Though one is obviously dwarfed by the comparison, both figures are impressive in their own right. And both speak to the health of their form of multiplayer gaming. For console games like Modern Warfare 2, multiplayer's meteoric growth is commonly understood. But for LAN parties, still playing games like Counter-Strike, their resilience and persistence are most frequently seen among college-age gamers on campus.

"If anything, I think it's growing" says Nathan Etzell, a senior at Oregon State University, whose 300-member OSU Gaming organization has a prewired, 30-person LAN room at the bottom of a dormitory where at least two large parties are held per term. In January, his club will meet the University of Oregon in the second "Civil War LAN," a gaming tournament named after the schools' football rivalry.

But there is a sense that the PC LAN party — like fraternity parties, all-nighters, streaking, whatever — are something whose time and place comes on a college campus. Out in the cold hard world, PC LAN and direct server support in new titles is dwindling in favor of console multiplayer and proprietary hosting services. Most notably, StarCraft II will not support LAN gaming as it shifts to Blizzard's Battle.net. And dedicated servers are out under Modern Warfare 2, which is now running multiplayer with a combination of Steam and the recently created IW.net for Modern Warfare 2. Both sequels' predecessors had a strong history in dedicated servers and LAN gaming, leaving some gamers feeling betrayed, and some LAN enthusiasts feeling marginalized.

LAN gaming is not gone from the off-campus civilian world. But annual convention hall events with big budgets, entry fees, prizes and sponsorships are different creatures from six people linking up to play Warcraft III. While the former will definitely still happen after you graduate, the latter is less likely. Those six-people sessions are most likely made among fellow gamers, who are likely to find each other in a class, or perusing a bulletin board in a student union.

"Their age group usually involves a lot of what PC gamers are," says Keegan Gormley, whose Big City Gaming in downtown Eugene, Ore. offers constant system-linked gaming and monthly tournaments. "They're mostly college-age students who, in their spare time, enjoy playing a game like Counter-Strike, or another game they've played for a long time."

The players in his $5-an-hour "stadium," — eight consoles connected to high definition, Major League Gaming-standard panel monitors - are largely middle- and high-schoolers, Gormley said. Younger kids are less likely to LAN, he said, because of the accessibility of consoles and the desirability of their most current games.

"There's much more deep-rooting in PC gaming," Gormley said. "Someone who gets into a game on the PC can end up playing it for years," he said. "On consoles, I've seen people drop Halo for Call of Duty, then drop Call of Duty for Flashpoint. For PC gamers, mostly, it's whatever they originally clicked on and killed with."

And that helps explain the persistence of LAN gaming. The standbys of a LAN party are usually real-time strategy games such as StarCraft, or WarCraft III, then shooters such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament. TF2 is the most recent of these, releasing in 2007, with others having roots going back to the late 1990s. There's a reason for this.

"It's what people are good at," said Patrick Chinn, one of the University of Oregon organizers for the Civil War LAN, which will be held Jan. 22-23. "One reason people want to play an older game like Counter-Strike is because they've played it a long time and they've gotten good at it. We've done tournaments for games that are brand new, and there'll be some attendance, but they're not as well played."

Plus, by this point, the support histories for the games have either controlled for or patched out of existence most means of cheating. "The tactics in a game like Counter Strike have become so refined that there's no real dick move you can pull," says Dylan Leeds, a senior majoring in digital art at Oregon. And for whatever in-game legislation doesn't cover, LAN gaming offers another control: Being physically in the presence of your opponent. It cuts down on ragequits and unsporting behavior.

"You're more likely to respect someone if you know you're going to see interact with them after the game," he said.

And that speaks to another quality of LAN gaming that, unlike its numbers, can't be replicated or really improved: the human contact of it all.

"If you're playing online by yourself, the hype's really not there," said Josh Bothun, an Oregon senior majoring in computer science and music technology. "It's like you have to intentionally create it for yourself, but you get a completely different experience when people are around you."

