Accolades Throughout the Ages

Accolades are a big part of Combat Arms and provide players with motivation and exhilaration. They have had an interesting history and this article will document it.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

There's no doubt about it - the Combat Arms community is a great one. There are many people that would disagree but with over 4 million enlisted it sure has a lot of people. Each person has a unique opinion and the Nexon forums allow people to broadcast that opinion. Petitions are a common way to gauge support for a specific suggestion and with the success of Fight Against Auto Turrets had, the acronym / abbreviation bandwagon began...

Desert Fox Concept Art

Operation: Desert Fox is this month's attraction in Combat Arms and is suspected to be the successor to Operation: Desert Thunder. The following images are screenshots of the map using Nexon's map maker.

The Permanent Duration

Unlike many other games, Combat Arms allows soldiers to rent their weapons for specific durations - 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, permanent and other durations obtained randomly from the Weapons Renewal Kit.

Hacking

This article will deal with the scourge of Combat Arms - hacking.

Unreleased Mercenaries

There is one update that is 3 years overdue from Nexon Korea that no other version has yet obtained. Make that two, ...there is the user-uploaded clan emblem feature but we're probably never going to get that... No, the update I'm talking about is two mercenaries yet to be released.

Codename: Winchester and a guy that likes the '70s.

Sand Hog Concept Art

I've featured the concept art of the other maps, so I might as well make it complete and post that Nexon has posted the Sand Hog concept art on their Facebook.

I'm a month late, but "better late than never", as inspired by Nexon.

Combat Arms Merchandise (Last Updated 30/09/10)

Although Nexon does not have an official store to purchase merchandise from, they have many items given out as prizes from various competitions over the years. From figurines to lighters they are suitable for all ages.

This blog post will go through the Combat Arms merchandise awarded as prizes.

Suggestions Suggested By Customers

It may seem that Nexon doesn't listen or doesn't care about their customers and rightly so. While their ticketing system is at times abysmal and some of their decisions are misguided, it is not completely true that Nexon ignores the bad things that plague the game.

Proof of this is shown by the following list which lists (as lists usually do) the suggestions read by, considered by, drafted by, designed by, programmed by, and implemented by Nexon from their forums.

Spectator Mode

It is known to all players that users can be banned for "Ingame GM Action". What this means that the player was banned on-the-spot by a spectating Game Master. Their judgement isn't always correct, with the Nexon forums having posts of "unfair" bannings being common... ColDroop but GMs are only human and they work for Nexon.

Onto the title though, have you ever wondered what it looks like?

Combat Arms: The Musical

On April 1st 2010 Nexon announced their newest pursuit. Once a company known for its RPGs, then FPSes and now their first theatrical performance Combat Arms: The Musical.

Tickets will be on advance sale to select Combat Arms users, as well as those who have a VIP Off-Broadway Association Membership, starting Mid-April, and go on sale on July 10th to the general public.

The YouTube Machinima Contest

The YouTube Machinima Contest first opened to the public on September 3rd 2009. Machinima, (derived from machine and cinema) is filmmaking created through the real-time recording of computer games, virtual worlds or any already-existing 3D digital environment or virtual world - in this case, Combat Arms.

The Twist: Combat Arms Command has provided the beginning and the end of the story for you. It is up to you to figure out how the story transpires from beginning to end.

The Public Perception

Nexon's marketing is without-a-doubt very effective. Over 4 million accounts and growing, Combat Arms does not seem like its population will go backwards anytime soon. However, one of the more powerful marketing tactics is free - word-of-mouth. The Java Gaming Experts practically created the second most subscribed MMORPG out of this tactic.

Conversion Complete - The New HUD

On the 25th of this month Nexon introduced a redesign of the in-game Heads Up Display (HUD) in order to match the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Much rage was had.

The Community Outreach Program

For the past year Nexon has stepped up its communication with its players. They have introduced Facebook fan pages, surveys, polls, new community liasons and other communications to try and really connect with their customers.

We will be looking at the Combat Arms efforts...

