The Energon Pub

And mission numbers were generally around 10 a side before things were cut down to ease server problems.

And this is a vague memory ... did some ever get up to 20 a side?

Burn wrote:And mission numbers were generally around 10 a side before things were cut down to ease server problems.

And this is a vague memory ... did some ever get up to 20 a side?

Yes they did... But for the life of me I can't remember what the specific mission was.

Caelus wrote:Yes they did... But for the life of me I can't remember what the specific mission was.

IIRC, it was "Bar Fight at the Energon Pub" or something similar. Wheelie was involved in the text, somehow, I think. I also seem to recall it having a 12 hour waiting time.

Someone with a better memory can likely put this in actual chronological order and provide dates, but some historic events I remember (I joined ~6 months after the game started):

- A "Great Whoops" in ~2004 that wiped a few weeks/months of xp and character progress.
- Glyph, the previous programmer, fixes armor. Prior to this, Iron was glitched so that 10 tons of it would make a character virtually invulnerable to weapons (like the Fallen is now, basically).
- The Bots and Cons got, and later lost, separate faction forums.
- Passcodes introduced to the Arena and Missions to prevent macro cheating.
- Passcodes removed.
- Made in Canada (MIC) was a major third subfaction alongside the RDD and AWC. All three of these subfactions had their own threads in HMWGD.
- Game goes offline entirely for a period of several weeks, if not months (last year sometime?).
- Omega Sentinel takes over from Glyph as programmer.
- Characters had to be put into the CR chamber manually after missions, but would be put in automatically after arena battles.
- Enduring repairers and avoiders exploited by a few players at the higher levels to earn massive amounts of xp, at the cost of straining the server with Arena/Tag Team battles that would run for hundreds of moves.
- Dark Tidings tournament, source of significant drama and currently still a sore subject.
- Wars of Self-Identity tournament won by Decepticons (IIRC), taking the prize of temporary use of some Autobot alts.
- Weapons rotated for the first and only (?) time sometime in 2003 or 2004, introducing such favorites as the Vibro Axe (which has largely fallen out of favor), DOL Laser Rifle and Battle Blades.
- Weapon/armor restocks, as well as alt rotations, performed manually by mods/admins.

Caelus wrote:

Burn wrote:And mission numbers were generally around 10 a side before things were cut down to ease server problems.

And this is a vague memory ... did some ever get up to 20 a side?

Yes they did... But for the life of me I can't remember what the specific mission was.

I thought that's what the original Sonic Wastes was 20 v 20. If I remember right ... it's be awhile n I feel old.

:MAX:

A little history on a weapons

Photon Eliminator Rifle - Firepower 5, the holy grail. Shot the crap out of people ... once a mission because of it's long recharge rate.

Fusion Cannon - Was actually available at a much lower point (3/2?) before it was decided that the Fusion Cannon, being the weapon of choice for Megatron, be given the status of "holy grail". For those who still see it as a holy grail, it sucks.

Vibro-Axes and Retractable Mecha Fangs - Favoured heavily by rammers who didn't want to invest in firepower.

Energon Crossbow - The weapon of choice for many before it was deemed too powerful. It's requirements stayed the same but it's damage output changed. The result saw two different types of EC's, the old powerful ones and the new weaker ones.

Black Magic - Able to unleash hell against an opponent. I think it may have been depowered a litte, not sure.

Following the change to the EC, a new weapon emerged that would change the landscape of the game entirely.

Battle Blades.

While everyone was fussing over BM's and EC's, no one realised the damage output of BB's and they soon became the weapon of choice. For whatever reason, they were never altered.

The reason BB's, EC's and BM's stood out so much was the malfunctioning endurance code and screwed up armours.

The old Twin Swords made BB's look like chopsticks...

Don't forget the Twin Swords. Those were pretty popular too, IIRC.

Also Land Animals ram was original as a cost of only 1,000 xp to upgrade. Too many people started to take advantage of this by jumping up to higher levels quicker so it was bumped to 3,000 xp an upgrade.

Tactics originally did not effect your level. Meaning you could get ram at 10 with only 4 upgrades in stats and still be a level 1. That change relatively quick after the first "big oops".

