Combat Arms

Nexon enters the First Person Shooter scene with Combat Arms. It has several maps, each different from the rest, and a unique weapons system: You use GP you gain from matches to buy weapons in the shop, but the items expire after a set amount of time and you can purchase a weapon for 1 day, 1 week, or 3 months. Some items can’t be purchased until the player reaches a certain rank. Players rank up by gaining EXP points in combat. There are several play modes: In “One Man Army” anyone is free game to kill, it’s everyone versus everyone. In “Elimitation”, two teams fight against each other to reach a certain goal of kils (Anywhere from 30 to 140). In “Capture the Flag”, the point is obviously to capture the opponent’s flag and bring it back to your own. In “Spy Hunt” everyone starts out as allies and three intel cases are spread accross the map. As soon as someone touches an intel case, they become an enemy and everyone is out to kill them. The object of the game is to obtain all THREE cases at once, and when this happens, the player with the cases becomes a “super spy.” He gets a whopping 500 armor points, a Gatling Gun, a Flamethrower, and an extremely souped up rocket launcher. I’m not too sure about “Search and Destroy” but I believe the point is to plant a bomb in the opponent’s base. Since it’s a Nexon game, there are obviously many hackers, as there is a public Cham hack that’s easy to find if you looked hard enough. There are hackers in almost every match, and since the Cham hack is impossible to prove (Without a confession from the hacker, or a screenshot of the HACKER’s screen), few of the hackers get punished. There’s also an “OPK” hack, which puts all of the opponents on one spot so that the hacker can easily kill them all with a knife, but that’s considered “VIP” and typically has to be paid for. In short: Combat Arms is a great game to play if you want to hack!

Maple Story Private Servers

They’ve been out for quite a while now. The first one opened (I believe) in December of 2007, the next one soon after, and then, with the public release of a different source in early March, private servers began to pop up everywhere. What is a private server, you ask? It’s basically a copy of a popular game but everything can be edited by the “host” or “owner” of the server. Experience rates, drop rates, items found in shops, you name it. MapleStory private servers range anywhere from 5x EXP all the way to 100,000x EXP. In some servers, everyone is a Game Master, and can spawn whatever monster or item they want, warp to any map they want, and be any class or combination of class they want. On most servers, though, the owner picks a small team of players to be Game Masters and moderate the regular players, as well as look out for hackers. These Private Servers are much more fun than Nexon’s versions, because the Game Masters actually exist, usually talk to you, sometimes are fun, and often throw awesome events. Events could include monsters that drop NX-Cash items, monsters that give a TON of experience (20k exp * the server’s EXP rate), monster invasion, boss runs, hide-and-seek, trivia, and tons of others. Some servers give out Wizet Invincible Hats as the ultimate prize. These babies give 999 to str/dex/int/luk, 999 accuracy/avoidability, 50 speed, 20 jump, and 200 weapon defence and magic defence. Many servers also offer the ability to be “reborn” once you hit level 200. You start back as a level 1 beginner, but you keep all your items, stats, and all your skills that you have mapped to your keyboard. For instance, if a player is a Night Lord the first time through, they can keep Flash Jump, Haste, Dark Sight, and Shadow Partner, and be reborn as a bowman. Shadow Partner works with all projectiles, so the Night Lord/Bowman will shoot 2 arrows with a regular shot, 4 with double-shot, 8 with strafe, and 2 streams of arrows with Storm of Arrows/Hurricane! All in all, Private Servers provide a ton of fun, and if Nexon could just take a few ideas from them, MapleStory Global would be MUCH better off!