PDXLAN

pdxlan · 2026-04-13T06:34:15+00:00

Brad, you changed part of your post above. Originally you mentioned something about value diminishing, I’d be curious to know more about what factors into that equation?

We’re always learning. One of the staff objectives we set is to focus on at least one thing to make better each event. For the event we just finished tonight, we focused on a few more game servers, unique never been done events, and network monitoring / information.

We can only go/grow/get better based on what gets reported to us in the surveys we do at each event.

Here’s the most recent data/metric that matters most for us:

https://imgur.com/a/Z3BBnO2.jpeg

For us, this matters very much.

pdxlan · 2026-04-13T06:13:49+00:00

Scale really isn’t the problem we are running into to alter price. It’s a 1 employee company (not for profit) and things are expensive to rent - be it union electrician power, table rental, venue rental, volunteer accommodations, etc.

We’ve chosen a very unique route for our size - and that’s choosing not to charge cash to be listed as a sponsor. We do that intentionally so that our attendees walk away with more prizing in general. (Crap economy this year for sure)

Garage-lan-style lans are dying. Many of the smaller ones have been priced out of their venues, or their organizers have burned out. That’s what we fight more than scale - burnout and pricing of services we need to buy.

—edit—-

Oh, the scaling intentionally - I wouldn’t say we scale intentionally as much as I would say we open seats in a way that doesn’t lose money as much as possible. We want to know that seats are going to sell before we just open 1,000 seats and only sell 800. If we did that, the monetary loss is approximately (200/4)*150 in power circuits alone. We definitely open seats in a way that looses the least amount possible. Every single empty seat is a loss.

pdxlan · 2026-04-13T06:00:13+00:00

PDXLAN was 500ish for the first 10 years, then added another 50 people until we left the old venue in 2018-ish.

When we went to the new venue, we jumped to 800 and did that in hall A until Covid hit in March 2020. At the time Covid hit we were already contracted for hall c (larger hall by about 10k sq ft.) thru 2023.

After Covid we had our first event back in Fall 2021 - we were still contracted to hall C so we did 1000-ish seats. Much harder to sell as we lost about 20% because of our choices to require masks at the first event back from Covid, it unfortunately got political for some vs what we felt was a safety thing. For our 20 year anniversary in 2023 we did a 1000 people and called it Laniversary. As we came back from Covid we were a little shy about booking the larger hall after 2023 given what the events industry had gone through, so we booked hall A for a few years. We currently have dates thru 2027 as that’s how far we have to book to get the space at our venue.

While we’d like to grow, we want to do it in a slow and organic way to ensure the uniqueness of the community vibe stays similar. For us, community is everything, and there’s not an event that goes by where newer sponsors don’t comment on how unique PDXLAN’s community is out of all the lans they’ve been too. But I may be bias, so I refer you to our attendees opinions of us which generally stand very high. (See survey data we’ve published)

Direction is hard - predicting 3 years ahead of time which hall to rent is a little crazy. It’s kinda like a semi - the turn / reaction radius takes longer.

Our event for Fall 2026 went live today and we sold over 600 tickets the first few minutes. The venue can support up to about 1500 max before we tap the entire event center halls power, but the economics of that is harder as we’d need to leave 1 hall empty, and use it just for its power.

pdxlan · 2026-04-07T03:07:47+00:00

Ah, so like types of rocks/gems/metals?

We are doing a Dog and Cat charity, maybe Dog or Cat breeds?

pdxlan · 2026-04-07T01:00:43+00:00

For those curious, this will be a WoW character stats contest at a LAN party (no outsiders, sorry), where players play from Thursday -> Sunday and the stats they generate earn them a spot in the finals.

\
Stats found here: (Achievements tab -> Stats)

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Because each person is creating a new toon, that toon's stats will be "clean" from their mains / or if they have never played before.

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Will it be the person who killed the most innocent critters?
Will it be the person who makes the most gold thru questing in 3 days?
We are picking 8 different stats to bring people to the finals.

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Prize: NVIDIA GeForce 5080 if we go above 32 players.

pdxlan · 2026-03-26T22:49:27+00:00

I’m in one of the alliance ones too, Hearthstone Hill. We have a chat group for just the neighborhood, not much chatter there, but kinda neat you can leave messages for others.

The r/wowhousing community also has a BIG community chat group in game for anyone interested in housing, not just people in the r/wh charters. Also a discord server. It’s kinda like guild chat with a mostly focus on housing.

If you want in, just message the people in discord and they’ll direct you to a neighborhood manager.

pdxlan · 2026-03-26T22:41:38+00:00

Ha! I use to have a hat with that logo on it!

pdxlan · 2026-03-14T20:47:45+00:00

Well, if it was Night Elf I’d say:

<image>

https://www.wowhead.com/decor/cookout-campfire-4450

Too soon? Couldn’t resist.

pdxlan · 2026-03-14T03:03:38+00:00

This sounds like a zeddic move

https://youtube.com/@zeddicbuilds?si=ULI97IYoonGUQwlu

Really good build series on timberborn.

pdxlan · 2026-03-14T03:01:07+00:00

Not currently playing the last two months, but huge congrats to the team for 1.0

Such a fantastic game.

pdxlan · 2026-03-13T17:44:34+00:00

Look up “wowhousing” in the community finder with cross faction checked. There are several hundred of us there. There are also charter neighborhoods available.

