Moving over to a new WordPress blog pretty soon

Trauma is currently working on a design for my new blog so I will be moving over there and ending this one soon.

Wow, really? Yet another clan decided to start some crap with me and paid the price.

Do people never learn? So these guys in the hAZe clan on MW2 decided to talk some trash to me on the game and made some comments about getting them a sandwich. I know these guys liked to play together and "pub stomp" random people so I joined (with a bunch of random pubbies) in on one of their games last night and this is what happened...

I had 27 kills and ONE DEATH against you guys and came within 2 kills of getting a freaking nuke. And I didn't even need to use my UMP or Shotgun to do it. If I would have used one of those weapons, it really would have been a bloodbath on there. LOL

Ya know, for a team that thinks they are so good, you certainly got your butts handed to you by basically one person. And that one person was... What was it you called me? Oh yeah, a "shitty girl gamer." So now how about you guys get ME a sandwich and stop acting like jackasses? When you guys can actually compete with me in the game then you can talk trash.

Congrats, you're just another number on a long list of people who thought they were better than me and ended up feeling the wrath of ViXeN. While you're in Vixyland, make you sure you tell Jonas, Stricken and PBNJ that I said hi. ;O)

Okay, who is next? Would anyone else like to take me on while i'm handing out butt-kickings lately? LOL

Natural Enemies falls to Vixy in a 4v1 during a scrim... LOL

Yes, you read that correctly. LOL

Team Elit3's friend, Jonas, who is the leader of another so-called "top team" of assholes called Natural Enemies, decided he wanted a scrim with my team. Moderno warned me that Jonas may be a hacker because of a scrim they had with Area51 but I decided to go ahead and set it up. We just played a game of SnD Saturday on Skidrow (yay) and actually beat them. But HOW we beat them is what caused the poop to hit the fan. LOL I was the last person alive and was on defense against 4 of their guys, including Jonas himself. I ended up killing all 4 of them with just my trusty UMP-45 and they proceeded to rage and leave the lobby. Jonas went crazy after that and wanted to duel me in a 1v1 game. Now I knew something was up because if he couldn't beat me with 3 teammates, how would he beat me alone? I figured he was going to use hacks like Moderno said so I said I would do it on the condition that he uses WeGame or something to record it. He refused so its definitely not going to happen and I'm thinking Moderno was right. Jonas must think I'm freaking stupid.

And our scrim with Team Elit3 hasn't happened yet. It seems they are quitting the game after the mw2tournament fiasco. Yeah, they're mad. ;O)

My feud with Team Elit3

For those of you who haven't seen the endless drama on the mw2tournaments.com and GameBattles forums, I have been involved in a pretty public feud with this so-called "top team" on the game. It started when two of the guys (Strick3n and PBNJ) from Team Elit3 decided to flame Moderno from Area51. He happens to be one of the admins for MW2tournaments.com and they don't like the way he is running things so they started publicly flaming him. Moderno is a pretty nice guy and most people think he is doing an excellent job so he didn't deserve to be flamed like that. And I think of him as a friend so I had to get involved and I'm sure you can imagine how things went from there. LOL These guys pretty much flamed most of the teams in the competitive community so I actually had a lot of people behind me for this one, which made it more fun. ;O)

It started out with some trash-talk between myself and Stricken, which quickly escalated into a challenge. First, stricken, PBNJ and Assassin wanted to beat me in the game. Last week I played all three of them individually in 1v1 duels (first to 10) and won 10-7, 10-8 and 10-2. Now Stricken wants to have a scrim against HGN, which is hardly a fair fight. Elit3 is an experienced competitive team with wins over teams like Drop 30 and Area 51 while most of the people on our team have very little experience, outside of our game-battles wins.

Now its gotten to the point where our feud has spilled over to the MLG GameBattles forum too...



So I suppose I will have to set up a scrim and see what we can do just so they will shut up. I don't know what they think they will accomplish if they beat us. Their problem was with me and they still couldn't take me down in a 1v1 situation. LOL I'll let you guys know what happens.

