September Shakeup

It's been a hell of a summer here in MGO land, and as we head into Autumn it looks like a very different game/community to when I left on holiday. A lot has happened, so I'm going to break it up into sections to make it easier, but let me give a quick recap:
Lot's of people "left" MGO
The Elite Clan Scene saw a big shakeup
MGOForums shut down
TGForums rose from it's ashes

Social News
Several high profile players left the MGO Scene in the last few months, most prominently MGO World Championship Deathmatch Runner up Red Leopard and fellow PBO Teammate Mlopes. The pair, known by practically nobody but me as Redlopes, quit for similiar but unrelated reasons, but the gist of it was that they had outgrown the game and the community and grown bored. A spate of quittings soon followed (although many were retracted), including: (now that MGOF has gone I can't remember who else, leave a comment of who quit).
The aura of negativity that lingered in the EU community as many people quit combined with holiday abscenses has led many to predict doom for MGO. While many prominent players and clans have dissapeared on kept rather quiet as of late, I think it is a bit of an overreaction to say that MGO EU is dying. Removal of players at the top only draws up more players to fill their place- and nobody is irreplaceable. The main threat to MGO, however, is the approaching release date of future blockbuster Modern Warfare 2, which could be devastating for player numbers. I personally believe that after the initial buzz the majority of dedicated players will return, but we can only wait an see.
Ex 2TM, PBO, PHILOSOPHER and MGO 1vs1 Champion BOSS. has deleted his character and is making a comeback as OLD BOSS, free from any clan arguments and looking to make a fresh start:

The reason I have called myself OLD is because when i play the game all those younger kids make me feel old while they run rings around me. Although I still have my old skill and can rip them apart at times

Clan News
Sometime in September, the recently formed Final Story was largely absorbed back into To The Max under the leadership of Zzzonked, putting things the way they were before the dramatic split of 2TM in August. While METE0RAX is missing from the clan, N00B has been rerecruited after disbanding Painkillers (PROTIP: Painkillers was named after N00Bs MGO1 name, Painkiller)
Elite clan Stealth Pro M4 have disbanded following the recruitment of  co-leader SpmxXD@rknessXx to PBO under the new name Half Light. The remnants of SPM have been largely absorbed by other elite clans, with some left clanless.

Peace of Mind have been reformed less than a month after their split, with a very strong roster after getting many of their players back from 2TM and Final Story along with some new recruits.
Top Finnish clan Suommen Paskimmat has appeared to have not returned after their lengthy absence this summer, leaving a hole to be filled behind the dominating 2TM/PBO.
Two major new clans have appeared on the scene in September; Tranquility and Fatality. With similiar sounding names, born at the same time and both with dragons for emblems, I'm not sure if the two clans are connected.

Tranquility, led by ex RevolutioN leader RM-11, seems to have dissapeared already but contained the remnants of Revo minus Samsterw, Fawzi and some others.
Fatality, led by ex PBO, 2TM and Skyper Rifle player METE0RAX, seems well placed (along with PoM) to fill the void left behind by the dissapearance of SPM, SP and White Element, with a strong roster (a first team consisting of METE0RAX ULTIMA HUNTER, M.$nake, Snake90 PlayeR 1. and  El Unicox)

Long running and Fan favourite clan Utopia  has been disbanded, after several players gradually left in the last month or so. However it seems to have quickly returned with many of it's old members as Quazi Zeal Tale, lead by TIME: 7:32 AM (protip: it's the time on his alarm clock), a name vastly inferior to the Space Pirates (or PwnStars) recomended by many TGFers! I'll update when I find out what Quazi Zeal Tale means.

Demise of MGOForums.com
On the 24th of September 2009 the home of the EU MGO community, MGOForums, was dramatically deleted. It started out at around midday, when the forums part of the site were innacesible and replaced with this message; to which many an MGOFer's pants were soiled.

It was put up by MGOF Admins Mike (Exodus) and Rohel  (RM-11), who had control of the forums part of the site. Many people sent in Poems and Psalms as requested, but nothing appeared to have any effect.

The site's front page, however, was edited by the Admin Sousouke and the following message was put up which directed users to Sousoukes site; Technime.

The site provided a forums and a haven for MGOFers who were simply thinking "wtf!". Rumours swirled as to what was happening, and speculation as to when, if ever, MGOF was coming back. Some said that Sousouke had been hacked, while others said that Mike had come back and gone crazy.

Our worst fears were comfirmed later that night, when logging onto the site simply showed garbled code and the remnants of MGOF's adverts. Later the site changed againto a blank white page with the poetic:

Which was soon changed to:

The deletion of the site and the reverence shown towards it was rather bittersweet, but it left hundreds of lost MGOFers looking for a new home. While Technime seemed like a good temporary shelter, we were finally saved by the final alteration to the site as of yet to the way it is now; a white page with:

The image directs user to the site TGForums.co.uk, which appears to be the permanent new home for the EU community. While it has far less registered and active users than MGOF did, it is growing quite steadily and the word is spreading.

So what the hell happened?

