I was never really sure about the GTA multiplier in all that time leading up to the release. It looked like it would be fun, but also like it would get old fast. Boy was I wrong.

Starting out at 11pm CET, we started playing Bunnyrabbit2's game with some freemode fun, team deathmatch and Cops & Crooks. Deathmatch was fun, even if we didn't rape the opposition as much as the Euro crew apparently did last week :)

At some point I saw Snaileb come online, and since I've been dying to play him at anything, ever since I saw the magical letters that formed his name on destructoid, I invited him. Things went a bit crazy after that, people had trouble connecting to him and he had trouble connecting to us. These connection issues were a real drag, it sucks that they still haven't fixed them although it seemed to work alright once I became host for some reason. Maybe that university line has some use other than downloading crappy movies after all ;)

Whatever happened back then, became a bit blurry. Eventually we ended up with the same Euro crew + Reaprar, who recorded the whole thing somehow. Please post the stuff dude!

After what felt like 3 hours of freemode at the airport and trying to land the jump off the runway on the barge-thing, some IRC regulars from the US came online and joined the fun. I read something on power-glove's FNF cblog that he needed another host, so I tried to invite some ppl but it seemed like it was going ok. No idea what really happened, but we all ended in the same game at the end, I think.

More Cops & Crooks and Team Deathmatch ensued until we magically ended up in freemode Airport again. Spawning with about 14 guys in a mexican standoff immediately set the tone for what turned into an amazing madhouse. There is just nothing better than getting in the game in a clustered group and shooting at whatever you can before someone shoots you! Because I accidentally pressed the A button one too many times at the game creation, it became an unlimited round with cops enabled and medium traffic.

That only added to the chaos: 16 players and 4 choppers are what multiplayer is made for! Come to think of it, I don't really know what made it all so great. Helicopter games of chicken, mass chopper suicides over Times Square, bitching at the one guy who finds the rocket launcher and destroys everyone, singing Vengaboys songs... it was probably a mix of that.

All in all it was an epic night well worth staying up till 6:30am for. Too bad there are timezones and I have a deadline for monday. I'll surely be there for more GTA FNF next week! If anyone wants to start before official FNF starts, feel free to join the Euro FNF at any time: the more people there are, the better GTA becomes.

Things i learned last night:
- Never get into a chopper with Tazar if you are in NYC, unless you have a death wish
- Cronosblade can be a sneaky bastard
- Hitogoroshi is Omar
- There should be a setting where you start out with a specific weapons
- Bunnyrabbit2 can be an awful driver, although operation Flaming Car Over Ramp was a success!
- Choppers are great fun, even if you never kill anyone except yourself with them
- Choppers need rockets :P
- The guy with the fastest internet should probably host until they fix the connection problems, it didn't seem to matter if it was EU or US
- GTA needs 32 player free mode
- Busses should fit more than 4 people
- I should have done this FNF thing waaay sooner!

Thanks for the fun, and see you next week :)