Updates

Unfortunately, we entered in the MW2tournaments.com tournament and lost in the first round. However we did make it to #8 on MLG's GameBattles for MW2 so at least we have that. Considering that most of the guys on the team had no competitive experience at all, I can honestly say I am proud of what we accomplished. Myself and Zeran were the only two people who have played games competitively so that is quite a feat.

Oh and for those who don't know, I competed in HGN's 1v1 tournament and was narrowly eliminated by Zeran in the second round. Damn you, Zeran! LOL I figured that Zeran, Kjaer and Hopeless would be my biggest challenges in the tournament if I had to play them. The duel was held on scrapyard, which is one of my worst maps so I knew right away that it was going to be a challenge. Anyway, I put up a good fight but ended up losing 7-6 so congrats to Zeran on that win! I really believe you are quickly becoming one of the best players on the game right now. The videos will be uploaded on our channel in a couple days and I just want to thank everyone who watched the livestream. We had a total of 278 viewers at one point during the stream!

Sexist Trolls in the Gaming Community

I think this sums up the problem perfectly.

Anyway, this is going to be a very long post but it will help people understand why I do and say the things you see in games and on forums. This is a story about how, much like Dr. Frankenstein, misogynists in the gaming community created their very own monster. And much like in the story of Frankenstein, that monster came back to bite them in the ass. ;O)

Before I get started, I want to mention a few things. I will probably be posting this on several forums so I want to quickly introduce myself for those who don't know me. My name is Rachel Catalano and I am a competitive gamer. I also happen to be a female gamer.

The second thing I want to say is that I am going to let you in on a little secret that many people outside of my clans and circle of friends in the gaming community don't know about.... The ego-tripping, trash-talking, queen of fragging known as "ViXeN" is an exaggerated version of myself created for the sole purpose of pissing off misogynists in the gaming community. While I do have a lot in common with "ViXeN" those who know me well also know that I act quite a bit different toward people I actually like. LOL

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Beginning - How it all started
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back when I was a kid, my older brother actually got me into video games. I was watching him play a little game called Tribes and it looked like fun so I decided to give it a shot myself. Even though I had never tried a game before that, I seemed to pick it up quickly and did pretty well. A few weeks later I was out-playing my brother and several of his friends. A month after that, I was invited to join one of the top competive teams on the game at the time, Strategic Team Dominance. This was where it all started for me. They had another female gamer named StarDust who was an incredible player. I mean I was pretty good myself at the time but she was on a completely different level. I was amazed watching her just completely dominate most of the guys on the servers but what was even more amazing was the amount of hatred toward her I witnessed when I was playing. A lot of guys targeted her with their anger and I couldn't figure out why at the time but not long after that I understood. StarDust not only took me under her wing and taught me how to be a better player, she also taught me three other important things... Not to take any crap from anyone, not to let anyone tell me I can't do something and not to let people chase me away from gaming.

With my skill level increasing every week, STD decided that it was time for me to play in my first Tribes scrim. I ended up with over 40 points and 3 flag-caps, which seemed to upset a few people on the other team. When I went was reading a thread on the forum about the scrim, I noticed that two of them were calling me names (slut and bitch mostly) and saying I suck even though I had never done anything to them, other than help my team win our scrim. And the kitchen comments started of course. That was just my first taste of the sexism in the community and it was only going to get worse from there. Much worse.

As the months passed and I continued to get better and better, I joined other really good competitive teams after STD eventually died. It seemed like the better I became and the better the teams were that I joined, the more the hatred toward me seemed to increase.

Here is just a small sample of the things I had to deal with from guys in the gaming community:

* I had people threatening to beat me, rape me, kill me, etc... And considering my age at the time, this was pretty upsetting.

* I had my pics photoshopped and posted on forums. The last time it had the word “whore” and a picture of a penis added to the picture.

* I had pics posted on picture-rating types of sites, without my permision. Usually with some pretty horrible things written about me in the profile for the photo.