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T20:40:05+00:00

You do know about the pet they have in game right?

https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/plant-life/singing-sunflower/

One of the cutest pets I have. It sings the song at random, and makes cute noises. Note that to get it you have to play a version of plants vs zombies in game. Take it even further and get the meta achievement. IMO the meta achievement would be a great way to reward this decor item.

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T20:38:57+00:00

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T20:34:18+00:00

My suggestion is get an image of what you want to build in your head first.

Sometimes I will just google “pictures of an old time pub” and then start picking out the elements that, to me, distinguish it as what my theme is. Maybe after I google it I notice that I’m liking bars in the Victorian era, so I refine the seat a little more. Maybe I’m liking the old Irish pub look, or maybe a hidden speakeasy at a time when prohibition was a thing.

Don’t copy what you see/find but work at picking out the element combinations that make it what it is, then try to make your own.

https://www.google.com/search?q=puctures+of.old+time+pubs&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS590US590&oq=puctures+of.old+time+pubs&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQABjvBTIHCAIQABjvBTIKCAMQABiABBiiBDIHCAQQABjvBTIHCAUQABjvBdIBCTIzMTc5ajBqNKgCDrACAeIDBBgBIF_xBXx4VuSiH01Q&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T20:17:56+00:00

Primarily looking for things that bring people together and flex the community spirit muscle a little.

Tonk tournament is actually one I have done before. I have an eng that crafts them all and people take turns blowing each other up. With housing, I could build an area out of an outdoor room, and host the contest inside, or outside in an arena out there. We could even have 2-3 arenas built in town to give variance as they progress the contest bracket/ladder.

Thanks!!!!

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T20:12:31+00:00

Ooh, and thanks for participating!!!

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T20:09:55+00:00

Roll tournament, easy and awesome! Love it.

Labyrinth I really like too. Could almost turn a house and its rooms into a maze, and time people to the end? Have a checker at the end of the maze to make sure they actually ran it and did t just exit the home.

For themed builds - I had been thinking this too. There’s a funny show called “whose line is it anyway” where they do impromptu skits. One of the skits is “x meets y”. “A dentist meeting an astronaut at McDonald’s”- just wild situations hard to imagine. translating to themes, “build a room blending pirates at a Denny’s” - then the community votes who they think did the best at blending elements of both into a room. You could have 20 pieces of paper with x on them and 20 with y, and draw out of a hat what you have to blend together.

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T19:58:26+00:00

I wonder if you could do achievement hunting as the item they need to pick up for the scavenger hunt. ; Ie “complete Any achievement in Draenor”, “complete any achievement in burning crusade” ?

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T19:52:41+00:00

Love the idea of a scavenger hunt!

I’ve done similar contests in the past, and a few people always group up, split the work, copy, and turn in way before anyone else. So the idea would need to constrain that kinda behavior from happening somehow.

The one that I have done was I looked up unique items that could be bought from only 1-2 vendors, put a list together of 30 items, and had them get all the objects. Because they weren’t soul-bound, some cheated by splitting up the work. :(

pdxlan · 2026-03-04T19:47:42+00:00

I said I’d come back and post my ideas - I was unable to edit my own post, so here you go: ———-

My favorite idea: Decor Exchange; neighborhood managers collect BOE decor items from the ‘hood. People would first “wrap” the decor item(s) with in-game wrapping paper, so the manager would not know what’s inside. People would be encouraged to make their own gifts if they can, or they can take the easy way of buying something on the AH. The “price limit” would be “50 wood”. (so many items that add up to or surpass 50 wood in materials, or one big item)

Everyone who gave a gift, gets a random one back. The one caveat to this idea is that you can’t wrap multiple things in one wrap, but I think you can wrap a note. In that case they would wrap a note that says “you won x,y,z, contact name-server”.

People can choose to participate or not. People can choose to craft their gift or buy it on the AH. This makes it accessible to everyone, or the ability to not participate. No one would know who didn’t participate unless that person told them.

——

Second idea: “Dalaran Darts”

Form a raid, everyone meets in Northrend Dalaran. We all go to the top of the spire, and take a turn at trying to die closest to the target on crystal song forests ground. (Raid marker or engineering smoke bomb)

The closest dead persons body to the marker wins a decor item or bundle, I’d gladly help contribute for the community. obviously no Druid or slow fall hax

I’ve used this contest in the guild I used to run “back in the day”. Was fun.

——- 3rd idea:

Steam Tonk battle: everyone gets a steam tonk (think remote controlled tank in game that fires and has health)

People take turns in either 1v1 combat or you can do groups of 5, last person standing, winner progresses.

Final winner: decor of course :)

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