History
“IT’S ABOUT FAMILY TOM”
TheFrequency has it’s roots in Sydney’s LAN Party scene of the late 00’s out of necessity, due to the conclusion of one of the most successful and longest running LAN Parties in Australia known as FragFest, which ran 12 and 24 hour events in multiple locations across Sydney, where 200 people would cram into community halls with their PC’s for unhealthy amounts of fun. These event’s were far more than just gaming. They were a pilgrimage, for for all walks of life from the Tech Enthusiast, the car mechanic, the nurse, the forklift driver, the musician and everyone and anyone in between. All were kindred spirits, bound together by category 5 network cable, caffeine, and the knowledge you could be whoever the hell you wanted to be, where your real name was less as important as your gaming handle, and as such, rarely if ever used.
Against the demise of LAN Parties generally at that time, in 2010 three individuals, in an attempt to try and keep this long lived and storied Community together, bought the hardware needed to keep running the LAN Parties, secure money for the venues, and try to get sponsors to provide prizes etc. Together they built websites, manually crimped hundreds of meters of cat 5 cable, and worked tirelessly to keep the Community together, and after deciding upon a name theFrequency.com.au officially went live on the 11/11/11.
TheFrequency would continue to run LAN Parties, however, with mass adoption of broadband across the country including in rural areas that previously relied on LAN parties for file sharing and low latency gaming, rapidly increasing venue costs, the increasing need and expectation to have a solid internet at the event, and corporate sponsorship becoming increasingly more difficult to find, the ability to continue to host events simply was sadly, no longer economically viable. LAN Parties will never entirely die, but the age of the humble LAN Party, as we knew it at least, in Australia was sadly over.
TheFrequency officially ceased running LAN Parties in 2016, and moved the party permanently online. From running local servers at LAN parties back in the day, to running large, highly customised DayZ EPOCH servers to running some of Australia’s only 120hz Battlefield 4 servers, to even at one point being sponsored by Streamline-Servers to run the largest and most popular clusters of CSGO servers in Oceania at one point, on the 11/11/21 theFrequency celebrated more than a decade of that Community still existing in one form or another, and in some cases for those who we met way back at those LAN parties, we STILL don’t know each others real names.
At LAN Parties, it was never just about gaming, it was more like being apart of an extended family. We may, out of necessity traded long road trips for webcams, community halls for Discord, but we are still here, It is true that only the strong survive, and through it all, from Ventrilo, to Mumble to Discord, whether you joined the community from playing on one of our Battlefield 4 or CSGO servers back in 2014, or were able to attend any LAN let alone let alone ours at the tail end of an era for LAN Gaming, the 20teen’s were a wonderful time for Gaming generally, and with it came lots of new faces who still in many cases are still active in the community today.
Despite having our humble beginnings running LAN Parties, or perhaps because of it, from the LAN scene grew a Community of Gamers that consisted of Admins and LAN attendees who found themselves getting teams together for scrims online for various fps games, and it wasn’t long after theFrequency’s inception that the “freqplatoon” was born, which is a section of the community who not just represent the community casually but also, have at times represented the community competitively. In 2013 the freqplatoon managed to place second in Oceania’s only HC Battlefield 3 Tournament. In 2014 and 2015, the freqplatoon would manage to have further success in equivalent competitions. Despite being a Community run LAN Party first and foremost, theFrequency also started to develop a significant presence Online and with it, managed to develop a community that had a competitive edge, but solely as a result of being a casual, team oriented Community to begin with, which is a culture that exists to this day within the community.
Remembering Our Mates
At the end of each year, TheFrequency awards one individual who is voted on by the community as someone who has added value to their experience over the year. After the votes have been counted, a member will win that years “Freq Of the Year” award and will receive “Ryans Medal of Honor” in recognition of that persons service to the community and in memory of our good friend and brother Ryan, “Ryze” who we suddenly and tragically lost days after nye 2021.
