Celebrate TrackMania’s 10th LANniversary on 14th December

[riolu]

I hope Riolu isn't insulted by being labelled as "Non-professional".

ofc i'm not since it's the truth, compared to all the other players I never played Stadium competitively

[Edster]

I hope Riolu isn't insulted by being labelled as "Non-professional".

ofc i'm not since it's the truth, compared to all the other players I never played Stadium competitively

Yeah, but so what? You're a 'guest of honour'; why should you settle for being called anything less than professional? You don't need to suck up to these guys man; once you give them a higher title, they've already beaten you!

[TMarc]

For all those who couldn't follow the stream last saturday, and until it hopefully gets uploaded somehwere,
here as little supplement a short story of my trip to Paris last weekend.
Nadeo had invited about 80~100 people to join the celebration party in the rooms of Ubisoft, so I decided to take the opportuny to have a whole weekend in Paris.
Paris is a city you must see! The old houses and the modern architecture here and there, the mix of cultures, the pure life
Sorry for the mixed quality of the pictures, light conditions were partially terrible, it is difficult to take good shots, especially with a smartphone (rule of thumb: never use the zoom!) And here for the forum (for ImagePark) I had to resize them.

I took the train (TGV, the French high speed train, that links Munich to Paris) because it reaches the center and then it is faster than to take a plane and also not much more expensive.
During nearly the whole last hour of travel before reaching Paris, the speed was 315kph, and sometimes little more. So you see, not only cars can go that fast

ok, the world record for trains is 574,8kph, but it was reached with a modified version of the TGV

Paris was welcoming me with a fog which gave a awesome lighting mood, so my first target was a night visit of the Eiffel tower:

After a small and uncomfortable (the fog had turned into rain) shopping walk on the Champs-Elysees, that are nicely decorated with LEDs in the trees along side during Christmas time, I went back to the hotel with the Metro line 6 that runs on tires (!), it passes the bridge some of you know from the Inception movie, and it is one of the few lines that also runs as overground train between several stations.

The next morning was a wakeup with perfect weather, sunshine and no clouds. This was already promising a great day

The breakfast I did not take at the hotel, but at a typical bistrot-café around the corner (much better and much cheaper ).

After walk the whole morning in the disctrict where also Ubisoft is located, I went back for lunch to the Eiffel tower district to see it at day.
From far distance you can barely see the tower, but it is very impressive to see it from the streets, please remember that it is a full metal tower that is now more than 200 years old and already since then 300m tall.


Then it was time to get back to the hotel, get some rest, and prepare for the party
Ubisoft is located behind this white crystal like structured building and right of the strange blue cut cylinder building.

Luckily I was let in a bit earlier, preparations were still ongoing.

The PC line up with the friendly support of LDLC, 2 ore mor each running TMO, TMUF, Canyon, Stadium, Valley, but also RPG Stadium, and the beta of Meuh Valley Raid.


On the back side the streaming station, with the commentators lounge.




On the other end of the room, the catering service also finished the preparations while the light magician installed different colored LED spots around the room. Mood changed.


More and more people came in, among the Nadeo crew and a few Ubisoft members, quite a few members of the community also had been invited
I was very pleased to see all the people I was only writing to here in the forums and online for years already - and to give them a face (not any order and sorry for those I'm missing): jonthekiller, mangastef, TMPurification, fantaribo, meuh, HaagseSmurf, TheM, bas_ekkelenkamp, carl, trkr, yoyo, and others, also Drakonia.eu members

And of course the Nadeo and NadeoLive members:
Alinoa and Adrienne
Hylis - pfew he's tall Now I understand why the whole ManiaPlanet is litteraly always looking up to him
Cerovan, Fix, LuckyBoy, GabrielM, PapyChampy, Farfa, Magnetik and many more.
Also worth to mention: the very kind l'apach ("the Apache") with his crazy hair dress
All people are very nice and it is more a big family we're part of.

Then the party could begin, and so did the streaming events (we were not following all of them much honestly, because the meet&greet talking, the gaming and the spectating on site was much more interesting ).
Very yummy small food items and drinks were served all the evening long.



The time passed so fast, then it was midnight, and the time was there to celebrate the actual birthday of TrackMania, to announce the winners of the competitions (skins: fantaribo, videomaker: darkpuddle, track: Basbaas - congrats to all three ) and to cut & eat the birthday cake (which was a real huge condensed chocolate bomb ) :


Then there was the last local event: a team competition Nadeo vs. Community.