* I have had people tell me that they hope I get cancer and die.

* I had the TW Forum jackasses spend hours invading every mIRC channel I was in.... I’d kick/ban them and then they would change their IP and come back with a new name.

* I had one small group of haters harass me constantly for well over a year.

* I had been called pretty much every name you can imagine.

* I had dozens of flame threads posted about me.

* I had people make an anti-vixy team just for the sole purpose of playing (and failing 0-2) against my clans.

* I have had my clans specifically targeted anytime I am a co-leader in one of them.

* Like I said, I had been threatened countless times. Ruckas said he would “deck” me if he ever met me in real life. And one person threatened to kick my ass if I showed up at the old UVALAN gaming event that was held every year. I was too young to go anyway but that is just crazy.

* I had one person tell me he was going to harass me until I quit playing the game which didn’t happen.

* I had people follow me around on different servers just to flame and try to team-kill me so that I couldn’t enjoy the game. It basically got to the point where I could only play on servers that had some of my friends (or people who didn’t tolerate stupidity) as admins.

* No matter what I accomplished, these people always said I sucked.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other elite female gamers with similar experience
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At first I didn't understand why they hated me so much but then I realized that they were doing the same thing to several other female gamers in the communities.

Jupe - She was the original leader of Estrogen back on T2 and she was constantly harassed by these people. They were always telling her that's she ugly, looked like a zombie, etc... And Jupe let it get to her a lot which is why I always tried to shift their hatred entirely on me. I had developed a chip on my shoulder and I knew I could handle anything they dished out at that point.

Envee - One of the other best female gamers around and the amount of hatred she gets pretty much rivals what I deal with...

Maxine - She is an older player and the best engineer on Tribes but was constantly harassed by other players.

Ophy and abentwookie - Two of the nicest people I have ever met in gaming and both are constantly targeted by these clowns just because they are amazing players.

Brootal - A great MW2 who was a member of my team at one point. She was a great CQC Rusher and would frequently enrage guys into calling her every name imaginable.

The list goes on and on and on. Female players just can’t seem to win...

If you don’t beat the guys, you suck.

If you DO beat the guys, you suck.

If you don’t post pics, you’re either a guy or you’re fat.

If you DO post pics, you’re just looking for attention.

If you don’t flirt with all the guys and act nice, you’re a bitch.

If you DO flirt with all the guys, you’re just looking for attention.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Rules" for being a female gamer if you don't want to be targeted as much.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have noticed a few interesting things over the years, though. They may not bother you as much if you kiss their asses enough, downplay your skills, and defend the guys whenever one of the other female players points out the rampant sexism and idiotic behavior. A good example would be when Half the Sky defended the guys after Jupe flamed them for posting pics of another female player on the old tribalwar forum. Naturally Half-the-Sky tried to place the blame on the victim by claiming that she shouldn’t have given out her pics to anyone.

Well, the person in question said the guy who decided to stab her in the back was a friend and you would think that you could actually trust a friend, but that isn’t always the case. I learned that myself once. Jupe pointed out the fact that they were the ones who posted the pics so the blame belongs on them, which was 100% correct. We seem to enjoy playing the “blame the victim so the other person doesn’t have to take any responsibility for his own actions” game in our society though.

Anyway, if you act like Half-the-Sky they may not flame you as much, but if you are a female gamer who exhibit any of the following traits, you can expect to become a target:

1. You are a highly skilled gamer.

2. You know you are a highly skilled gamer.

3. You have no problems with letting others know you are a highly skilled gamer.

4. You don’t take crap from anyone.

5. When a guy trashtalks, you call them out.

6. You are a serious gamer (me, Maxine, Vesta, jupe, etc..) instead of a cheerleader type of gamer who just sits around flirting and talking.

7. You beat the male players mercilessly (Note: The better the players are that you beat, the more people will hate you, which is why I usually go after the top players.)