LAN parties have an anecdotal culture that just can't be replicated by solitary multiplayer gaming. Often stretching 24 hours or more, they're salted with tales of inside jokes and hyper-caffeination. At major tournaments in the civilian world, bragging about casemods and your rig are their own sideshow, similar to a custom-car show.

"It's more about community," says Gormley, the game store owner. "It's being able to shoulder-shove the person you just killed. It's less about yelling at someone over a mic, and more about actually giving that person the evil eye.

"It gets so elitist online, sometimes," he continued. "It seems like a lot of people don't want to play online console games because they don't get the game in its first week, don't level up their character in time, and then they feel like they can't compete."

It might be easy to assume that anything other than gaming over the Internet, as opposed to a LAN or WAN, is redundant, a relic, or headed for obscurity. But system-linked games bring something to the room that proprietary multiplayer services can't: One's friends.

To use an apt college metaphor: "It's like drinking online versus drinking with friends," Chinn said. "Drinking a couple of beers and IMing with friends is not nearly as much fun as actually drinking with your friends."

The brown-eyed, pigtailed 22-year-old, who describes herself as a "reality porn star", just signed on with porn powerhouse Digital Playground and her first movie is set for a Dec. 29 release.

But that's her public face. Her secret life is one of guilty, geeky pleasures: LAN parties, Star Trek, World of Warcraft and building and modding her own PCs.

"I started playing video games when I was 13 or 14, when Age of Empires came out, and I've been playing ever since," Alexis told Kotaku in a recent interview.

Alexis refers to her gaming habits as her "alter life", an interesting choice of words for someone in her business.

"I've been playing World of Warcraft since it came out and have played every expansion since," she said. "I play Tiger Woods and other games. I love it, it's my alter life."

Unlike some other adult actors and actresses who form industry guilds or use their real names in game, Alexis prefers to play anonymously.

"My alternate live is very nerdy," she said. "I love playing people online and them not knowing who I am. It is really relaxing for me, kind of an escape, you know?

"I kind of have tried to maintain my anonymity. It's the one place I can play and not have people talk to me about what I do. For me, it's not about talking to people, it's about bashing people."

Alexis says she has a lot of characters in World of Warcraft, her favorite game, including a level 72 Night Elf Druid, a level 44 Tauren Hunter and a level 64 Blood Elf Mage.

"I usually try to play female characters," she said. "I keep a couple of guy characters too. I have several different accounts, so they have different names."

Alexis' self-professed love of gaming goes far beyond your typical mainstream gamer. Her other hobby is building and modding computers.

"I have a couple of different computers," she said. "I have a PC I built out for gaming, a Mac Pro for editing and site building and I have a server back up I host my stuff off of. I also have a Toshiba laptop."

"I'm pretty spoiled."

Alexis sounds proudest of her main computer, one she built herself and installed in a homemade transparent, baby-blue plexiglass case.

"I have water-cooling in there, I picked up the new i7975 extreme edition CPU," she said. "I have it set up as a dual boot with XP 32-bit and Vista 64.

"I don't have Windows 7 yet, but I'm exciting about picking it up. I'm going to try out the 32 and 64 to see which makes more sense."

She says she didn't get into PC modding and building until she went to college.

"I got hooked up with a bunch of kids that got into LAN tournaments," she said. "I wanted to compete and be a bad ass with a cool machine.

"I really just enjoy it, it's so different than anything else I do. It keeps me fresh and going."

Alexis says she's never had the chance to combine her career with her love of gaming culture, something like World of Whorecraft, but she would jump at the opportunity.

"If Digital Playgrounds decides to do something like that, role-playing or fantasy, I'd would love to do it," she said. "I'm a big Star Trek fan too."

I asked Alexis if she gets annoyed that people are surprised that an attractive adult actress like herself would play video games.

"It's not annoying, it's a little surprising," she said. "I've met a lot of cool women that play video games through LAN tournies. What surprises people is that I'm hot and a porn star and a player, but that has nothing to do with it, gaming is so popular now."

"My gaming should be about what I do, not who I am."