EXP & GP

EXP & GP, short for 'experience' and an acronym for 'Gear Points' are awarded after each game to all players that stuck it out to the bitter end.

This article will discuss the varying amounts soldiers have been receiving for their efforts over the years...

Combat Arms Brazil - Closed Beta

On June 29th 2010, Level Up! Interactive first announced that Combat Arms Command will reestablish at a new location for Brazillian soldiers to battle for the United Alliance Forces and against Warcorp and whatever. I don't think anyone pays attention to the storyline, Nexon included (Nemesis Research Lab? - that's what you're parodying with "Nemexis", Nexon), so let's get on with the article...

Bounty Hunter

The predecessor to Spy Hunt, the Bounty Hunter mode was planned for release sometime around October 2008. However, due to complications it was delayed and eventually scrapped in favor of what we now know as Spy Hunt.

M67 Frag Grenades

Once upon a time every soldier was issued with two default grenades. This came with advantages and disadvantages. Firstly, most of the maps were small so it was easy to randomly throw one grenade in the air and keep one for strategic purposes.

But then it seemed Junk Flea was raining grenades...

Wanted: New Topics!

Have you ever gone "Ooh, I remember a time when..."? I did, and I decided to create this blog.

However, I would like to be reminded or made aware of other events / topics in Combat Arms' history that I may have forgotten (ie, haven't featured in the blog yet).

It may be the case that I have covered all the major aspects so far in CA's lifetime but it's always good to get another opinion.

I've created a forum thread about the blog here: http://forum.nexon.net/CombatArms/forums/thread/5242854.aspx

Thanks!

Major Game and Web Service Upgrades

On Sunday, December 6th, 2009 Nexon performed major game and web service upgrades "to handle the current and future traffic of players to our website and games". This maintenance went for 24 hours and none of the Nexon America services could be accessible.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer is an application designed for customer support and remote system management for organisations. It allow users to take control of another user's computer (with their consent of course) over the Internet.

In Combat Arms though, it has another use...

Supply Cases

Supply Cases are special cases that contain a specific type of item, in varying duration. They are a gamble item, as you never know what you're going to get and for how long (just like a box of chocolates!). Open it up for GP or NX and get a randomised item from a specified list.

Nowadays there aren't many supply cases but there used to be supply cases for each type of weapon...

Turrets, oh Turrets.

The weapon with in-built wall hacker and aimbotter has recently been nerfed so that now it acts as a support weapon as it should - and not the main source of kills for a specialist.

The Forums

** As of Thursday, October 13, 2011 this article has now become obsolete due to the release of the new vBulletin forums. **

A standard feature of all online forums nowadays - avatars are little pictures that go along with your posts, acting as a 'face' for the posts. Usually matches the signature.

Along with many other standard features of forums, these are missing from the Nexon forums.

Weapons Free Passes & Default Item Changes

Before permanent items, there were NX items called "Weapons Free Passes" and "Default Item Change", allowing players that have purchased these items to trial GP weapons or change their default item.

Combat Arms Easter Eggs

Video game easter eggs are not of the chocolatey type, but are small surprises that are implanted into the game for a laugh. Combat Arms has a few of these so might as well look at them!

Combat Arms Europe Differences

The grass is always greener on the other side, as they say. I play Combat Arms North America as most people call it, so information in this article may be inaccurate. I've seen posts on both forums and once in a while both whine that their version is so horrible and whatever.

Quarantine Mode - Version 1.0

Quarantine Mode has gone through many balancing issues to make it fair for both the humans and Infected. We'll be looking at the first iteration...

SnowBall Fight

SnowBall Fight was a fun game mode that was available for a limited run, from 1/14/2009 through 2/25/2009. How to play can be found here... although this article isn't about how to play it...

Gameplay from 2007

I was trawling around the Internet's forgotten corners and stumbled upon this gameplay video - possibly the first of Combat Arms. If you look carefully (since the quality is pretty bad - but still good for the times) you can see the old player models / uniform and accolades in action.

Combat Tools

Before The Community Ban List there was Combat Tools - a program designed to collect evidence against players breaking the Terms of Service. Popular at the start, not so much now...