It seems Mike deleted, for whatever reasons, the entire site with the help of Insanor; the site's host. I personally believe that he had an ulterior motive past the front of a simple "meltdown"; to start fresh. By creating a new, more general site, the community will be stronger and more close knit as it becomes smaller again, especially with the wider appeal "The General Forums" has with the approaching release date of Modern Warfare 2; a game to which MGO may lose many players. It allows for a more cross-platform community, and could surpass MGOForums in terms of activity if carefully managed. On the other hand it's possible that I'm spouting pure kak, and that any positive effects are unintended: only one person knows.

Game News

Konami updated the TOURNAMENT mode entry system to prevent Tournament Riggings, only 3 months late as well. The update prevented more than one character per GAME ID from being registered for a TOURNAMENT, effectively making it harder to rig one (although you can still create multiple GAME IDs but this would require purchasing the expansion packs for each one).

A message has been issued recognising the Death Loop glitch, and warning that usage is cheating, and can result in a ban. While this is encouraging, and shows that the MGO execs aren't just snoozing on the job, the actual fix for the glitch is a far more complicated issue requiring changes to the game code.
Hope for a solution lies in the most recent Update to the Game Version, 1.34, a minor update which consists mainly animation adjustments, repricing and adjustments to certain weapons, scoring adjustments and changes to skills. While there is no word from Konami on any repair to the Death Loop glitch, it is hoped that a fix has been sneaked into the update Deathlooping is, as of yet, unfixed. Information on the update is available here.

Poll Results
Results of last weeks poll on Deathlooping were

Don't ask me why I put MERKENT in there, I'm obsessed o.O.  According to the poll you're just as likely to be recorded as deathlooped back, something which I seriously doubt. The next poll is up, get voting!

Thanks to MERKENT,*Agenda*/NevaeH and OLD BOSS.

Deathloop Disaster

A worrying new trend has recently emerged in MGO, a little easy piece of glitching called "Deathlooping" (shortened to "DL"). It is a glitch which is used almost exclusively in Survival and Tournament modes, and goes as such:

• 
  
  NubSox2 kills CoolDood93
• 
  
  NubSox2 shoots at CoolDood93's corpse's head
• 
  
  CoolDood93 dies immediately upon respawn (And loses DP from the lost weapon if DP is on) and the kill comes up on the killfeed.
• 
  
  The second kill does count towards any stats.
• 
  
  Lather, Rinse, Repeat

However if you know you're about to be deathlooped, you can prevent it by pressing select at the weapon selection screen before you spawn, then press start and spawn as normal.

I'm unsure as to where and when the glitch originated, but it is likely to have started on the NA server where there is a far higher incidence of glitching than in EU. However it's usage has become very high only in the last two weeks or so and is now widespread among the the EU MGO community, with several prominent players getting banned by Konami for it and more openly admitting to using it. There have been lots of complaints about entire teams using it against them, although it's ease of use means many players retaliate in kind.
However unlike several other forms of glitching, Deathlooping is relatively easy to prove with video evidence since it's usage is obvious. Reporting players to Konami for using the glitch has seen considerable success, for example flyboy95 and Zzzonked bans likely being due to video evidence. This spate of bannings might put off a lot of players from attempting the glitch, but hopefully Konami will soon do an emergency update to remove it.*

In Other News:
The longtime EU clan Peace of Mind has disbanded, after a large roster change in the last few months, such as some players moving to other clans (Yasmin, *Yuki*, NeoN-KnighT, Manna, Sephiroth, Front Line with most of the roster getting absorbed by 2TM and FS) and others leaving MGO.

Another legendary EU clan to disband recently was White Element, who went from strength to strength only a few weeks ago to rapidly losing most of it's members to the new 2TM and FS. However there are still four players left including it's leader Raging_Snake91, and WE's clan notice reads "White Element Will Rise Again". I hope this prophesy comes true, WE have been a strong stable clan for as long as I can remember.

A new clan know as Dark Matter was briefly created by DARKLIQUID and XRAYKARMA with Tauro and Red Eight 8 also on the roster, but as of the 27th this clan has been disbanded an replaced by the more familiar DeathRainsDown, a clan which has been around sporadically since April. While Red has admitted that running a clan is difficult, the strength of the first four players (all ex-2TM) combined with the amount of clanless players available due to recent disbandings leads me to believe that this will be the most successful incarnation of DrD.

The Kings of 2vs2 Showdown was played last week, with MGOForums Doubles Tournament Champions Mlopes and Red Leopard challenging MGOForums Kings of BB CAP Tournament winners METE0RAX and Solid007. The scores were:

AA CAP - 2-0 to METE007
SS RES - 2-0 To METE007
TT RES - 2-0 To Redlopes
GG TDM - 2-0 To METE007
Congrats to all involved, matches were good so check them out here, courtesy of MGOFs favourite new recorder Gayle San

Finally last weeks poll results to the question "Final Story or To The Max" were

I only did that poll because it was the topic of the last post, not because I particularly cared about the results ^^

PS. Sorry about the long wait, this stuff is time consuming you know!
PSS. Also apparently I have to give mention to some darkie who's name escapes me =|:3

*Nevermind this is Konami we're talking about

'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.