In late June, Blizzard defended the removal of LAN support - and thus the end of the LAN party for this game - as a way to "ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy." The petition, in a quite pleading tone of voice, asks for LAN support to be saved, for reasons of lag, customer convenience, and the game's heritage.

I'm thinking the $$$ behind getting everyone on Battle.net or else is going to speak well more loudly to Blizzard than 100,000 voices, no matter how reasonable their requests or respctfully they're worded. It makes me wonder if there ever was a useful Internet petition.

More than 100,000 Sign StarCraft II LAN Petition [VG247 via VE3D]

The "LAN in StarCraft 2 Please" petition isn't really all that much of a petition when you get right now to it. It's more of an attempt to reason with Blizzard, with a little bit of unabashed ass-kissery thrown in for good measure.

The new Battle.net sounds absolutely awesome from the sneak peeks you have given us, and people will most likely be using it exclusively, even if they only play single player. However, there is no harm in allowing LAN play as well, and it does bring further depth and life to what will probably become the top RTS of the next decade.

What kind of petition says "Please"? The kind that gets 5, 861 signees as of this writing. Nearly six thousand people, all politely demanding requesting that LAN be put back into the game, if that's okay with everyone involved. I guess it says something about the StarCraft fan base. Where Diablo fans were ready to set themselves on fire over a brighter color palette, StarCraft strategically weave their arguments together with shameless praise and respect, perhaps trying to sneak their way behind enemy lines to cut off their supplies or something. There has to be some sort of strategy involved here...I'm just not seeing it.

LAN in StarCraft 2 Please. [Petition Online - Thanks Kay!]

Over the weekend, 300 kids at the Cyber Fusion 2009 event in Malaysia set a new mark (a new "official" one, at any rate), bringing not only more gamers, but managing to play for 40 consecutive hours.

The most-played games over the weekend were Team Fortress 2 and titles from the Quake and Unreal Tournament series, while organisers also spotted a few users grinding away on their WoW accounts during quieter moments.

It's hard work, playing Counter-Strike for 8 hours non-stop. Especially if you're only fueled only by Coke and sweets, and surrounded by blokes emitting bloke-gas. Imagine the smell after 8 hours, let alone a sleep-over, and these things sometimes go for entire weekends.

I think this picture says it all. One dude fast asleep (if he doesn't wake up with a sharpie moustache, his mobile in his mouth and crisp bags stuffed in his ears, he should count himself lucky), one guy with the world's worst posture, and one with his thumb firmly jammed in his nostril.

Ah LAN parties. How I miss you. Alice Taylor

Beware the photographer [via Flickr]

Scene of the crime: McWhertor's favorite trendy Shibuya dance club, WOMB. Electronic Arts held a BattleField 2142 tourney complete with a, and I quote, "half time... pole dancer." Who won? Who cares?! Camouflage stripper!

(Actually, Japan's Burning Love took top prize in Asia. Congrats.) Brian Ashcraft

LAN Stripper [Watch Impress, Thanks Daniel!]

Illegal drugs, caffeine overdoses, and ridiculous load times: these are but a few of the terrors that await you in the Modern LAN Party.

I'm only a little surprised. Mostly disappointed. One reason I hang with geeks is that many of them are fairly puritanical about this stuff, preferring to remain in Spocklike sobriety. Those days are over, it seems.

You know you're in trouble when your gaming is interrupted by a scream of "come on you fuckers, who's first?" Things generally go south from there if, when you turn around, you find a completely naked man with a giant erection standing in the middle of the room, beckoning for someone to come over and sit on his lap.

Jesus christ bananas.

Even so, I wish the reporter had taken more of a gonzo approach to the whole event, as opposed to hanging back and making wry observations. I want more shock and awe, and many more uses of the word "horrible", a gonzo favorite. Eliza Gauger

Gaming's New Drug Culture [Twitch Guru, thanks Aaron]

This clip showing the bouncers at a massive lan party dealing with a cheater has GOT to be staged, but it's still hilarious. The best part is when a pack of jackal-nerds descend on the crumpled computer and start picking it apart faster than you can say: "Slightly used 400w power supply." Brian Crecente

[Thanks Uchiha]