguy, vodkastains, Drwhistler



Rau and NoGame made sure that the Rockband tourney gave us all a reason to rock out Saturday. Here's the winning band:

Banjocut, EC300 , Slappins and Big0ne:



Not everyone could go to Lan this year, but don't fret! We still have some great things to give away. Keep your eyes peeled for some contests in the near future.

We are also trying to get more community events on a regular basis. Any ideas are more than welcome. PM J-Cat (http://www.2old2play.com/Blog/J-Cat) , or Caesar (http://www.2old2play.com/Blog/caesar) if you have any great (or not so great) ideas.

Once again, thanks to you all for supporting the LAN and Child's Play.

AOW and the AOW Clan tarts are proud to announce that this year at the 2009 Chicago LAN we will be sponsoring a GOW2 Wingman Tournament Saturday Aug. 8th @ 6pm.

Offical Rules:
Platform: XBox 360 Created
Series: Best of 3

Map(s)
1 Avalanche
2 Blood Drive
3 Ruins

Game Options
Game Type: Wingman
Round Time: Limit 5
Wingman Goal Score: 15
Bleed-Out Time: 5
Friendly Fire: On
Number of Bots: 0

Best of 3 tie settings: In case there is a tie on the maps (1-1), a new map will be played in order to decide the winner. The third map will be hosted by the team who scored more rounds. In case the round count is on a tie (like 5-4, 4-5) coin toss will be used in order to determine the team hosting the third and deciding map.

Character: free choice. More characters of one kind are allowed in the same team.

The following bug/glitches are not allowed, and may be a reason to be disqualified, if used:
1. Getting out of the normal boundaries of the map.
2. Land Surfing, Skydiving, Airwalking and equivalents.
3. Moving when grabbing items (Weapon-slide).
4. Weapon-sliding.

Ghost-camming is not allowed; when a player dies he must set his view to one of his teammates
point of view.

The not-hosting team will be able to choose either COG or LOCUST.

The time is finally here as we enter into LAN week for our 5th Chicago get together since the LANs humble beginnings only 4 years ago. Find out more about this event, what to bring, and what to expect from your first LAN experience.

First off I just want to say how great it is that we were able to sell so many tickets in the current economy. Nobody likes to be reminded of our current economic state, but it really is a testament to how much people love the LAN and being a part of 2o2p. For all the people that couldn't make it this year, we hope to see you next year.

For those that couldn't make it

Just like last year we will try as best we can to cover the LAN as it happens. More then likely this will include a live stream of the LAN on both the home page and the LAN page at www.2old2play.com/lan. We invite all members to take a view at every thing that goes down at the LAN so they can see join in on the fun. We will try to get as many events on camera as we can, but keep in mind there is a lot of running around going on so some things might be left off screen.

Also if you didn't grab a ticket but still want to help the cause, please feel free to head on over to www.2old2play.com/lan and click the donate button. All proceeds from the LAN go to Child's Play Charity in order to help give sick children better lives and a touch of happiness. We know times are tough, but 2old2play has always proven to have a heart. Last year saw more then $2,000 raised for Children Memorial and my hope is that this number will be even larger.

Check List for LAN

If you did manage to get a ticket then just remember now is the time to go over all the stuff you need to bring. 55 monitors will be present as stations for the LAN, but you MUST bring your own consoles in order to fill those spots. We always say do not rely on others to bring the games, controllers, cables, and consoles, because before you know it there will be nothing there to play.

Also remember to label ALL of your gear as things have and will get moved around from time to time. We also seem to lose one or two things during a LAN so keeping a watch on your gear is a good idea. Some masking tape and a sharpie should be more then enough to get you by without issues. If you want to be even more hard core about it feel free, but just remember that other members will play on your console from time to time. As we know consoles do red ring so keep that in mind when you are jumping from station to station.

We also need those extra items from the closers members in order to have enough to network, power, and connect all the stations. If you need to know what else to bring, you can head over to the Chicago Lan Forum and click on this thread for more information. Basically and Cat5 Cable, power strips, speakers, or VGA Xbox cables will help us tremendously. If you don't have those items do not worry, we will run out and pick up whatever is left over.

Update all your games! You wont believe how many people forget to do this at home and it ends up causing issues at the LAN. There is a net connection, but assume it will not be available to you. There is no way to hook up 50+ xbox's to one stable internet connection so its best if you do this all at home. That includes new maps, patches, and downloadble content.

