'Appy Anniversary!

To celebrate the one year anniversary of MGS4 and Metal Gear Online, Konami has gifted us with a new update (1.33)on the 16th and a few cool new features. Since the NA region had previously not received the 1.32 update, this was their first update to introduce the nerfed Mk.23 and subsequent damage reductions of SMGs and handguns.

The most important is probably is the introduction of a new map; Icebound Inferno.
This is the map on which you fight Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid, and Crying Wolf in Metal Gear Solid 4, and is a large blizzard stricken desolate map, with plenty of open spaces, large towers and incredibly low visibility once the storm kicks in. Personally I liked II because of it's different "feel" from the other maps, with lower intensity warfare and lots of sniping aswell as the ability to sneak effectivley with white or snow camo. However the map lends itself quite well to camping, and without Monomania the storm makes it almost impossible to see who you're shooting.


Secondly was the introduction of the championship lobbies, which has helped to increase competition among top clans while helping lower tier players to get berets and rwd points.

AUTOMATCHING also saw a well needed update: The prize for every round was increased from 5 rwd to 20rwd. Also every 3rd or so match from AUTOMATCHING lobbies would be a "REWARD MATCH", where each player on the winning team would receive an extra 200rwd at the end of the macth. DeathMatch games resulted in an extra 200rwd for the winner of each round, or for all players in a draw. However this was exploited for "farming", where players "skipped" a map untill a REWARD MATCH came up, then left their characters to idle until the round ended, resulted in a winning of 440rwd every 10 minutes. Konami altered the system on June 23rd 2009 to have all matches be REWARD MATCHES, with a lower prize of rwds for both winning an participating.


Among other minor gameplay updates such as weopon damage balancing, Old Snake was introduced as a playable character outside of SNE, albeit without his "invisibility" effect of the OctoCamo, resulting in the high popularity of Snake vs Liquid games (since they are the most balanced special characters relative to each other)


Finally Konami announced a special "MGO Anniversary Tournament", a tournament which turned out to be a 20 ticket TDM Tournament played out on the four SCENE maps (HH, II, RR and OO). Many of EUs elite entered, however the lobbies were full within a few hours and not all of the best teams were able to play. The "EU Division" had only one lobby, and it was won by a 2TM consisting of The Whitemantis, TheEnd, flyboy95, Mandator, Zzzonked (C4RNIF3X), REDWINGS who beat Fight or Flight. The prize was a white gasmask for the ingame character akin to the one Psycho Mantis wears. (The WhiteMantis won a white Mantis Mask, how appropriate) which will be awarded at a later date. However the tournament was criticised for being unfair due to it being a "campfest", with most matches ending with fewer than 5 kills, and some on a draw (which are abitrarily decided). The list of NA winners was posted here




In other news:

• A new clan, Skyper Rifle, was formed by Exodizzle, and has quite a few power players such as MeteoraX, Red Leopard, Captain-Cod etc
• Revolution disbanded and a new clan, Atari, was formed by Toy Doll and seemed to have absorbed most of Revo's old members. This clan then dissapeared when Revo reformed led by RM11.
• Revo's previous leader, DiscoMad, joined 2TM along with new recruits -Kurosaky- and bUnnY over the course of the week
• The 2TM tribute trailer, made by "Alex94", was released, followed by "Chapter One- CAP". Yeah it's not very good, but the logo at the end is quite nice.