And don't even think you will ever earn their respect by playing better. That will have the opposite effect. I constantly tried to prove myself since my first day and I have accomplished more than 99% of my critics, yet I still get disrespected by certain people. I mean I know I have plenty of respect from a lot of the vets of the competitive community, especially former teams i’ve played for and against, but for some reason some people in the community refuse to admit that i’m a very good player, no matter what I do to prove it. I can play better than them constantly in pubs and pickups and even beat their teams in scrims/matches and I still hear the “vixy sucks” comments.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creating the "Monster" - Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will admit that I let all of the hate get to me at first and it definitely left a scar. After my first couple of years, I even quit playing games entirely for several months at one point. I had just had enough of it. But then I remembered what StarDust told me... Don't let people chase me away from gaming. That was the moment when I decided make a stand. Not just for me but for the entire female gaming community.

What these guys didn't realize was that they had just created a monster with their constant harassment. I learned to use their hatred as motivation to become better and better. I spent months learning from the best players around and studied every part of gaming: teamwork, tactics, rushing, defending, 1on1 dueling, flag-capping, etc.. I also recorded my game-play so I could learn from my own mistakes and watched other top players to see what mistakes they made. I also developed a love of trash-talk which really made people mad. And I exaggerated my own personality a bit just because I knew they hated it so much.

I basically became everything they hated. I became a female gamer who played and trash-talked even better than most of the guys and that did not sit well with a lot of people. They didn't know to react to me. A lot of people still don't... LOL Now that I knew what really made these guys mad, I decided to pay them back for all of the bullshit I and other female gamer had received. It was time to sink that knife a little deeper into their fragile little psyches. ;O) 

Any time I joined a new gaming community, I would make it a point to find and beat some of the top players on the game because I knew that was the best way to bring out the sexist guys in the community. And once I knew who they were, I made it my mission to absolutely crush their egos in every way possible. Maybe this makes me as bad as they are, I don't know. But I do know that this could have been prevented if they would have just treated me like any other player right from the start. But they didn't and this is the consequence of their actions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I came to the conclusion that Maxine was right in the discussion we had a few years ago. The gaming community really is still just some boys club and we’re never going to get the respect we’ve more than earned, it doesn’t really matter what we do to prove ourselves. With that said, I have only one thing left to say to these trolls: I don’t know what your problem is, maybe you’ve been rejected too many times by women in real life so you want to take it out on people over the internet (way to hide behind a computer), maybe your fragile egos can’t handle being rocked by female players, maybe you’re just some ignorant rednecks, whatever… I don’t really care at this point. You can pretty much take your respect (I don’t want it) and misogynistic little boys club and shove it up your asses.

As I said countless times, you can flame all you want and tell me I suck, but i’ll still continue to be the one rocking you every single day in pubs, scrims, PUs, and matches. And there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it except whine and flame. And if you think you will fair better than all of the other guys who thought they could beat me in a game, I am not hard to find. Just don't be surprised when you are left raging and crying like everyone else. ;O)

Every time you guys set a new line in the sand and dare me to cross it, I absolutely will. Every time you tell me I can't do something, I will. Every time you tell me I can't beat a certain player, I'll beat him. 

HGN's Friday Night Fragging Fun

So for those of you who don't know, HGN has a little get together on Modern Warfare 2 every Friday night, where we have some scrims against each other and play fun games like that "Micheal Myers" thing. While it is mainly for members of our HGN community, non-members are also welcome as long as we have space available. It usually fills up fast though.

The only requirements are to have a mic (we use teamspeak) and don't be a dick. We usually end up with a full lobby every week so don't be late if you want to participate.

Here are some screenies from past events.

HGN 1v1 Tournament

On the 13th, HGN will be sponsoring our very first tournament! It will be a one-one-one tournament between members of HGN's casual and competitive. Anyone in the HGN community is welcome to join and compete. Winner will get the Resurgence DLC pack and possibly some other prizes. Oh, it will also be streamed live and Spooner will be doing commentary.

