'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.

Top Tournament Round 2

It seems despite their obvious bias towards the JP region, Konami still think of us poor westerners, and so the Champions Tournament Lobby is being put in for both EU and NA servers, as shown by the in-game and website update yesterday:
While personally, as a fully fledged sloth, I'm excited to be able to possibly win one of those beautiful white fleece caps, my enthusiasm was not shared by everybody. Some people are annoyed that, since runners up can't enter the main tournaments, they will never get the chance to win a beret in the new more competitive lobbies. Also players who have not won all the coloured berets may be unable to get any other colours without winning in the Champions lobby, however it is unknown whether the tournament restriction will be lifted after every prize colour change.
Some feel that it will result in devaluation; a loss of "specialness" for the berets and fleeces now that they will be easier to get. In fact reception was very unwelcoming:

Excess:
imo its a bad thing because some people i know are just too shit to win a tournament, yet they will have prizes that i myself won by beating DDL and 2TM in the same night to win, when they may bet teams like thr sloths and other autoteams.

gfg.

Dinger:
i have mixed views, berets are supposed to be for the elite and the laggers, now any scrub will be able to get them.....shit

Tauro:
I like the part of MGO which rewards you for being a good player, and don't want random sloths walking around with elitist prizes.

*Agenda*
See, now a bunch of non-worthy retards are gonna have berets, therefore making them worthless to wear.

However there are some that support the new update:

Maxtec:
What's with all this unworthy shite?
There is not one single person here who is good enough to win every time so why are people acting like they do?
I notice none of the real pros are here moaning I.e merk/mfdoom and that's because they are willing to face any opposition and win which makes them worthy. Anyone who has a problem facing only pros is not worthy of a beret IMO

Okay then only one, but it was words of wisdom!
It has been speculated that the prizes for the Championship lobby will be different, such as differently coloured berets or more reward points to provide an incentive for the "serial champions"
The Champions lobby will, of course, increase competition among the top players as well as encourage lower tier players and clans to compete rather than just play for rewards, and I personally think it will be a very positive change for MGO. However it may be that, just like the "RAY=Elite survival lobby" idea, this will start out well but end up failing when eventually average players get into the champions lobby again. Only time will tell...


The Champions Lobby will be opened on the 16th of June

Top Tournament

This was recently posted on the MGO JP website (in Japanese of course, it's been translated).
Click it to see it in full.
It seems that from now on there is a special tournament lobby devoted only to players who have previously won a Tournament, or have got runner up. The fact that they have two lobbies for it means there must be a lot of tournament winners in Japan, I doubt there's been more than 384 tournament winners in the past on the EU server. Hopefully this will come to EU, it will surely help top clans to improve by playing against each other more often, and will give lower players a chance to rise through the ranks. Another possibility is that while half the elegible players will play in the new tournament lobby, the other half will continue to play in the original lobbies, as they're more likely to win and prevent worse players from accessing the Champ lobby. Either way I'm looking forward to seeing the outcome.

Thanks to +KïtSuNE+ for this one!

Berets, Bosses and Blood Bath

Beret-for-Pay
Recently there has been a bit of a furore over the selling of Tournament Berets (uniquely coloured berets that can only be had by those who have won an in game tournament) by 2TM's C4RNIF3X, now known as Zzzonked. The scheme was an offer of an tournament beret for €15, or €5 for every 10,000 rwd points made. This is done by giving C4RNIF3X your GAME ID and Password, which he'll then play on in a tournament with the rest of 2TM.

While intitally the idea was met with praise for it's business potential, quickly things turned sour, and soon the thread was locked and the situation reported to Konami. However like they say any publicity is good publicity and word quickly spread about the beret offer. It is unknown how many berets have been sold but C4RNIF3X has been reputed to have made over €500 from the scheme, including the purchase of his own MGO ID by an unknown player for a supposed €300. MGO can now be considered a part time job with a pay rate of a €1 per hour.

Big Boss Emblem attained
As of the weekly update today, Tuesday 2nd June, Raging_Snake91 of White Element on the EU server is the first and only player to acheive the Big Boss emblem. His weekly stats are unrecorded since they were reset after the update, but he has a rough estimate of them. I'll post details on the requirements as soon as SaberBlade cracks it.
More information can be found here.


Kings of BB
MGOForums' latest tournament plays on the recent popularity of 2vs2 Capture on the map Blood Bath . It was initially abandoned due to lukewarm reception and the large amount of effort involved, but it was restarted and signups started on May 1st. While there is no GB ladder (it was deleted due to inactivity in mid-May) MGOForums' record with tournaments means it looks promising. The current Roster and matchups can be found here. In keeping with the theme of prizes being clothing of famous MGO players, the prize will be a thong worn by RevolutioN's RM11. No really.

Update
The tournament was eventually won by 2TM's Solid007 and Skyper Rifle's MeteoraX, who beat 2TM's Fawzi and «F¢rarrï»