Nexowned!

"Nexowned" is the term used when suiciding for no apparent reason. It usually happens when running up and down stairs, jumping around a lot and lagging into objects. It can be used for anti-glitching as well as anti-flyhack.

The Nutshot

Let's go back to April 2009 when the NutShot was introduced and the Gender Change item became a hit...

Project Black - Working Title

Project Black was the working title for Combat Arms, which is where the "Operation Black Storm" was probably inspired by. Nexon then released the game as Combat Arms, originally planned to be a military FPS aimed at an older audience.

Old Accolades

Everyone knows the accolades in Combat Arms - Multi, Ultra, Fantastic, Unbelievable - and the graphics that come with them... but they weren't always like that...

Password Change Campaign

Not too long ago Nexon started an initiative whereby all players must change their password every three months in order to increase player security. First it was a simple form and all you had to remember was your old password... The second iteration was not so well received...

Black Market / Rank Requirements

Once upon a time there were NX items that had rank requirements. That all changed on (anyone know the date?)

Gray Hammer Concept Art

Since there are 30 drawings,  I can't be bothered pasting them all here.

Here is the link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=191911&id=122899437065

The Original Free-to-Play Pledge

The free-to-play pledge is a promise made by Nexon that basically details what their philosophy is regarding the Black Market. It's a much debated part of Combat Arms, especially with specialists available without rank requirements and NX-exclusives.

Recording the Combat Arms: Operation Black Storm sounds

The following is a video of the Combat Arms team recording the Combat Arms gun sounds on December 17th 2006.  It was recorded at Dogs Range, LA.

BlockHead Invasion - The Nexon Block Party

On September 29th 2009, Nexon announced that the Block Heads are coming our way and will be transforming the Nexon.net portal into a social networking hub. An "infotainment animatory thing" appeared on the header of each page explaining what was going to happen...

Server Groups

Server Groups are separate servers that feature boosted experience and may be restricted based on ranks, clan status and more recently, clearance levels.

There have been many server groups over these two years and here is a list of most of them...

South America Termination

On April 2, 2009, Nexon America announced that South American service for Combat Arms will cease on April 9.

This was a difficult decision but made due to server latency issues, in order to maintain the integrity and quality of our overall service. We wish to extend our appreciation to our South American users for their time spent playing with us, and we hope that you have enjoyed your time playing Combat Arms.

As of today, no new accounts from the South America region may be created. As of 10:00PM PST on Thursday, April 9th, 2009, service for South America will officially terminate and South American accounts will no longer be able to access Nexon America's Combat Arms.

Concept Art for Cold Seed

Concept Art for Junk Flea

Combat Arms Hitbox Bug

The January patch of 2009 "improved" the hitboxes... but what Nexon really did was create what now know as "noreg", specifically the Hitbox Bug. This was a huge problem for the community as people were loading entire magazines into the backs of people without doing ANY damage.

Nexon has blamed the cause of issue to be latency issues and announced via a forum post that getting a better Internet connection would solve the problem. The following is a video displaying the issue.



Registry problems, that is bullets that do no damage, may be a problem today however it is usually caused by lag.

Blast from the Past 

The rank requirements originally planned for the G.I. Shovel and the P90 have been removed (both weapons are available immediately to all players) 

---------------"Other Updates and Fixes", Patch Notes 11/12/2008 

Shotgun the M590 Military!

Aah, shotguns - instilling rage in the community from 2008 to 2010. Probably the most infamous shotgun of the early days was the M590 Military - pretty much one every game. Nowadays it's the M4 Super 90.

With this shotgun, every shot from mid-range to close-range combat was one-hit-kill. It was also a secondary weapon. Massively overpowered, now massively underpowered that hardly anyone uses it anymore.

First Nexon discontinued the secondary slot for shotguns and then nerfed the whole class of weapons into extinction. The are still some accounts that still have a shotgun in their secondary slot because they haven't logged in since the switch.