:MAX:

I remember "The Search for Megatron" tournament in the late summer or early fall of 2004 if I remember right (a couple of months after I joined). The winning faction was able to access the G1 Megatron alt for a time. Though since then (maybe 9 months to a year after the tourney) it has become part of the regular Decepticon alt rotation, but at the time an often requested alt. The Decepticons won that one as well.

I remember when Glyph added the experience calculator to the help section. A wonderful tool to plan XP spending, something he had orginally had on his own website before becoming HMW programmer.

I remember there used to be fewer alt mode classes.

While it was before my time, I've heard from many of the veterans that there was a time when stats in a tactic did not count towards your level, much like the current stat points put into robot abilities.

To expand on the armor issue Scantron mentioned, not only did 10 tonnes of iron make you nearly invincible, none of the other armor types worked at all. Thus rendering Rank as a worthless stat for a long time.

And then this one time, at band camp, Arcee...

Ah, Black Magic... Used to be able to do 50% damage to just about anyone, fired by just about anyone. I spent the better part of my 'con career trying to make a medic that could use it effectively, but he could never freakin hit anything with it when he used it. He wound up using the SAR instead - the old-time equivalent of the Dol in terms of popularity.

Ironically, I have a bot that uses BM now, and it probably does about as much damage as it did originally, but she has 3 or 4 times the Strength my medic did, and a lot more speed.

Also, wasn't there a second generation Fusion Cannon in there somewhere? The original 3/2 version, and then two variations on the 10/10?

One of the things that happen was we would get 1.X every now and then depending on how big of an addition a certain item was at the time. In my case, I came in around 1.3 which was about the last of the four active mechs. I also remember back then that level four was the creme of the crop which hardly anyone was at. No one dreamed of being at level 10 or 11. It does surprise me that no one mention the original creator's name which I'm drawing a blank on right now. It was him and Ryan a.k.a. Seibertron who originally created HMW and it was Ryan who tried to keep HMW going until Glyph showed up. I want to say there was someone before Glyph who was helping Ryan keep things going but I could be wrong.

Master Maximus wrote:...not only did 10 tonnes of iron make you nearly invincible, none of the other armor types worked at all.

I thought Glyph had mentioned that all armors did work, but that Iron was so messed up that everything else looked broken by comparison? Can't remember though...

Concerning alt-mode classes, the Cassette, Emergency Vehicle, Small Animal, Repair Tank, Battlestation and Rescue Vehicle classes were later additions. The Cassette was just added as a way to give "Action Masters" an alt and Emergency Vehicle was a renaming of the old Ambulance class (same tactics). I can't remember the reason for the introduction of the Small Animal and Repair Tank classes. The Battlestation and Rescue Vehicle alt classes were first unveiled as the "prizes" in some tournament or another (Dark Tidings?). IIRC, the Autobots won that tournament and had exclusive access to Battlestations/Rescue Vehicles for a few months before the 'Cons finally got some of their own.

EDIT

- The ~1 week long experiment wherein Repairers were given the capacity to Repair themselves in battle. Just made the enduring Repairer problem exponentially worse.
- "Retreat" function added to end Arena battles and Missions after a certain number of moves to prevent enduring Repairers/Avoiders from exploiting the system again.

sumowrestler wrote:It does surprise me that no one mention the original creator's name which I'm drawing a blank on right now. It was him and Ryan a.k.a. Seibertron who originally created HMW and it was Ryan who tried to keep HMW going until Glyph showed up.

The original creator was Vir.

Whisper wrote:The old Twin Swords made BB's look like chopsticks...

ahhhhh yes, another popular weapon of choice.

A rammer's evolution.

Brawling - Vibro Axe - Retractable Mecha Fangs - Twin Swords

sumowrestler wrote:I want to say there was someone before Glyph who was helping Ryan keep things going but I could be wrong.

How soon they forget.

Maximus Prime wrote:

sumowrestler wrote:I want to say there was someone before Glyph who was helping Ryan keep things going but I could be wrong.

How soon they forget.

Eh, could be worse, you could be the middle guy in between the guy who can't be remembered and the Glyph guy. Least ya got mentioned.

