The Energon Pub

Fri May 25, 2012 2:58 pm

Hey, whatsup guys, my name is Eddie and I used to play this game way back in the day. A friend got me into this game in the summer of 2003 and it was a lot of fun. You mainly put your bots in the Arena or the Missions and you could buy weapons and armor for them. lol I remember the wait time for putting in some of the better armor was like a whole day in some cases. I guess my question is what happened to the community? It was pretty popular here, like the forums at least used to have a lot more people.

Was it the big reset that changed everything? I remember leading up to it was a huge DEAL, and then it reset all the transformers back to zero. I was still playing HMW here and there, but after the reset I did stop playing it for the most part. Was that what happened with most of the other players?

Its crazy because I even remember some of the guys still post on here. I remember names like Burn and steve(numbers go here) hehe....and this is like from almost 7-9 years ago! And I know that the main guy, Ryan, is a cubs fan. I'm a sox fan tho cough cough sweep....jp lol

If any of the old schoolers could give some insight into what happened here that would be awesome to understand what happened here. Thanks. -Neo

Fri May 25, 2012 5:37 pm

It wasn't the infamous 'HMW2.0' that everyone heralded as the End of Days (or at least the game), but yeah, the reset... wow, it's been what? something like three or four years ago now? anyway... resulted in a lot of people deciding that they lacked the time or interest that would be needed to get their teams back to their former states and chosing to leave.

Biggest cause, though, would likely be classified as 'Real Life Intrusion'. I know that it's what took me out of the game for about three or four years until recently.

Yeah, the community's gotten smaller, but it has its good points; fewer instances of the 'Newbie Of The Day' asking the exact same question that the guy yesterday did; being part of a board-based 'sub-group' or not doesn't have the same... effect on the game it once did; and with fewer people, we can actually do more interesting things than just 'Autobots kill all the Seeker alts, Decepticons kill all the Semi Truck alts' for competitions and such - there's the New Alt Hunt where you can actually claim one of the opposing faction's alts for your own use if you kill enough of them - we vote on new weapons which is how the 'Hellfire Shotgun' ended up in the game recently... Iron isn't the be-all-end-all of Armour anymore like it was for a long time...

Oh, yeah, the alt mode selection cycles automatically about twice a week, meaning that you don't have to wait for it to be done manually, just for the alt you want to come around.

Overall, though, the game's still the same;
Create your transformers, send them into missions (Arena is pretty much a write-off at the moment since there's a bug in the code that displays old battle logs for the arena instead of the one you just fought and since it was considered a good way to get people out of the arena and into missions it was just left alone), give them armor and weapons (It still can take a day for the highest ranked armor to be installed, though)...

With the reset, a lot of the 'doesn't play' TFs were removed, so the TF rankings are maybe a third of what they once were, but it's a bit harder to increase in the standings because while the overall number of people is lower, the percentage of actual players is now higher.

Sat May 26, 2012 3:41 pm

Thanks for the update turbo

It did feel a little like...waaat, I have to start all over again? hehe, its all good tho.

So its mainly the missions now? Jeez, those missions are going to be tough, in the beginning at least. I do remember though that once you get a few points for your transformers, they could really do some damage. And those strafers, oof lol.

Are certain alt modes vastly superior to others? I always remember people always talking about alt modes and they seemed like they could be really important.

The infamous TF leaderboards! Is Skylynx (sp?) still number one? It seemed like the guys up top only battled the same guys over and over, thats how badass they were lol.

News Credits: 7 · Sat May 26, 2012 4:19 pm

Nah.
Post-reset, suddenly all sorts of 'n00bs' took over the game, armed with smartphones and taking all the top spots. Especially Burn was a little sour about that... And still likes looking back to his glory days :lol:

HMW has become all about the missions nowadays. A bug in the Arena makes it impossible to see a result of a matchup. Missions are tough for lower levels, but with quite a few players now having team members at level 8, 9, 10 and even 11, if you get a hit or a repair in against one of those guys, you're pretty much set, even at a low level.
In fact, this is a huge benefit of only starting again now: after the reset, the startup of the game was extremely slow due to no high levels being available. Nowadays, a high level player can easily net 1,000,000 xp a day for his team.
Alt mdes are still important. Strafe and repair have once again become the best skills to have, even more so than Ram used to be (considering one-on-one Arena fights are no longer viable). At the high levels, I guess we still see a lot of the same faces, although the top 8-12 players all seem pretty active... And I don't think there really is one super HMW powerhouse robot: the top 10 'bots are all well matched, even with a level spread from 9-11.
And the super-weapons from the past have been neutered: Battleblades are good, but not amazing, as are Dol-Lazers.

Sat May 26, 2012 6:48 pm

Since when was HMW not all about the missions?

Sun May 27, 2012 5:24 am

Tammuz wrote:Since when was HMW not all about the missions?

Its always been about the missions

Sun May 27, 2012 7:27 pm

Thats what i thought

Tue May 29, 2012 3:40 pm

This game is in desperate need of noobs.

News Credits: 3 · Fri Jun 01, 2012 3:20 am

I nO0b'd my way to the top, and have no shame in it

News Credits: 3 · Fri Jun 01, 2012 3:43 am

Then again by nO0b'd I mean spent damn near 16 hours a day walking the a meat grinder with a target on my back.
I started back when we had 4 factions and I was predacon. With virtually no Maximal opponents I had to do nothing but arena matches. It wasn't until the press got rolled back into the cons that I was able to do good missions again. And I spent a lot of the game to higher level to have much opposition. But as of the last 6 months or so the game has caught up to me. So now I'm just trying to Max out my top 3 by sept.

News Credits: 226 · Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:35 am

You should have it done before September.

Mon Jun 04, 2012 7:14 pm

Tried! Then apparantly my old account was deleted. Shame too, would have had like a ten year old account at this point :sad:

Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:51 am

Ok, that horrendous real life thing means I haven't played for a while, so how do I buy armour and weapons? I can't find it anywhere.

Also wheres the XP calculator gone?

EDIT: Never mind, found 'em