Hylis and Yoyo were fighting hard, until Hylis votekicked Yoyo (yes, he really did that! ). Look at his face, at first he could'nt believe what happened

Also the talkmaster tried his skills, trkr was already driving competitions in the past:


TMPurification also showed his talent as driver
The chat messages during the races were also very funny Like HaagseSmurf: "practise, practise, practise!!!"
I also hat the chance to a bit in the end, it was really fun, and despite they're not always gaming, the Nadeo guys are not that bad. But the community drivers made it

The evening was getting longer and longer, and the chill zone was getting popuplated, with partial deficites


Everyone was asked to sign on the two linen during the evening


And then it was already time to go

Luckily the next morning was also very sunny, I went for lunch at the Canal St. Martin, and later also went to the Seine river, Louvre quarter, for a walk until the train brought me home.


Now, back home, I'm a bit sad, because the time was to short to talk with all people (its alway like that), but I know that there are friends there, a family of enthousiasts.
It was a very nice weekend in Paris, thanks Nadeo for the invitation, thanks for the party, and thanks for 10 years of fun with TrackMania!

On such events you can see that Nadeo is not just a company of anonymous developers who are creating one game with the only purpose to sell it.
They are still living this dream, they are continuing this adventure, even if it has shifted a lot to ShootMania. TrackMania is not forgotten, and we will certainly be surprised by what will happen in the future.
RPG title, Raid and others are showing what the community can do already now, and this is only the start!
The next 10 years of TrackMania can come

[niku]

Looks great. Thanks for uploading.

Sadly I was away saturday evening, so i couldn't even watch the stream or participate ingame on the 10th birthday of my all-time favorite game.

Go Go Go for another 10 years!

Much love Nadeo

[HaagseSmurf]

Nice report of a great weekend TMarc and very nice pictures as well
Thank you very very much Nadeo for this really really great evening, an evening to remember!!!!!

Greetz,

[Alinoa]

It was a very friendly LANniversary in Paris and I was very happy to see faces of some members of the TM community. I will remind this event forever

I would like to thank Drakonia and Mania Actu members (Jonthekiller, Sky, Aura, Thyrus, Koko, Quovandius, etc, sorry because I don't remind other nicknames) very much for the LANniversary. They manage streams, tournaments and fixed issues happened very efficiently, GG guys you really rock
A big GG to Pepita (Adrienne) from Nadeo live who managed this event

I hope that players invited on LANniversary by other players had a as great time as we had. Some players also ran special events and I hope they enjoyed it as well.

Thanks all for being here and for having celebrated the 10th Anniversary of TM, it's so exciting for us to work with so many great and kind players

[Demented]

Very Cool.
Thanks for sharing those photos TMarc. I looked at them all.
I caught the last half of the US party stream with the Fragdolls. It looked like a fun time too!

[magnetik]

Lot of fun. Glad that I was almost elected as the best map

[SiH13]

Nadeo doesnt know how to play trackmania

[bas_ekkelenkamp]

It was an amazing night, one of the best days ever!
I took some pictures, so I might aswell share them.
It was quite a trip by car from the Netherlands to Paris, around a 4 to 5 hours drive, we got really lucky and barely caught any traffic on our way!
HaagseSmurf picked me up in Rotterdam, then we drove to Breda to pick up TheM.
We arrived at our hotel in Paris at around half past 3, where we waited aprox. half an hour for Chuckie and Adsun.
After that we grabbed some pizza together and met with Papychampy, SiH and the destroyer back at our hotel and walked to the ubisoft building. We were a bit early so we got to shake hands and talk a bit with Alinoa and Hylis outside.(they're even nicer in real life!)
Anyways, the whole night was amazing. Thanks nadeo for the oppertunity!

Here's the album with all the pictures I took

And wow can't believe I took first in the building contest! I couldn't really come out of my words when I got asked on "stage" to do a little word in front of everyone and everyone watching live with the stream, but it was a lot of fun!
Haagse even recorded it here, and that's papychampy shouting "BASEBASE" in the background..

When the night was nearly over we talked a bit with Hylis and he handed us some of the TM original discs, it was great.

Oh yeah the livestream is saved on the drakonia twitch channel, so for those who missed it can still watch!
here (mostly in french though!)