Winter Worries

Unhealthy MGO

Before Deathlooping started several months ago, the highest Grade Points reached in EU was 2600+ by both The WhiteMantis and flyboy95. Nowadays the Top Ten looks more like this (click it!)

Nearly all of the top ten are glitchers or inactive accounts! The steady rise in GP over the last year has stalled, and the blame for this can be attributed squarely at deathlooping, and now glitching. Also the banning of high GP accounts due to deathlooping also has a part to play in this, with those players coming back on alts and “eating” GP. Lots of people would say "GP doesn’t matter!”. For an individual player, this is true to an extent; the exact number doesn’t really reflect skill. However the rise and fall in top GP is a good indicator of the “health” of the community of players- a steadily rising GP average at the top shows increased competition, and helps to differentiate between the clans. In NA, the clan Mind Games/BKY/CheckMate dominates the clan scene, and this is shown by the cluster of MG players at the top of the rankings. Similiarly the upper legit GP and level boundaries were always first pushed by the JP servers, where deathlooping, glitching and extensive alting are relatively rare.

Diseased MGO

In EU MGO, true glitchers have been few and far between. We all know a few, reformed glitchers such as Chica ^^ and Dark Weller, as well as a few unrepentant glitchers such as xXTELEPORTXx. However as a whole, EU MGO was pretty free of (lagswitch using) glitchers and because of this the Grade Points of the top players until recently been relatively high compared to the Glitcher-rife NA server. However in October 09 an infamous NA glitcher, Sgt. BlackBird, made his way over to the EU servers after reportedly being uberbanned in NA. These glitches include

Infinity looping- a continuous deathloop which only ends when the glitcher is killed

Freeze glitching- where a player is frozen in place on the glitchers screen, allowing them to be shot from behind cover, around corners etc.

Mao lag/ Long Lag- A rare but particularly nasty one in which the glitcher is given at least 10 seconds to run around invisible to others and do what they want

DismaliciouSx on the NA server has a lot of videos showing these glitches (This is a particularly good one). It is feared that the glitching might spread with organised glitching teams- and since an ordinary player can’t retaliate it could be far more destructive than the deathloop fad. 

Update: As of January, EU MGO has effectively turned into what NA was like. Glitching in various forms is rife, varying from dedicated glitching teams such as kogarasumaru, Double99 and Rude Awakening, to previously respected clans such as Peace of Mind  who have lagswitching members for “counterlagswitching” purposes.

Dead MGO?

On November 10th the most hyped game of the year, Modern Warfare 2, came out. Many MGO players had previously played it’s predecessor, the blockbuster Call of Duty 4, and it was thought that the vast majority of MGO players would forget about MGO to play with their new toy. However, while there was a visible impact on numbers, especially at the upper levels of MGO, MW2 ultimately had a far smaller effect on the MGO community than expected. While there of course lots of people who “quit” MGO for MW2, many still stayed active at TGForums.co.uk and MGO was left very much alive.

Game News

Seemingly out of new items to sell, the MGO Reward shop is now holding a sale, with two items being put offered at half price for one week only. Last week it was the 50, 000 rwd Kabuki Face Paint and all colours of Bush Hat, this week it is all colours of Shemagh Scarf and the CQC gloves.

While it’s true that nearly all the items shown in promotional pictures and videos are now available, it’s disappointing to see that this may be it for the utter weekly excitement of a new item. Hopefully new items will be introduced after some hard thinking by the Konami staff, but until then, happy January sales!