Finally, don't forget your cash. I know this sounds simple enough, but you wouldn't believe how many people end up paying out the ass for cash station fees because they do not have enough on them. Remember this is also a vacation and more then likely you will partake in the kickassness (a new word) that is Chicago. That means food, beer, and do not forget the raffles and events for charity.

Events at the LAN

Don't forget this years LAN is going to have some of the same events that we saw last year. That includes the Rock Band Rock Off and the $1,000 Halo FFA Tournament. Times are subject to change, but both of these even should be held on Saturday. Make sure you are around as both will be first come first serve for all members. The same plan will go for the raffle. We did a lot of good last year and made most of our charity money via the raffle so we encourage people to sigh up and give what they can. The raffle will close the LAN Saturday night so stick around.

See you all there. Travel safe!

Fire up you Xbox 360 and get on Xbox Live tonight for the second 2old2play Monthly Community Playdate. Games will run from 8:00 - 11:00 PM CST. Read on for more info.

Building on the momentum from last month's event (Big Up to MJ for getting this ball rolling!), we will be hosting a few more rooms and dusting off the Meet2old2play Gamer Tag for new community members or those who simply have not participated in any of the 2old2play community events yet. So tell all your friends to mark their calendars and PM me if you would like to host a room for this event.

For those of you who cannot make the LAN this year due to the crappy economy, this is a great opportunity to participate in a regularly schedule "Virtual LAN" where you can meet members of 2old2play, have some full and hopefully add to or max out your Friends List(s).

So be sure to join us on the 21st to get your game on!

Event Details

Date: Tuesday, July 21st
Time: 8:00 - 11:00 pm CST (or until everyone passes out)

Games to be played: Anything and everything that the community wants to host.

We will be using the following FoF Silver Accounts to help organize this event and may add more as it is deemed necessary.

Room 1
a2o2proom1

Room 1
a2o2proom2

New members Room
Meet2old2play

Red Faction Room
FL2old2playRFG

As with CPD1, we will have a person who will set up and lead a gaming room for their particular title and will be in charge of assigning folks to start up new rooms as each fills up. To make this easier, I would like to also assign a second person to each room who can focus on sending out invites and cycling people through so that the room leader can focus on the gaming. If you are interested in hosting or helping out with a room, please post a reply to this thread.

Current List of Potential Rooms and Leaders

1. J-Cat & NoGame: COD W@W
2. Waterborn: Gears of War 2 (possibly with members of Oxytocin)
3. Caesar & Kontrolld & Honorbound72: Halo (tentative, could use at least one backup
4. Jcotter: Forza
5. BigOne & hilskie: Rainbow 6
6. ATC1982: "Early Bird" Texas Hold 'Em- XBLA (from 7 - 8 pm CST)
7. Prof_Rockwell & Zippy731: Red Faction: Guerilla
8. Kewljoe: Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2
9. Clobbersaurus67 & IAmTheLiquor: COD 4
10. bunsen27, Tank & Snuphylupagus: Battlefield 1943

Just a reminder to all the folks out there headed to the LAN who still have not booked their hotel rooms. Group rates end July 27th after 12pm.

After the cut-off date, the hotel will release these rooms and the rate will increase so if you have not booked yet, now is the chance! Also, if we do not meet the minimum number of nights for the group and left over rooms are charged to the group account (IE me) so if you have booked already but did not give them the 2old2play name, please make sure you call them back and let them know.

Please understand that 2old2play needs to secure 120 nights with the hotel so all members MUST make sure they tell the hotel they are with 2old2play! The number for hotel reservation is 1-847-297-1234. If you have any other questions please feel free to post them here. See you all in a couple of weeks!

After a few months of trial and error, constant feed back from SCC members, and donations from the community, I'm happy to show off what should become the new face of 2old2play.

SCC (Senior Citizen Card) members have already been working with me and the designers to help guild the new look of 2old2play, but we think it is time to share the design with the rest of the community. For version 3, our goal was to keep the same feel as Version 2 has, with a bit more refinement and polish.

We started by stripping out a lot of the bloat that we have accumulated throughout the years of V2's launch and tried to refine the areas of navigation, log-in, donation, and news. We also wanted to brighten up the text and create a better contrast that is a bit more easy on the eyes. After all, the idea of a dark contrast for older gamers never really made much sense in the first place.