Music - Server Lobby and Game Lobby

It is interesting to note that the American and European versions share the same music, but the Korea version contained a completely different set of track. The Fireteam music (which is the only music that is played during a battle) is the same across all versions.

The game started out with two main tracks - one for the server lobby and one for the waiting room / game lobby. When Nexon changed the music, there was only one track for the whole game.

The music for the server lobby was a shorter version of the version featured in the CGI trailer. Talking of trailers, Nexon seems to have revived the music through their map trailers.

The following are YouTube videos of the music since Blogger does not have a music player. The account that uploaded them is not under my control so it may be unavailable as time goes by...

The Old Combat Arms User Interface

Well, what a controversial topic! Even the executive producer of CA, General G, recognised that the current UI was not exactly the best update Combat Arms could have had.

Supposably the reason for the drastic change in colour scheme and everything else was that the amount of guns were getting too much for the old UI to handle.

“We’ve updated it to have a more modern look and improved functionality.”

“We’ve added so many new items and weapons since we launched the game, it has become difficult for users to sort through items. This will make it easier for users to find stuff in the shop.”

-General G

The old UI contained pictures of the guns without hovering over the weapon, allowing for easy navigation through weapons you don't know the name of. It actually had colour and had a military-feel to it, instead of the black and grey scheme we have now. When the February update was complete, there were many players that could not figure out how to do certain things. The font was hard to read and really, really tiny. Players have now gotten used to the UI and Nexon has fixed it up so that it is now readable.

The Old Loading Screens

Each map has its own unique loading screen, contained within it the Daily Top 5. Nowadays it contains a blueprint with points of interest marked called Hot Zones, the story behind the map and a short tip.

What they look like now is not what they used to look like. Each map used to have a full-screen vista with the usual tip and Daily Top 5. Along with that, they would also have a male character equipped with certain gear to the side.

Combat Arms North America Beta Tests

Combat Arms North America first started their Beta testing with a Closed Beta test. In order to have been chosen for this test you had to download the client through FilePlanet. It ran during May 29th to June 6th 2008.
In the closed beta, 4 maps and 30 weapons were available. 30, 000 soldiers were enlisted during this test. On June 26, Combat Arms went into its Pre-Open Beta Phase, where the game was open to the public, but it was still being tested and changed to prepare for Open Beta. The official launch of Combat Arms started on July 11, 2008 and this is when Nexon officially recognises its anniversary.

The test was available only to North and South America as well as Australia and New Zealand.

During this time the forum was littered with angry Kart Rider players due to the fact that Combat Arms replaced the Kart Rider forums never to be returned again.

Players received 9,000 GP when registering as well as a Starter Kit comprising of either:

-- M4A1 Assault Rifle (7-day use)

-- L96A1 Sniper Rifle (7-day use)

-- M23F Incendiary Grenades (7-day use)

OR

-- Mk.48 Machine Gun (7-day use)

-- SR-25 Sniper Rifle (7-day use)

-- M16A1 AP Mines (7-day use)

 
 The GP was then reduced a couple of months later and the Recruit Weapons Kit discontinued. It has made a permanent reappearance and presumably is here to stay.

  

Did you know?

Nexon maintenances never end on time. 

Combat Arms NA Home Page

The Combat Arms homepage was different to the current one we have today. It relied heavily on Flash, which in turn slowed the website down especially when bots scanned the page for signatures.
It also made navigation on laptops harder as Flash is very precise.

It also contained a separate page for the introduction which contained three trailers - Gameplay, CGI and Black Market trailers.

Above is a screenshot of the homepage, skinned with a Quarantine theme in the navigation bar.

Nexon also had bi-monthly polls in which they made decisions based on these results. For example, a question asked "If a permanent option was made available for your favorite weapon, would you: ..."  in which the answer "Purchase it and rest easy knowing you always had it at your disposal, but continue to try other interesting weapons." came first.
A few days later and the permanent NX standard duration came out, presumably because the option Purchase it and use it exclusively, no more trying out different guns for you!  was last.
However, the last poll they had revealed the lack of knowledge of the storyline as the correct answer came in last. It has now discontinued.

