DuckyofDeath123

I've taken a look around Brussels hotels first, since it's closer. I will list the affordable yet not crappy hotels I could find. I have included a few hotels I don't think are the best fit but could be a good backup for late bookers (or the seriously budgetarily handicapped). I'm assuming shacking up two to a room (each their own bed, though!) for pricing and breakfast included because it's cheap almost everywhere and Belgians tend to have a rather French/Italian attitude to people fucking up food (i.e. violence), so even the hotel breakfast buffet should be fine. For your convenience, I have whipped my magic wand out, and pulled this handy map of Brussles city centre out of my arse which shows the five hotels I've listed - so you can see where they all are, and where the public transport options are. 1. The insanely named http://www.husapresidentpark.com/rooms-en.html Husa president park hotel is the furthest outside the city center in this list (so far, I'm typing this while digging up hotels) but it looks pretty decent, got a big lounge/bar area we can all wait for anyone who happens to have a heart attack, it's 5 minutes walk from the North station from where a train ride into the city center is also 5 minutes, or we can walk the whole stretch in about 20 minutes. The kicker is, it's got the total budget price, but includes things like, rooms you might like and breakfast included. 2 adults in a twin room, 70€ p night (35€ per idiot per night) 2. Be Manos, this is more in the city centre. It looks a bit modern, and apparently has a decent lounge/bar where we can all wait forthe guy having the heart attack. 120 pnight for 2ppl room, breakfast included. (60€ p night per idiot) https://www.hotelspecials.be/hotels/be_manos.html?arrival_date=2018-06-15&nights=2&units=1&adults=2&children=0 3. There's a hotel for the blind in the city center which is reasonably priced and has rooms for three people, two or one. Why is it a hotel for the blind you ask? Well, http://www.hotel-mozart.be/ you go on to that website, and tell me honestly if you think whomever devised that colour scheme has functioning eyeballs. It does have a lounge/lobby arrangement and at least one bar I can see, but if we have to wait for someone to finish having their heart attack in there we're all going to be blind I fear. 2ppl room: 80 pnight w/ breakfast (40 per idiot) 3ppl room: 115 pnight w/ breakfast (just under 40 per idiot) 4. Bit less affordable, but you needn't wear sunglasses indoors:: https://www.hotelspecials.be/hotels/leopold_hotel_brussels_eu/fotos.html?arrival_date=2018-06-15&nights=2&units=1&adults=2#tabs was obviously made by someone who does have working eyeballs, but is also an accountant, judging by the amount of beige. (official website https://www.hotel-leopold.be is a symphony in the colour of OAP cybernetics) The Economy rooms they offer are a bit misnamed because they're single person rooms which become around 80€ per night. The Twin rooms are looking around 100€ p night, so that's 50€ per idiot per night. According to the booking sites this includes breakfast. NOTE: Double rooms are cheaper then Twin rooms, but they require you really really like the person you're sharing with, because there will be touching under the blankets. Also: no heart attacks in this one, it looks too boring for that sort of thing. 5. Cheap, no breakfast, no service, and I think I'm right in saying, no bar. https://www.hotelspecials.be/hotels/easyhotel_brussels_city_center.html?arrival_date=2018-06-15&nights=2&units=1&adults=2 That would be the easyHotel(s) in Brussels. If you want to attend and have no money, and can be arsed to go out to acquire breakfast yourself, the rooms look clean and functional, and at €60 p night for 2 adults in their own beds, (30€ pnight per idiot) it's the budget-conscious idiot's... well not dream, really, but it's within reach of your budget, whoever you are. This last one is deffo not where I see most of us staying if there are other options, but it's the only genuinely cheap hotel in Brussels I've found where the reviews don't include words like "cleanliness issue" or "odd smell", or there's mention of being "only 30 minutes from Brussels" which, in the tiny country of Belgium, means the hotel might be in France or Holland. That was boring, someone else do Edinburgh please.

ARMA3 is already dying out too so upgrading to that will not help. Sick to A2 and keep a solid group of die hard fans. If they've stuck with A2 this long, they may stay for a while at least.