We then wanted to make blogs a bit easier to sift throughout all pages so we added arrows on both sides. This way you wont have to go to the blogging page every time you want to look beyond the top 7. In a similar move we tried to make clans much more accessible on the home page by creating one area for people to search, research, and learn more about the clans of 2old2play. The main focus is to get more people into more 2o2p clans faster, so we hope this is yet another step in that direction.

All the babbling aside, thank you so much to all the members that helped to fund this design with their donations from SCC, Events, Art Auctions, and site donations. We are now looking to complete the next phase of development and can't wait to share more information once it's available. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or reasons to bitch, please feel free to do so here. Without further adieu, I give you v3.0.

Click To Make Larger

Put your kids to bed early on June 19th and meet your fellow 2old2players online to play some of the games you already enjoy. We will be starting at 7 pm CST and going until about 10pm. Beat up on your fellow 2o2p members in one of these four games: COD 4, COD W@W, Halo 3 and GOW 2.

Without getting complicated, this is how it will work:

If you are into Halo 3 CoD, GOW, and more, add “a2o2proom1” to your Friends List. If your thing is the COD games, add “a2o2proom2” to your Friends List. At 7 pm CST, sign in and we will pull you into a party and set you up with other 2old2players.

This is a great opportunity for you to meet some of the people behind the scenes on the site and really understand what we’re all about.

The follow is a list of Press and Writers, Site Moderators and Popular Bloggers that you will be play playing with:

BigOne – GOW2

Caesar – H3

Pearly – Peggle

Durty – H3

Tdrag – COD5 W@W

NoGame22 – COD W@W

MikeJames – COD4

Waterborn - COD4

J-Cat – COD4

DSmooth – H3

Don’t be shy. Send your friend requests out and be ready for a great night of gaming and getting to know the 2old2play community!

Look out Locusts! 2o2p is running its first Gears of War 2 Tournament this Saturday night. Several of the Gears clans and a few rogue members were able to put together a total of 12 teams for this event.

The tourney kicks off at this Saturday at 10pm EST and should last for several hours. We will be playing basic Execution rules with no Party Chat and double elimination. Special thanks “FUNKNSTIEN” for taking the lead and organizing all of the brackets and rules. Stay tuned for results!

The second season of the MML Halo 3 League concluded a last week, capping an exciting season that exceeded pretty much everyone's expectations.

This season the league swelled to a staggering 14 teams with 14 General Managers. All told 70 people in the league and if you include the Free Agents were talking around 85ish! What a turn out.

Some overall stats from the league:

• Total Games Played: 442 games out of 445 this includes the playoffs.
• Total Kills: 27,234
• Total Assists: 14,474
• Total Deaths: 27,549
• Total Head Shots: 11,494

Halo 3 is different things to different people. Some may be interested in competitive play and take part in organized tournaments sponsored by the site, while others just like to play for fun. The MML has worked hard to bring these groups of different players together to compete, have fun and make new friends.

The idea was to bring the part of the Halo 3 community together by mixing it up. That is, teams feature players from both the casual and competitive camps, have mixed skill sets and play mixed game types. In doing so, people who normally don’t play together have a chance to meet, enjoy friendly competition and have fun.

As with the first round of the MML, we started off with a sign-up period. Then all those who signed up were randomly put into a double-round free-for-all (FFA). This gave players individual points, which GMs could then use to evaluate players for the purposes of first drafting and then trading. Points helped the league's teams stay balanced throughout the season as trading was not only encouraged, but mandatory, keeping in line with the intent of the league -- mix 'n match.

This season each team had four weeks to make three trades, and each week players gained points based on how well their team played. Trading became about a player’s points first, skill second. For example, if someone was traded, and they had fewer points but more skill, that team could take a hit in the standings.

This season, there were enough teams to break out into divisions. The American Halo Conference and The National Halo Conference each division had seven teams. We took 12 teams to the playoffs this season and it was a knock-down, drag-out fight all the way to the end of the regular season to see who would advance.

Ghost92’s stat tracking program tracked each player’s detailed statistics for every game in the league. The stats allowed league management to do a lot of things, such as award weekly league MVP’s. The stats also enabled players to track their progress, and made it easy to select for end-of-season awards. For next season, Tocleora has been building a web version of the stat tracking program to make life easier on everyone. From what I have seen it will be the end-all-be-all for stat tracking. All you have to do is put in your game id’s for the games played that week and it will populate all your stats, game by game. It will also do the points for the players and the teams, as well as the records for the teams and much, much more. Doodirock has already committed to creating a sub-domain for the MML on 2old2play, basically our very own League Page, which will no doubt be awesome.

