Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Expedition, What We've Missed

We all know the story of Backstabbers and 2Moons. Today, we as a guild are inactive in 2Moons. Let's step back a little bit. The 2Moons Backstabbers was active in and the one today have some differences between them. Two major patches have been released in the time between then and now. The first being 2Moons: Bad Moons Rising (BMR). With this patch, there were numerous additions to the game. New mounts, a rewards system for reaching certain levels, and a pet system are a few of the additions to the game.

Most importantly, the BMR patch introduced the Deadfront system, where 4 interested parties are (randomly) selected 6 times a day to enter a instance dungeon for 30 minutes. The point? Massive experience. In a single run it was possible to gain over 15% experience (if I recall correctly) at the high level 70s/low 80s. I've also heard that at the lower levels people were getting 30% and upwards per run. So if one was able to get in, it was possible to very easily level in a couple day's time only having to log on for half an hour at a time. The effectiveness of leveling in Deadfront is so much greater than that of the Crespo Dungeon; it's unparalleled to any other method. Even more, there are a couple Argates guaranteed to be found in each run by whoever reaches the treasure chests. The difficult part of all this is getting the vouchers to enter Deadfront, and actually getting selected.

Remember that Backstabbers became inactive before this patch was released. Step forward a few more months. More recently (in the past couple weeks), yet another patch was released. 2Moons: Expedition. This patch added a number of things as well. The Expedition system was introduced, but at the moment is largely unused due to the level of difficulty to complete it. Party vs Party system was added, new items were added, earring slots were added, among other updates.

One of the Expedition additions to note is the Item Enchant system. Now it is possible to "enchant" an item (much the same way as the Argate system), adding bonus attributes to the item. Normal becomes Magic, which becomes Noble, which becomes Divine, which becomes the equivalent of Legendary. This requires a Mavric appropriate to the type of item. They are obtained the same way as Argates are, basically. The Mavric introduces another major item in the economy, at a price that rivals Argates. Assuming rates for Argates and other valuables were not changed, it just means that there's another item out there that could drop and be worth something.

The long awaited new skills have also been implemented in Expedition. I am unaware of the major changes for each class, but for at least some classes it is a game changing update which introduces new builds and alters old ones.

However, the most important part of Expedition (in my own opinion) is the change to the leveling curve. It has been officially stated that the leveling curve has been reduced/lowered. By how much exactly, it is not stated, but I believe it is a significant change. In a single Deadfront run, the percentage of experience gained is perhaps 8% more (a conservative estimate from me) than when Deadfront was first introduced at the low level 80s. I assume the +10% exp boost advertisement option is not being used for this (An addition/fix I forgot to mention. I also forgot to mention, Siege Wars for guilds was also introduced at some point. But anyway...). This means that it is significantly easier to level in this build of 2Moons than the one Backstabbers played in. Even if the +10% exp boost ad is being used, the difference still stands between the 2Moons of yesterday and today.

Alright. Now we arrive at today. The main conclusion I have come to is that leveling, especially at the lower levels, will be a complete breeze compared to the 2Moons before these patches. Deadfront, a reduced leveling curve, and the exp boost from ads simply make it so much easier. After checking out the latest patch, there has been discussion between us of whether or not Backstabbers will return to 2Moons. Some of us have a renewed love for the game, and would love to once again be active in 2Moons. Others are not so enthusiastic about returning to a game we have already left. Regardless, I hope this has brought you up to date with these aspects of the situation in 2Moons. In making a choice, other topics about the state of 2Moons I haven't covered to note may be: the amount of hacking/botting, the playerbase, the competition, the action/role of Acclaim, and the economy.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Gunz and its awesome music


I didn't realize until recently that Gunz: The Duel had such awesome music. Most of the time when I played gunz I played the game with a shitty speaker. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new laptop and began playing the game with headphones. One word describes the gunz music: badass. The music playing in the embedded vid above is the theme played in the lobby. Awesome.

The second embedded vid is my personal favorite theme in game. If you want to truly appreciate the mastery of Gunz music, make sure that you're listening with headphones on or with some crazy speakers

Thursday, September 4, 2008

BackStabbers Has Officially Joined Perfect World International


Yup, not only are we set on conquering the Lineage II world, we are also setting our sights on Perfect World International. PWI is currently in Open Beta. I Dashizznik, am an Untamed Barbarian. I was only at level 2 when I took that screenshot of myself. Now... I am level 3 hahhaha.



Thus far, DKxAfFection, aka DKLegendaryAffection on 2moons, and I are the only members who have invaded Perfect World International. Pretty soon our hordes will be roaming across PWI destroying everything in our path.


One word: PIMP

Monday, September 1, 2008

Some Notable Events in our Guild's history

  • Dashizznik and e0x's historic sweepthrough of Frozen Valley. While running through Frozen Valley, we pked every single player we saw. Everywhere we went, the result was a bundle of limp bodies lying on the ground. Even when players asked for help from higher lvl players, it was of no use since we pwned them as well.
  • Vivse's legendary one man sweep of Requiem. As a result of this insane pk spree, Vivse's ip was a whopping 10,000.
  • Several players from this noob guild called Blood Ravens saw Vivse training at Frozen Valley and decided to gain up and pk him. Guess what, if you mess with the BackStabbers, you're gonna have to face the consequences. BackStabbers members Dashizznik, e0x, Nivek, DKLegendaryAffection, and Vivse himself ran back to Frozen Valley looking for vengeance. The members of Blood Ravens saw us and scrolled.
  • e0x, verybignig, and Dashizznik had an epic "conflict" with this player named JohnnyNguyuen. This guy likes to talk crap about everybody. We decided to follow this guy for 2 straight days just to mess with him. Every so often we would pk him and he would cuss us out on global chat.
  • Nivek's epic encounter with a DeathIsEternal guild member. The DIE guild, which is nonexistant in 2moons now, fashioned itself as the game's best guild. Well, guess what, Nivek pked that lil noob, thus proving the that the DIE guild were full of frauds.

Dashizznik: Assassin


I am now an assassin. Better recognize!