(BFB) MW2: Commando Cartoon {ORIGINAL.}

A funny cartoon someone made for MW2. And its sooo true. LOL

Well, I am leading a team again!

HGN decided to create a competitive MW2 team for our community and they put me in charge of it so I have a lot of work to do. I'm setting us up some scrims, we have just joined game-battles and may even play in the upcoming tournament on MW2Tournaments.com which will actually be for prizes. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. We also have our new website going and Spooner is hard at work adding new videos to our YouTube channel. Here is our current MLG Game-Battles roster. We will also be adding Mr. Pain, Re-Owner and Resistor soon.

 

My CTF Capping Guide from the MW2 forum

I decided to post my guide on here and update it a bit.

This guide is mostly for lone cappers because you can't really depend on having help in pubs. I may make a capping guide for clans later. I don't care for this game that much but I usually do a capping guide for every game so here we go...

Classes

CTF is my favorite mode so I currently have 4 (my 5th class is for FFA, TDM, and SnD) different classes that I use for capping, depending on the situation. I know that some cappers prefer using a handgun with the tactical knife but I don't have any experience with that so I'm going with what works really well for me. My opinions may change when I hit 70 but this is what works at the moment.

Capper 1 UMP with Silencer, Magnum with Tact Knife, Claymore, smoke grenade, Marathon, Lightweight, Ninja. I prefer using Ninja on this one because commando with the tact knife is cheap. But if you're new to capping, using commando will be helpful.

This one is made for pure speed and elusiveness. The first thing I do is place the claymore at some point in the route I plan to use to get back to our flag in case I have a chaser on me. It works pretty well. And I like to use the smoke grenade for multiple reasons. Its useful for going through open areas, its useful for tossing at the flag if you know where their campers are, and sometimes if I'm playing an open map like Wasteland, I like to toss the smoke nade in a different direction to divert a defender's attention away when I'm approaching the flag. You wouldn't believe how often it works.

Capper 2 UMP with Silencer, G18 with silencer , stun grenade, tactical insertion, Marathon, Cold-Blooded, and Ninja. This is my stealth capper class. I use the tactical insertion for another quick capping attempt after I die. Its easy to catch defenders off guard right after they kill you.

The next two classes are for kicking some ass. ;O)

Capper 3 ACR with Red Dot, Spas-12, frag grenade, stun grenade, Marathon, Stopping Power, Ninja. If you see the Spas-12 in my hands, it means I'm coming to kick your ass before I take your flag. This is the loadout I use when they have a lot of defense on the other side or I'm just annoyed. LOL

Capper 4 ACR with Red Dot, Akimbo G18, Tactical Insertion, stun grenade, Maration, Lightweight, and Commando. This is another good one for kicking ass. And I use commando to eliminate fall damage (I use some crazy routes on some maps) I rarely knife with this class. This is probably one of the cheaper classes in the game but when you're playing against a stacked team in a pub, it helps even the odds a bit.

Knowing the maps

The most important thing for any good capper is to memorize every single part of the map. You need to know the best capping routes, where you can break off into an alternate route if necessary, where every object is that can be used as cover, where people usually camp, where people usually try to cutoff a capper, etc...

Awareness

You always see people talking about awareness in almost any type of fps gaming guide because its one of the most important things for any fsp gamer. This is especially important for CTF. You need to know what is going on around you at all times. You need to listen for sounds, watch for movements, know where both flags are on the map when they get taken, constantly be looking around and moving, watching areas where people like to camp, etc...

Route-Running

One thing that always makes me laugh is when I see someone grab a flag and then basically run in a straight line back to their base. Needless to say, they die more often than not. One thing you need to do is to learn how to zigzag and use cover (trees, pipes, vehicles, anything that obstructs the chaser's view) while running. The majority of my deaths as capper happen either immediately when I grab the flag or when I get back to my own flag area to discover half the opposing team waiting for me. I don't die (except on a couple of maps that I'm still learning) as often on the run back to my flag area because I make it very difficult for people to hit me.