The league was more successful in mixing players around this season as all 14 teams met the three-trade minimum. This allowed everyone involved to get to know and play with people they don’t normally interact with. That is what 2old2play is about -- gaming with each other, and having a good time doing it.

Thanks to everyone involved, players, GMss and Free Agents it’s because of you guys the league was a success again.
 
Here are the final standings and awards of the MML Season 2:

The National Halo Conference

The American Halo Conference

MML Awards


MML Weekly MVP’s
Week 1 MVP

Week 2 MVP

Week 3 MVP

Week 4 MVP

Week 5 MVP

Playoffs MVP


MML League Champs Spring 09


League Champs Signature


Final Excel Stats Page
 
Playoff Brackets

Finally, consider this is an invitation to join MML Season 3 in the fall. The rules are going to be revised to try and improve on what we learned this season. If you're new to 2old2play, this is a great way to meet new people from the site. It doesn’t matter what skill level you are. Come in, have fun, and get to meet and play with other people from the 2old2play community.

So what does the MML offer other leagues don't? Glad you asked.

1. Individual Players stats for each game played for the whole season
2. Individual player points
3. Trades
4. General Managers
5. Conferences
6. Weekly MVP's
7. Weekly Podcasts, were we talk about trades and games played
8. Free Agents
9. Playoffs
10. Season Ending Awards that cover everything from Kills to most time in the hill.
11. Weekly top 10 plays (well, we try)

If you would like to keep up with whats going on with the MML you can hit up anyone of the following.

• Twitter
• Our Youtube Channel
• Our Podcast which is on Itunes!
• 2old2play

Our Promotional Video [Done by 2old2play's very own Bioslayer]

I want to send a special thanks to some members who helped with the league this year, Ghost 92 for his stats always being on time! Bioslayer for his ridiculous video editing skills. Fire for organizing the FFA. MLG Royal for coming up with the maps and game types. And last but not least, CMA for helping me keep this beast running in the beginning when i had a passing in the family.Also, to LBSUTKE for doing the podcast with me every week, and to Codemonkey for helping me get the podcast rolling on the interwebz! Thanks for stepping up this season guys!

The MML and all graphics & features contained within are a Trademark of 2old2play.com!

Thirteen weeks and you can blow that shit-stand you call home whether it be Ohio, California or Maine. You can burn to the airport or start your roadtrip to the beer-drinking, controller-handling, cable-crimping goodness we call the LAN.

Over the next ten weeks, some of the LAN veterans will remind you of all the reasons you must make it to Chicago August 7th - 9th. Kicking off week 1, here are the "Top 10 Reasons to LAN in Chicago with 2o2p - Version 1":

1. You know you want to see Lbsutke in an S&M/Gladiator outfit. It's okay. There's no reason to be ashamed. The handiwork put into his outfit is masterful and it should be ogled and enjoyed. You know you want to see it, and you can! Also, we heard that he puts out. Bonus!
2. Wizard World. You can pose next to a chick that can truly wear the gold slave outfit!!! She smells purddy too ... And you'll get pics to prove it happened. 
3. Doodi feels bad when people don't come to his party. He does. He cries like Dawson. Don't make Doodi cry.
4. Prove to your wife that not all gamers are as big of nerds as she says they are. That is, if you're stuck bringing your wife you, chump!
5. Leftovers galore. How long has that deep dish been sitting on that chair? Who cares! It is mine. NOM!
6. The Librarian will bring you cookies. Home-baked with love.
7. To finally realize that people you thought were asshats, might not be so bad in person ... Well at least a few of them ... cough ... Lbsutke ... cough. But don't fret, after the LAN glow wears off in a few weeks -- asshatery always continues! 
8. NO FUCKING LAG/HOST ADVANTAGE!
9. WebCam shenanigans. Bwhahahhahahh!
10. Donate to a worthy cause - www.childsplaycharity.org. Once Doodi pays off the hotel bill (including bullshit hidden fees), LAN and raffle proceeds will go to help raise the spirts of children in more than 60 hospitals across the US.

So what are you waiting for?