Metal Gear Online

Metal Gear Online, commonly abbreviated MGO is an online multiplayer spinoff of the Metal Gear series. The game was officially unveiled in Kojima Productions' 20th Anniversary Part of the Metal Gear series. While Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops featured optional online game modes that were both dubbed "Metal Gear Online", this incarnation of the online game was initially announced as a separate standalone product based on the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots gameplay and setting, but has since been announced as part of Metal Gear Solid 4. A standalone version was released in Japan on July 17, 2008.

On June 21, 2012, the servers for Metal Gear Online will no longer be available. In the lead up to its closure, Konami will bring down the Metal Gear Online shop, and character creation will go offline in April. The three expansion packs will be free to download until the servers are shut down for good.

Gameplay
The game features 16-player online battles. Players can upgrade skills that their character can use such as hacking SOP, CQC mastery, enhanced lock-on, and more, all of which can be leveled up. The player can keep tabs on allies and enemies with nanomachines.

The SOP system from Metal Gear Solid 4 was implemented through a link-system where teammates could connect to each other and share information such as location and where friendlies are aiming. The system, however, could be hacked with an SOP plug, allowing the opposing team to receive information regarding enemy positions.

The player is allowed to customize their character in variable clothing, face paint, gender, voice, voice tone, ethnicity, and whether they are young or old. The player can collect reward points in gamplay to achieve more customizations for their clothing. However one should note that any and all clothing is simply decorative and does not change the gamplay or give the players a tactical advantage in any way, shape, or form, with the possible exception of using certain varieties of clothing and face paint to camoflauge oneself on certain areas of certain maps (which wouldn't work the same way as Snake's octocamo that makes him invisible given to his camo index).

The player can also train other player's in a training room (assuming they have the necessary wi-fi to host a game) and can choose which players they graduate. Depending on player's character gender and selected voice, they will each hold their own unique speech. See: MGO Graduation Speeches

Beta testing
An online beta test was released exclusively in Japan, which occurred from August 20, 2007 through September 3, 2007. The beta was only open to 3,000 players. In addition to announcing a ship date and hardware bundle for Metal Gear Solid 4, SCEA revealed that a beta for the game's online component will happen before the June release. Metal Gear Solid 4 will come with a "starter pack" that will be expanded upon with extra content.

In North America, the multiplayer beta test for Metal Gear Online was made available to download on April 16th. The beta test was originally scheduled to begin on April 21st and end on May 6th, but high levels of server traffic had forced Konami to delay the start of the beta until the servers were stabilized.

On April 11th 2008, Konami announced an open Metal Gear Online beta for Europe and will be available for download from April 17 and will be entirely open to everyone who downloads it until May 6.

On April 21, the open beta was launched in Japan and Europe. Due to mass appeal, many gamers applied to participate in the beta, but the servers were met with severe user traffic within the opening minutes, resulting in a system wide crash. The beta therefore, had been postponed in Japan and Europe, as well as the launch of the North America beta, so Konami could fix and stabilize the servers. According to the Metal Gear Online teaser website, the beta was aimed to begin at midnight of April 25th, with a comment mentioning a possible further delay if the solution hadn't then been resolved. Konami had also set the new beta test closure date on May 11, 2008.

Release
Metal Gear Online went live on June 12th, 2008, the release day of Metal Gear Solid 4. It featured all the same levels and gameplay modes as the Beta, as well as adding two extra stages, totaling five stages, and a new gameplay mode, totaling at seven gameplay modes.

Skills
Key: * = Unlockable Skill ' = Preset Skill

Experience Level System
In addition to ranks, MGO has an exp level for a player's skill as well. These levels go from 0 to 22. What the game takes into consideration when it comes to levelingis as follows:

-Your score at the end of the round

-The number of players above you on the score board at the end of the round.

-The number of players below you on the score board at the end of the round.

-The individual level of each player above and below you at the end of the round.

The game will reward you experience for each player who placed below you, and remove experience for each player above you. How much you lose or gain is dependent on each player's level, as well as how close your scores were together. In summary:

-If you play against higher-level people and finish better than them - you gain levels fast.

-If you play against same level people and finish better than them - you gain levels slowly.

-If you play against lower level people and not finish in the top half - you lose a lot of levels.

The player doesn't get any real reward from this. If anything, level 4 gives them the opportunity to host Combat Training as an Instructor should they manage to accumulate 20 hours of playtime, and be already graduated by an instructor of combat training themselves.

Many players would also use accomplices, in order to easily gain ranks or achievements which would require significant time or skill to achieve during regular play, which would involve two or more people killing each other to get kill streaks of headshots, effectively termed "boosting" in order to have themselves recognized by elite players to to get into a team for "Survival" or "Tournament" matches where elitism is rampant in forming such teams. Like all forms of cheating however, this more often than not tends to not work in the player's favor, and their actual skill wouldn't match up with the level they are recognized as having, hence, would be easily defeated, and eventually cut down to size in rank by other players who also may or may not be cheating themselves in some form or another.