Do NOT run in straight line, learn to use cover while running, and do NOT use the same route over and over because it makes you predictable and an easy target.

Before I end this, I need to discuss one important aspect of becoming an elite capper. You absolutely MUST forget about kd/ ratio. Don't look at it and dont worry about it. A truly elite capper is probably going to die and die often. As a result the elite capper will probably have more deaths than kills. Why? Because the main difference between an elite capper and a good capper is that the good capper will often go for unneccessary kills on his way to or from the enemy flag. When you do this, two things happen: First, they know you are coming. Second, they know what direction you are coming from. An elite capper will ignore potential kills unless the person is a serious threat to your cap on the way back (camping a spot that you plan to run past) or they are directly defending the flag.

A true test for any capper is to grab the flag and get back to your own flag without firing a single shot but that can be difficult sometimes. But regardless, you should NOT go for a kill unless you absolutely have to... Remember, your main goal is the flag so don't get distracted and don't give away your position.

One time in a CTF match I played on another game, I actually went 7-33 while capping. And in the end, my team won because of the 5 caps I had. That's what really matters above all to a true capper... Capping the flag. Don't worry about the rest and you'll find yourself capping easily.

I'm going to make some videos of my capping routes for each map sometime next week and post them on youtube. I'm not going to give away all of my routes but I'll post one good one for each map. I'm sure some people are saying, "oh what could she possibly know, she's only been playing a little while and i've been playing since the game was released!" Well, I've seen experienced people on this game who run bad routes and don't use cover very well. I've only been playing for a month and already average 3-4 caps a game and have only had a handful of games where I didn't cap at all. I've also been a capper on nearly every fps game I have played for the past 10 years, I've been a capper on several very successful CTF teams, and even won a tournament for capping on a game. So yeah, I know a thing or two about the subject.

------------------

UPDATE

Well, I joined a scrim last with -IA- against [LsD] and it gave me a few more ideas for my CTF Guide.When I joined the game and we were waiting to start a couple of the [LsD] guys decided to mock my name for some reason. And of course that irritated me and I wanted to completely own them in the scrim. So when the map started, I picked my ass-kicking capper class and immediately rushed their flag area. The big difference between doing this in a pub against random players and in a scrim against an organized clan is that the clans generally have good defenses in place. That was the case with [LsD] so I died repeatedly. I did manage to kill several of them in the process but I wasn't able to grab their flag. This went on for about 3 minutes into the first half and the score was still 0-0, so at this point I finally decided to chill and use a method that works. So what I did next is....

Learn to Adapt

Having problems with Tubers? Is that annoying sniper on the roof taking you out everytime you touch the flag? Is your route being shut down everytime by clever defenders? Being able to adapt to situations is another important quality in a capper. If what you are doing isn't working you need to try something different. Experiment against their defense and find a weakness. Even though the [LsD] guys thought it was funny to mock me, I have to admit they had an excellent defense and my method of rushing in with guns blazing was failing miserably. So I tried something different.....

Timing and Patience

These are two more things any good capper needs to learn. After my many failed attempts at rushing the [LsD] flag, I decided to take another approach and waited nearby for one of the other cappers on my team to grab. After he grabbed it and ran off around a corner, two of the chasers went after him and killed him. This left one person behind guarding the flag so I immediately took him out, snatched their flag and ran in the opposite direction of the original capper, which meant the other two guys were out of position to chase me. This resulted in an easy cap for me and the other good thing about it was that it forced the defenders to start checking that spot (and others) to be sure that I wasn't hiding there again.

So one my next run, I went to the roof of the building near the flag and waited for my other capper again. After he came in and was killed before he even touched the flag, they started checking the spots to make sure I wasn't going to come rushing at the flag again. So while they were distracted, I killed them from the roof and then jumped down and snatched their flag. Again, another easy cap.So now in just a couple of minutes, I had capped against them twice and at the end of the scrim they didn't mock me anymore.

I joined the Home Gardening Network!!