Damnit that was supposed to be a secret

No worries, I'm not so easily scared (esp not if Jaysus will be there, I can hide behind him all day!) I'm not sure if July is set already - before this poll got opened we were discussing time and location polls and I've only seen a "where" poll, not a when. Maybe that comes after we determine where it is.

No, that's the damned point, lass. "where do you want to go" could have more than one answer from that list. I didn't say that, I said people who have no intention of going voting for a place corrupt the result, putting the meet in a place so they can/will/want to attend, and then not coming; at the same time other people who mightn't want to go to that place now aren't coming but would have if it'd been somewhere else. I don't know why the two of you are taking everything I have written as a personal insult. But I guess it doesn't matter if you're not coming anyway. I was at all but one of them. I know how it works mate. Talk about talking arse. But so that means you'r ejust voting because you're angry, not because you're coming? Noted.

Let's keep this topic alive shall we (Unlike my teammate)

So in that scenario, you would vote Edinburgh only; and you would show up as "yeah, I'll be happy to come, but in Edinburgh, not somewhere else". It would also have me able to pick three or four cities (Edinburgh def. among them) that would be fun. But it's not technically easy to do so no point in arguing after it. As for the second bit: Because history has shown that the number of voters is a LOT higher than the number of people who actually go. Having people who are unlikely to actually go vote just makes it harder for the organizers to find which city is most popular.

Actually, the point of asking about which cities will work is to find the ones that would get the highest attendance. Because as in previous years, it's more fun if we have more people. Though you might get your wish. More people have voted for UK than have attended any one of these shindigs - it'll be a big one if everyone who voted is serious about showing up!

You can only vote for one? Would be smart to let us vote for every city we'd be willing to go to. That way you quickly get a shortlist most people will be OK with and you can just pick either the most popular or the most convenient from that shortlist. It would also prevent non-attending members from picking a UK location and then not showing up. I'm not suggesting people might be doing that, but they are.

I'm not sure Jersey (nor the Isle of Man) qualify in terms of survivability for non-Brits who are used to having less rain than that in their summers. I've seen stuff filmed on the Isle of Man. It's a wonder the houses don't get infested by fish. Is Jersey the same sort of deal? And will it be affordable for the continentals? Copenhagen is lovely but it isn't that cheap, alcohol really is just NOT cheap and the link to Sweden... Well, Malmö and Halmstad right below it are very nice and have some very excellent facilities for the upmarket dining enthousiast, but to be honest they are VERY expensive places to go for a boozer, and you have to realize you're so far up north that summer is defined as three weeks in July which means we're either going to be cold or it's going to be stuffed to the brim with Swedes on vacation. I wouldn't mind going to Halmstad with the more well-off people, but last year in Berlin some of us were needing to keep an eye on their bank roll and Sweden, gorgeous as it is, is going to be easily twice if not four times the price for an evening out. I don't think we can do that with this group, it needs to remain affordable for all. It's not too good an idea to come home and say "well honey I had fun, but the money is gone so we're not going on any more vacations this year". Budapest appears to suffer somewhat from the same problem on flights, not sure about staying there. It seems reasonable (not that I dug very deeply). Prague seems fine, Czechs aren't known for being the nicest people on the planet though. Brussels isn't going to be as cheap as Berlin but it shouldn't break the bank. I still like Croatia as that too will be affordable, and it has been thumbed up by a few others in here too. That also offers the joys of being on the Med's coast. I can see some avenues for trips and boat rides to Italy for those of an adventurous nature. Truro I think we can all agree is going to be where we test the XI nuclear tactical missile. Twice.

Dubrovnik and Split are both under €200 in July as well (round trip) by air so that seems affordable, on the Mediterranean sea. I think that sounds like a pretty damned sweet location, and for me it's just as much work to fly there as it is to drive to Belgistan.

Oh by the way one eye guy, it's the XI EUROPE meet-up. So we have it in Europe. You're welcome to come, but it ain't gonna be in Atlanta (which, apart from everything else, is a mosquito infested toaster oven of a hellscape six months out of the year and thus not ideal for meet-ups even on it's own continent, I must hasten to add.)

