The World of Wookie

Reloaded, July 2006

Reloaded LAN events had its genesis in an idea between myself and Nick “The Wedgie” Williams, which aimed to combine several smaller lans into a joint community effort which would then see an ongoing flow back to the lans themselves as people saw that we were active in the gaming community. We were joined in this foray by Anthony “anthony256″ Garrefra, John “Frogboyj” Koopman, Eric “Arnie” Shoebinger, David “faust” Mundy and others from several lans in our area. Represented were POVLAN, BFO LAN, AUscompgaming, and SOLAN.

The first Reloaded was chiefly sponsored by Iseek Computing, Getright Computers and Steelseries gaming. However we did manage to pull in $5000 worth of prizes – the most for any lan event in SA up until that time. It was to be a sign of things to come.

Tickets sold out several days prior and the venue was packed…and people kept coming. We had 160 people through the doors and could not have fit more in if we tried. It was from this 160 person event that much larger things came out of.

Reloaded 2, Jan 2007

Welcoming the largest SA event, Valhalla, into the fold, we moved to the St Clair Recreation Centre just 6 months after the first one, with the aim of doubling the sponsorship, and the audience. Thanks to the tireless efforts of all the admins involved we managed to rake in more than $20,000 in prizes and giveaways, and had an attendance of 500 people. It was one of the largest lan events ever held in SA, and the largest in recent times. While there was no naming sponsor, major sponsors of this event were: Thermaltake, Getright Computers, Iseek Computers, Steelseries and many more

Reloaded 3, Jan 2008

To much fanfare, we announced the Adam Internet Reloaded Festival. Reloaded 3 had more lan events and console gaming events than ever before, and heavily involved local admins in the running of these. In total 9 local gaming events were represented in the admin team.

Initially aiming for the showgrounds and the magic 1000 attendees, we settled again for the familiar surroundings of St Clair Rec Centre, this time drawing a mammoth $90,000 in cash and prizes to lure people from all over the country, including the very top people in CSS, Starcraft and World in Conflict. The event was an outstanding success drawing over 700 people out over the 36 hour event. It was however, expected to be the last of these events.