As I mentioned in my previous articles about the Penny Arcade Expo, one of the main features was the PC gaming room. Click the link to find out all about PAX if you don’t know what it is. The PC gaming room is where all of the PC game tournaments took place, and when a tournament wasn’t going on, attendees could relax and play their favorite games.

Penny Arcade chose LanWerX to set up and run their PC gaming room, and that turned out to be a good decision. LanWerX is a local chain of excellent gaming centers in Washington. LanWerX brought about 40 high-end PC’s loaded with a bunch gamers’ favorite games like WarCraft III, Halo, UT2K4, and many more. At scheduled times during PAX, LanWerX ran the PC game tournaments and made sure everything went smoothly. They even hosted a round of the Omegathon.

The rest of the time, the LAN room was open for free play. As you can imagine, it was a busy place, especially during the evenings. PAX attendees could come in and sign-up to play and they could enjoy their favorite games on some of the best computer equipment available. The high-speed LAN kept everything running smoothly and the fast computers allowed the attendees to enjoy their games of choice in high resolutions and graphical quality. Each computer had nice speakers and an optical mouse. It was a great place to unwind after a day at PAX. The LanWerX staff was really helpful and nice. I have to commend them on being helpful and in such a good mood during the whole event. There were tons of gamers in an out of that room all day, and well, you know how gamers can be when we get all excited and everything.

I’m glad LanWerX was there for the inaugural PAX. Next year, the Penny Arcade team promises an even bigger LAN room and expects even more attendees. LanWerX will be there again to handle the mob of gamers.

LanWerX currently has three locations in Washington, and a fourth one is opening soon. That should tell you something about their popularity with the gamers here in Washington. At each LanWerX locations, they have dozens and dozens of high-end PCs to play on. They upgrade their hardware often, so you will be sure to get the best gaming experience. Even their chairs are nice! They have a large library of games and they keep adding more. They have a high speed LAN and they use a T-1 line for online gaming. LanWerX Game Centers are not just for PC gaming though. You can also play a variety of games on all three consoles. The Bellevue location that I visited has a console theater room with large seating and a 100″ projections screen for GameCube, PS2, and Xbox games. It’s got a great sound system too. They also had several arcade machines, which are increasingly hard to find these days. There’s a private PC gaming room too, which is ideal for clan matches and practices or other special events. Speaking of special events, LanWerX holds several. There are often local and even national game tournaments in which prizes can be won. They even take part in the World Cyber Games international tournaments.

Each LanWerX location is a clean, fun place to play with your friends and other gamers from around the area. For the really serious players, it’s a great place to hold clan events. They keep up on technology and have the best games around. They have drinks and snacks available, and most importantly, they always have some Bawls on hand. I had a great time in the LAN room at PAX, and it looked like a lot of other attendees did too. I look forward to attending another PAX and getting my frag on in LanWerX’s PC gaming room.

By Andrew Thivyanathan – 08/31/04

Screenshots for LanWerX at PAX ’04