Vettie Views Returns

Greetings Mech Fans

Its been a long time since Ol’ Vettie penned a Vettie’s Views article. I been thinking a lot about all the new games coming our way and considered doing an View on the list of them. I still might do that, but not today (tonite actually). I don’t have the time right now to put in the research required to give you guys the depth (I) you would require to sink your teeth into the mech titles on the near horizons for us. For my money, Mech Warrior Online will be the closest thing to what we have now and probably the easiest for us to digest or migrate to. I cant help but wonder. Remembering when Battlefield 2142 came out lots of Mech Warriors started playing that game and after a bit of time, slowly back they came. I wonder, will we see that again?

The thing is, this game that draws us to it, night after night, or whatever spare time we can muster or actually MAKE to play, continues to draw us in. The hope for MP4 is still lingering in our heads knowing what Jeho has been through and the possible loss of the game data, but we still hope. Night after night, just look at the open servers, SOMEONE IS PLAYING, even if they are just shooting bots.

Let me think. Mech Warrior 4 Vengeance came out when? The year 2000? I think. WHAT? We are still drawn to a game that is going on, if not already, 12 years old? Yes. Yes we are. This game has everything we like in a game. Great battlefields (maps) that were supplied with the game and the ability to create more of them. And the community did just that. We have tons of maps. What else? Oh yeah, BIG ol robotic styled fighting machines that you can simulate sitting in the cockpit and being able to pilot the thing. Oh that’s not all my friends, it has weaponry that you can change out to suit YOUR requirements. Let us not forget explosions, lots of explosions, big nasty explosions with lots of collateral damage if you are too close.

Yeah this game has all that, but, that’s not the good part. No, no fellow mech warriors, the best part is you. Yeah you, Im talking to you. You get in your machine and you drop at launch point and you go hunting for the other guy. Sometimes alone, sometimes with team mates, but get to hunt other guys in their favourite machine and try to blow them up. Many if not most of you use comms (Teamspeak 2 and 3) and you all get on the same channel and you banter back and forth or you talk about crap that has nothing to do with whats going on, but that is all part of the fun. Its like guys card night with out the cards and no mess to clean up when you log off.

Many of us have been playing together since Vengeance came out. When Mercs arrived, well it was a natural progression (although I waited till the price tag dropped from 50$US to about 30$US before taking the plunge, yeah I know, cheapskate here). Many of you have adopted new names over the years and most of you have kept them the same. I started as Lt. Vettie (a rank with the team I was part of way back then) but eventually dropped that in favour of just “Vettie”. Whatever the name, we are still playing the game.

Well, I was going to just do a mish mash of things on this issue, but as usual, I got carried away talking about my favourite game and you guys.

Let me give you a little update on a personal level. Ol Vettie is divorced. Ms. Vettie just had a real hard time with all the things we went through (my medical stuff, almost losing our home, relocating, kids in college, bank accounts going real south, 401k plans biting the dust no matter how much effort we put into them to keep them on the black side we just seemed to lose money, losing close to a million dollars worth of stock when the company I had (deeply) invested in sold out and on and on). I hold no grudges nor harbour no ill will. Our divorce was clean and easily settled between us.

I now live in a new town, just recently getting an apartment of my own. I prefer a house, but I am unable to do the upkeep required, so I decided on an apartment. I have a good internet connection so I will be joining in the fun on Sunder or whatever server you guys are in. I have a partnership with a friend in a small music store and I buy, trade, sell guitars (and other things). Music has always been my passion. I own a few things I never thought I would, such as a violin, but hey, if I can make a buck or two. What? Can I play it? Well its not Charlie Daniels, but I can get it to make noise. Problem is, when I do try to play (emphasis on try) dogs for miles around try to bury their heads, I dunno whats up with that…

I have a wonderful girlfriend and care lot about her. I am trying to put my life back together. Each day that I am able to get up, well I give thanx for that. Yeah I hurt all the damn time, but you get used to a certain level and you learn to live with it. There are days that are almost too much. The pain is so bad that nothing I do seems to help. Those are the tough days. Those are the days when I actually take some of the meds I am supposed to take daily, but I am not a pill guy. In fact I hate taking meds. ESPECIALLY pain meds. But there are days that I have to, just to be able to make it to the restroom. Thank goodness those days are not very often. My liver issue is not gone, but is in remission (< spelling?). I still have to be careful with my weight and what I eat and drink, but hey, that’s better than the alternative (as far as we know).

Back to Mech Warrior for a minute or seven. I been thinking lately how its kinda cool that not only have we been playing this game for 10 to 12 years, but we are STILL learning things about it. Case and point is the mission play map thing. One of the players brought it up in the Sunderjunkies forums that there were mission play maps out there that we weren’t using. I had remembered trying to get some of those maps to work back when I was running a server. The thing is, 10 to 12 years LATER, we are still running down things we didn’t know, like how to make a map work like a mission play version if it shows up as such, but doesn’t work as such. There are scripts we can change to make things a little different (like the bots) and just so many things. One of the things I find interesting about this game is that as long as it has been around and as many people that have graced our battlefields over the years there have been very few true hackers to the game. Yeah there were some, but there were also many we thought we hackers that simply weren’t, turned out to be part of the way multiplayer worked and the age of the game vs the technology that now exists that didn’t (or wasn’t even conceived) when the game was released. Kudos to MekTek for picking up the torch when Microsoft lost interest in the game and (basically) keeping it hacker free an giving us new mechs, maps (and the individuals that gave us those too), weapons and systems to keep the game as fresh as a 10 to 12 year old game could be.

I know many of you play other games out there, so do I, but we all have one thing in common, we all fall back to MW4 Mercs when we really want to have fun or just blow something up.
W00T! Fellow Mech Warriors, W00T!