Blast from the Past

-- Hack protection has been increased.

-- The carry quantity for the M67 standard grenade has been reduced to one (1) for game balance.

 --------------------"Other Updates", Patch Notes 2/25/2008

Combat Arms Beta Sounds and Pictures

During the beta phases of Combat Arms (sans Europe) the sounds that made up the game were very different. The voice commands, character models, character sounds, interface, direction - hey actually everything but the guns is different.

The character models were a lot thinner than what the male characters are today and also feature different uniform and gear.

The voice commands also differed from what is available today. The voice commands featured the commands "What the heck are you doing?!" and "You are so respectable!" as well as other people voicing them.
Most of them are survived from this video:




 The interface was also different and was more military themed than the shiny black UI we have now (more in an upcoming blog post).

The beta test also contained what we now know as Specialist weapons, mainly the flamethrower and airstrikes thrown as grenades. Take a view here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3CQEQPsMuM

Many players are nostalgic of this period of CA History and mostly remember the friendly community and lack of hacker paranoia that now plagues the game - all different for different people though!

Combat Arms Korea

Combat Arms first debuted on the Nexon Korea portal as their second first-person shooter, WarRock being their first. With the Korea FPS market being already oversaturated, it was nowhere as successful as Combat Arms in America or Europe and hence is no longer supported by Nexon. According to the website, it has only been updated sixteen times (perhaps more but I can't read Korean - thanks Google!).

The servers are still active due to the availability of the game at various internet cafes where players receive extra EXP and GP when played on those computers. This is indicated by a "PC+" icon beside their ingame name.  

(Excuse the red marking as I obtained the screenshot from the Korean forums)

Combat Arms Korea first launched their open beta tests on November 8th 2007 to the 15th and continued updating the game with weapons, fixes and maps. The Closed Beta tests started around June 2007 although not much information is available in English about this.

The game we see today is drastically different to what they the Korean's were playing during these tests, and I'll get to that in another blog post. 

Their game does not feature female characters, and also includes a modified version of our mercenary Deckland as base characters. Their UI is also our old version (see here ) and the rank titles are also different. They have also reached the maximum rank, akin to our General of the Army.

Rankings can be found at  http://combatarms.nexon.com/intro/page/nx.aspx?url=gradeinfo/index

The clan emblems featured in the game are uploaded pictures, a feature the Nexon America and Europe obviously don't trust us with!

Elimination is named as "Team Deathmatch" and Search & Destroy as "Mission Mode".

The game stopped updating once Specialists and the map GraveDigger came out, which angered the community. Most people have moved onto the newer CounterStrike Online hosted by Nexon. 

** NOTE ** There may be some inaccuracies due to the language barrier and inaccurate information from secondary sources. If you have any corrections, please feel free to comment!

Combat Arms Turns Two

Well, this is the first blog of what we all hope to many to the Combat Arms Historeum. Coincidentally, it happens to coincide with the very recent second anniversary of Combat Arms! A lot has happened during those two years, both good and bad, and we will be showcasing these for newbies to envy find out about the history of the game in detail as well as give the older players a trip down memory lane...

Since this is the most recent happening on the battlefield I guess I will be showcasing it first!

For the second anniversary of Combat Arm's birthday, players received permanent items that presumably will never be handed out ever again. They included a backpack, helmet and face mask emblazoned with blue lightning strikes and "2nd Anniversary" marked upon them. In order to reduce the imbalance that never-to-be-obtained-again items might have, statistical boosts were negligible.

This was a change from the first anniversary items, which included a hat, face mask and and backpack emblazoned with red flames, as they were only available for 72 hours. However, possibly due to outcry of popularity over these items on the Nexon forums, an event was held to extend the expiration date of the items to a further 72 days. Obtaining the first batch of anniversary items was a lot harder than obtaining the second, as the first event had you log in through consecutive days to receive the items instead of just logging in once.

Other events were held to commemorate the anniversaries, such as GM events, bonus EXP & GP, a photo contest to win a Nutshot t-shirt.