'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.

Recap: Tournament Riggings

Recently there has been a furore over the rigging of multiple tournaments over the last two weeks. Here's a recap for the uninitiated:

The S.WOLF Incident May 24th 09
At around 8.30pm people began to notice that all the tournament lobbies for the 20.00GMT Tournament were full. While most of the tournament lobbies (V.RAVEN, R.OCELOT, D.OCTOPUS, OLGA etc) seemed full by normal teams, something was amiss with S.WOLF. It seemed that, somehow, there were only 16 teams playing the tournament, as opposed to the normal 64 teams. Of these 16 teams, 15 of them were AUTOTEAMS (the teams created by the game for solo entry players) and only one proper team: "BANANA TEAM". BANANA TEAM were eventually knocked out by a team containing PBO's MERKENT, while another AUTOTEAM containing PBO's SnakeEater won the tournament.

Quickly people began to realise what had happened: the tournament had been rigged. A group of people had created 63 teams using their alternate characters (each player is allowed 8 different character slots), resulting in all the team spaces being filled before anybody else had a chance to enter. When the tournament started, lack of leaders for any of the puppet teams meant they were dissolved. The plan would've meant the single legitimate team, BANANA TEAM, would have cruised to win the tournament against several AUTOTEAMS (which are usually weak teams). However this plan was thwarted by the entry of several PBO players as solo players, resulting in them being put onto one of the AUTOTEAMS.

Due to the Beret-for-Pay fiasco, some people pointed to 2TM's C4RNIF3X as the person who rigged this tournament. However he was quickly cleared (using common sense) and all fingers pointed at BANANA TEAM (who's players are from the clan "BaNaNa TeAm" led by IL PEGGIORE). While IL PEGGIORE denied any involvement, it is now accepted that they were the perpertators. A lot of debate arose from the event, with some people worried about imitations for future tournaments. Also there were reports that on the same day Japan was experiencing the same problems, although details are a bit sketchy.

Konami Investigates
The next day the following message appeared from the MGO Japan main website, using google translator.

It is unknown if the message was aimed at, or in concern of EU region players or JP region players, but as of yet there are no messages regarding the issue on the EU MGO website.

Riggers Thwarted?
On May 27th, the day when Tournament registration opens, people began to notice that history was repeating itself. The V.RAVEN server for the Saturday tournament (30th May) were being filled very quickly in the same way as S.WOLF had the week before it. MERKENT posted on MGOForums requesting everybody to report to Konami, en masse, what was happening. Also several players were named and were also reported. One named player, Tomberi, admitted that they were doing it and was linked to the thread about them all being reported. V.RAVEN quickly began to empty as the riggers cancelled their entries, allowing players to enter once more (including stronger teams such as RevolutioN and +Kowagaru+, making the lobby effectively rigproof). It seemed any issues had been safely averted...
Revolt in RevolutioN and a succesful rig
On May 30th reports came in again of rigging, this time widespread across the servers. S.WOLF, however, was not filled by the "usual" riggers, but by members of the respected clan RevolutioN, dark weller and Hiroshiko. Those members were swiftly kicked from RevolutioN.

R.OCELOT was also full for the 17.00 GMT tournament, and this time fingers pointed two teamsl "Shining Sun" (which contained the player Tomberi) and "Black Elements". Despite the presence of the clan Valhalla, Shining Sun went on to win the tournament, a succesful Rigging.
The S.WOLF 20.00 tournament (the one filled by dark weller and Hiroshiko) was eventually won by Peace of Mind.

Easy like Sunday Tourney
An admission by Tomberi was posted on MGOForums. Read it.
Sunday 31st was another day of riggings. It seemed that 17.00GMT V.RAVEN, 17.00GMT S.WOLF and 20.00GMT R.OCELOT had all been rigged. The amount of riggings, from multiple teams, helped to ensure that ant-rig teams were split up over the lobbies. Also it seemed people were rigging the second tournament while everybody was playing the first one to ensure nobody could stop them. However they were defeated by SuommenPaskimmat, who they weren't expecting to get.

So what next?
On Tuesday 2nd of May, Konami posted this on the EU MGO website, a few days after posting a similiar message on the JP wesbite. Although it likely relates to glitching and lagswitching, hopefully investigations will relate to other forms of cheating as well.

What will happen to the dozens of people involved in this scandal is yet to be seen. People predict bannings, but due to the sheer amount of people involved to various degrees, I think it will be difficult to do. Hopefully this message will deter any future riggings, so that MGO Tournament can return back to normal.

Update:
As of Sunday 7th June, there have been no reports of any forms of rigging for yesterdays or todays problems. I think the new announcements about tournaments may have had something to do with it...

Update 2:
The 20.00 GMT S.WOLF tournament was rigged by a team called CHEATERS>LOSERS, however since the introduction of the champions lobby apparently it's been quite easy for any organised team to win.

It has widely been criticised as "pathetic"