Good to see ya snurfing around the board there Max.

Alpha Strike wrote:
Eh, could be worse, you could be the middle guy in between the guy who can't be remembered and the Glyph guy. Least ya got mentioned.

Good to see ya snurfing around the board there Max.

Who are you?

Hey MP, I didn't quite forget you. My reference was more for the coding portion of it. I remember you being a mod but not sure if you ever got into the programming side of things.

Way back in my lvl 0-1 days, I swore by the Sword. No FP or skill needed, good damage (for those days) and best of all, no recharge. Then they got changed and again there were "new" and "old" versions, some with no recharge and some with.

Anyway, when I joined Mkall was the reporter. He interviewed players every few weeks. It was great, we got to know our neighbors so to speak.

Back then, Courage Skill and Firepower seemed to be the only stats that actually worked. Vibro-axes, and retractable mecha fangs were must have weapons, as burn said. And a character with 5 tons of Iron was a GOD!

MP, Alpha Strike, and WarHammer were our mods. Some of the best we ever had IMHO. As you can see from previous posts, two of them still lurk around here. So look over your shoulder. You never when WarHammer may materialize and confiscate your beer.

The boot camp. Loved it. Some of the best times of my HMW career. Some of the vets, most of whom I don't see here anymore, kept giving us noobz crappy advice so we closed ranks. By the time people like Burn and Steve started giving us real advice, we didn't trust them. Tammuz and a few others started the Boot Camp thread. There we would experiment and tell each other what worked, we'd talk smack constantly, and make sure low level missions were always slam full on both sides. The boot camp was finally shut down because the number of posts. It was obscene. At least 40 of of us using the thread like a chatroom. Tammuz can probably tell you more than I have, correct a few points and polish it off.

Glitches...the one I remember most clearly was the tactics glitch. XP spent on tactics wasn't counted. It was still there to be used. So people would raise their tactics as high as they would go with the XP they had, then spend the XP on stats. I think most players (me included) at least experimented with it. Then came the abuse. Level 4's that should have been level 0. The bug was fixed. Glyph told them to reset, and the majority of the offenders didn't comply. He threatened a reset and was ignored. He finally found a way to reset stats and tactics without removing armor, or alt-modes. He warned everyone ahead of time, but a lot of people (presumably the exploiters) didn't save their caracter specs. The whining was hilarious.

Scalphunter mini-tounament. Was awesome. All the players who were interested put their teams in the hat. Then we went scalphunting. In order to win, you had to take out every bot on a players team. If I recall correctly, the player who scalped the most complete teams won.

I remember the Dark Tidings Tounament. It was my first one and I loved it, but then politics got involved and the boards turned ugly. The war was going on in the forums instead of the missions. It scared me to death as a noob. I actually stopped using or even reading the boards at all for a long while.

I started using the boards again when OS took over. I saw all the changes going on and couldn't figure them out on my own. I regret all the things I missed during that time.

Odysseus wrote:War is old men talking and young men dying. You know this. Ignore the politics.

Anyway HMW from my point of view.

I am really curious about this.

What actually happened during the Dark Tidings Tournament?

The Master Blaster wrote:I am really curious about this.

What actually happened during the Dark Tidings Tournament?

I don't know really, having not been privvy to most of what went on. What I do know is that the word CHEATING was the buzzword for the forums. DT almost destroyed the community.

Let it lie at that before the thread gets locked.

Okay.



But if anyone here was around when everything went down, please PM me about what happened.

The Master Blaster wrote:I am really curious about this.

What actually happened during the Dark Tidings Tournament?

Oh lord

It was just bad. Chances of a Dark Tidings catastrophe happening again is 0%. The parts of the game that were exploited have been fixed and the attitudes on the board have gotten trmendously better (as this thread is proving).

No need to rehash it more than that. The history of HMW is happening right now. Changes have come quick and we are currently in the middle of it morphing into something better.

Favorite memory of HMW:

free xp!

Man, i miss those days when the xp bug struck...

Yeah, I've been through 2 xp bugs.


Helped out nicely!



haahhahaha

I must say it's amusing that all the now vets get jittery whenever it's mentioned