[alibrarydweller]

The distinction they're drawing isn't WLAN vs LAN but WAN vs LAN. Remember that in the peak days of the LAN party it was an alternative to gaming on dial-up or DSL - even if you had a good connection it was unlikely the whole game had one. A reasonable Wi-Fi connection today is miles beyond the WAN connections of Y2K.

[Thlom]

The big LAN parties also had a fat internet connection at a time when the best you could have at home was INSD. But even more important was that everyone at the LAN shared their piracy collections over DC++ or FTP. Good times.

[embedding-shape]

> that everyone at the LAN shared their piracy collections over DC++ or FTP

And that one person sharing their 100GB (virtually unheard of amount of storage at the time) archive of porn, proudly announcing themselves as a "winner" of something at the end of the party.