I joined a little gaming community/clan on MW2 called HGN: HumbleGamingNation. I don't know them well yet but they seem to be an ok group of people. And of course my loyalty is still to Estrogen but it looks like we will be moving to another game (possibly BC2) so I joined these guys to have people to play with.

Yeah, yeah, I know the words "Humble" and "Vixy" just don't sound right together but still... ;O)
Anyway, feel free to check out the youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HGNation

Ohh nice! My new logo for my upcoming myspace

Wookie is currently designing a new logo for my new myspace page and it will also replace the ViXeN logo on my blog. She is still making some changes and hasn't removed the backgrounds in
the pics she used but so far it looks great. Click on the image to see the full
sized logo.

Estrogen Elite at the next Blizzcon and Quakecon!

Myself, abentwookie, and kalli will be attending Blizzcon this year and then we (along with 3 other core members: ) will also be at QuakeCon. We may add other events to our calender.

Hey welcome to my new blog.

I want to thank the wookster for creating this and my new myspace page. She did a great job as usual. I'll mostly be using this blog to discuss gaming but I may get into some other things as well.

Some people who used to know me from other games may wonder what I have been up to lately so I'll start with a quick update. As many people know, I have been on an extended break from competitive gaming for a while now but I haven't stopped gaming entirely. Last year I actually spent a couple of months playing an FPS games called Combat Arms and became the #1 ranked player for DeathRoom (twice) and SnowValley (once)

And now I am officially back from my break and playing Modern Warfare 2. I had originally planned to make my return to competitive gaming with Estrogen Elite on this game but it is a little disappointing so we may play another game instead. However my plan to take this team pro hasn't changed. So watch your backs, PMSclan. You're about to have some serious competition.

I am even thinking about attending some tournaments on my own again to see if I still have it. So yeah, I'm not even close to being done yet. ;O)

Maybe FPS games and gamers have evolved while I was away from gaming and maybe I'm already turning into a dinosaur. Or maybe FPS games are doing the same thing MMO's have done since World of Warcraft was released. MMO's are all being dumbed down to be like World of Warcraft because of it's success. What this means is that we are stuck with a bunch of dumbed down cookie cutter games designed for casual gamers. Whatever the case may be, FPS games have changed and I don't like it all.

I actually started noticing these changes long before I left, the problem just seems to have gotten much worse recently.

Here is what I'm talking about:

1. FPS games are not MMO games. Let me repeat that... They are NOT mmo games. When I load up a shooter, I expect to be able to use any of the weapons immediately. I don't want to level up for weeks just to be able to use a shotgun or whatever other weapon I want. If I want to grind away for hours, I'll go play WoW. Enough with the leveling crap in FPS games.

2. It seems that FPS games are becoming more and more noob friendly (easy) every year. I only needed to play MW2 for a couple of days to notice several irritating things. The helicopter stuff is beyond stupid. Could they possibly make it a little easier for people to get instant kills that require no skill? I remember back on the latest Tribes game (Tribes Vengeance) I was complaining about how they had dumbest down the series to make it easier for casual gamers to play. I had made a comment several times about how a company would one day add a nuke weapon to a game that would instantly kill everyone on the map. Well, that day arrived with the MW series. I told everyone it would happen because of the way companies were adding more and more over-powered weapons and noobtubes to games but no one believed me. Now they do. LOL And its only going to get worse of course. After the way MW2 has sold tons of copies, you can bet the dumbing down of our FPS games will never end now.

These game companies are making FPS games so easy that any noob can start playing and easily kill a skilled vet with no trouble at all. And considering the amount of time and effort us oldschool gamers put into becoming good, that is more than a bit irritating.

3. The CTF in fps games now seems to require very little actual skill or strategy. Which is good because most players don't really play it. They just camp for kills like we're playign TDM. People don't know how to defend the flag, cover cappers, etc... Its the same with other objective based modes as well.

4. FPS games seem to be all about graphics now instead of challenging and fun gameplay.

5. The lack of dedicated servers is annoying. I hope this doesn't become a trend.