They're not all cheap, I thought Edd was mental so I looked up Stuttgart - Bratislava, and I have to say, holy fucking sheepshaggers. Four digit airfare is not on my budget, I just bought a car. Now, it is possible that july is the wrong time to book flights for. So let's grab some dates, make a list of the big cities, and draw up who can go when and what cities are OK with them, taking only serious suggestions (i.e. reachable by air and can get around with short rides on public transport, not the Ardennes where everything is a million hours away from civilization and once you get in the middle of nowhere you have to bring your own car, or Truro, which as far as I can work out would be cheaper to move it to us, rather than the other way round). We picked July before because it's just before the big school vacations (lower prices for travel and hotel) and the weahter tends to be many nice. Shall we begin by picking which weekends in June/July/August would be doable for everyone?

My main concern this year is going to be budget and date. Which city is less worrying provided we get a lot of others coming. I liked Prague two decades ago, maybe it's still fun today. Brussels is OK too, good food certainly. We do want something to do other than pubs - Not everyone is content to roll into a pub at 11 AM; some walkies, bus tours or balloon rides are deffo welcome. Prague and Brussels should be fine in that regard, as would I'm sure Budapest and Riga. Truro... not so much. Nor for that matter a few of the other tiny little shitholes towns mentioned. Let's do try and keep it to a place with like, an airport, a train station and a lot of choice in things to do.

Windows 10 on recent Intel hardware shouldn't be noticeably slower unless you go hunting for it with some benchmarking software, but if you've got an AMD CPU, it appears that you may be about to get bent over and have the proverbial cactus go in dry.

I don’t like pre-buying games with early access; by the it’s done you’re bored with it and playing something else. But it looks promising.

How finished is it? Still in bera with crashes bugs and missing features or?

It looks very promising, with graphics that are functional rather than exciting (thus not overloading your 3yr old PC when a second player shows up) in a proven engine and realism bonded with action, putting the theoretical end result somewhere between ARMA and COD. Sort of whre Battlefield would have been if it had large maps and realism. All of that, coupled with the absolute shitfest that is all of EA's game releases for the year and likely forever, puts it in a place where it competes with Escape from Tarkov as a possible Next Big Thing for me and my friends to play. But No word, at any point so far, about dedicated servers or private hosting. If we end up in the BF1 scenario where you pay fairly big bucks to rent a server that only does what the gamedev wants it to, this may not end well. I hope they don't do that because it looks good, it looks fun and I really want it to work.

OK so we do see some interest. 1. Do we have a server at this point, or are we going to have to rent one? 2. Shall we pick a date and time and start spamming it to others who might enjoy a bit of play time? 3. Do we want to argue about game type and rules and maps yet or shall we wait until we have enough people saying they'll join first? 4. Who's going to be the poor bastard stuck with the duties of actually making this happen?

Amsterdam is a lot expensive. Berlin did well in that regard. We briefly discussed Scotland while we were in Berlin. It’s not yet going to require visas for us mainland Europeans, though it might be as expensive as Amsterdam. Latvia and Prague both sound cool, though I have been to Prague already and wasn’t that bowled over by it. Prague is driving distance from me which is a definite plus so so far I like all suggestions

I'm not sure switching servers midway is a great idea. There's going to be enouhg people faffing about being confused and in the wrong team without adding a midway server hop to the mix. I think we can agree to play on whatever server is available And of course, we're all sufficiently skilled that really, the extra lag isn't going to make a blind bit of difference. It's just one more excuse for why we missed, shot the wrong guy, let our mines go off too late, flew the helicopter upside down into an enclosed space, landed the tank on it's side, rolled the IFV down a slope into the river, ran over Jay with the anti-air or detonated that C4-laden kamikaze-quadbike with a teammate still on it, confused as to why his driver got off suddenly in the middle of an open field near an enemy tank.

I'm game. I barely play anything at the moment, I can make some time. Last week of November is Thanksgiving in the US, might enable us to do a US vs EU game, or otherwise we can just put up a few infantry-only rounds up where the winner is the one wit the most head-shot kills or somehting.

I remember one of these well organized entirely relaxing events... I would deffo be inclined to participate if we have another complete fucking chaos disguised as a EU vs US match or something similar

I wondered what got you this medal...

Shht, our opinions aren't wanted by the bitter, slightly idiotic, old men who think the article is true despite that