Expansions
Expansions add functionality, such as new characters and maps, to Metal Gear Online. Konami plans to release expansion packs periodically. The Expansions appear to be named after the themes of Metal Gear games that have been released.

Gene Expansion
The first expansion pack for Metal Gear Online, titled "Gene Expansion", was officially announced at Metal Gear Online's homepage and was released on July 17, 2008 at a cost of $11.99 US or $14.99 US with an additional character slot. Gene Expansion features three new maps, titled Coppertown Conflict, Tomb of Tubes, and Virtuous Vista; two new playable characters (Meryl and Johnny), each with their own special abilities; a new game mode called "Survival"; and a new reward system. The reward system awards players points for playing the new game mode which they can exchange for items to customize their character in the new Reward Shop. Players will also be able to create female characters. Also, the skills feature has two new additions: "Box Move" which allows the character to move faster while hiding in a box, and "Quick Recovery" that increases the speed at which the character can help teammates recover from being knocked out, as well as decreasing the time it takes to wake themselves up.

Meme Expansion
The second expansion pack for Metal Gear Online, titled "Meme Expansion", was announced on Metal Gear Online's homepage and was released on November 25th, 2008. It costs £6.49 for British users. It comes with two new characters (Liquid Ocelot and Mei Ling) each with their own special abilities. Three new maps were released Silo Sunset, Winter Warehouse and Forest Firefight. In addition to this a new game mode was released called Stealth Deathmatch. Also included with the update was a slight change to the user interface and the Rosemary lobby replaced with the Meryl lobby. The Meme expansion does however require the user to purchase the previous Gene Expansion. Meme's new maps have also been added to the Survival mode. New items exclusive to the expansion included the Crocodile Cap, an Afro wig, and the top and bottom portions of the Ghillie Suit.&nbsp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLmWPcZk9Ao

Scene Expansion
The third expansion pack for Metal Gear Online, titles "Scene Expansion", was announced on playstation.blog and was released on March 17th, with preorder being available from March 10th. It will feature two new characters (Raiden and Vamp), each with their own special abilities. The Scene Expansion pack also features 3 new maps, titled Outer Outlet, Hazard House, and Ravaged Riverfront. In addition, exclusive items such as various wigs, a mask made in the likeness of Robbie from the Silent Hill series, a Hockey Mask, Haven Trooper armor, bikinis, topless males, and some Eastern European-style equipment (eg, a hunting cap, a leather coat, and leather gloves) are included in the expansion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbUnDSkx5TI As of June 16th, players who purchased the Scene Expansion have access to the map Icebound Inferno. This map was taken from the Communication Towers area of Shadow Moses. Players who purchased the Scene Expansion can now use Old Snake outside of Sneaking matches as a unique character.

Subsistence
In the online version of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, players played as members of the three units: KGB, Ocelot Unit and GRU. On some servers the highest scoring player could play as the leader of the Ocelot and GRU units: the highest scoring player in the Ocelot Unit would play as Ocelot, while the leader of the GRU unit was Major Raikov. In contrast, the lowest scoring player in the KGB unit is given control of Sokolov. Naked Snake also is a playable character in the game. Other special characters include Reiko Hinomoto from Rumble Roses, who came in a Heel and Face versions, one for each team. In addition, it was also the only game so far that allowed the player to use a flamethrower during gameplay. The Japanese servers were closed in December 26, 2006, the North American servers in April 2, 2007 and the European servers in October 30, 2007.

The game was made up primarily of games in which players compete against each other for points. The following modes are featured:

The Maps in Subsistence were


 * Lost Forest
 * Ghost Factory
 * City Under Siege (Later ported into the PS3 online as Urban Ultimatum.)
 * Killhouse A
 * Killhouse B
 * Killhouse C
 * Svyatogornyj East
 * Mountaintop (Krasnogorje)
 * Graniny Gorki Lab
 * Pillbox Purgatory
 * High Ice
 * Brown Town (Later ported as Coppertown Conflict into the PS3 online.)

Portable Ops
In the single player game, players will be able to recruit soldiers into their unit as part of the story. These soldiers will then be able to be used in the online portion of the game. However characters that die in the RC mode die permanently and can not be used in single player. These characters are then offered to the opponent, to become part of their team. Because of this you can surrender a match to save the rest of your unit. Characters that die in VR are not killed permanently. This could only be played through a wireless ad-hoc network on the PSP.

Peace Walker
In this incarnation, up to 6 players would be able to choose their own character skins, which could be collected from singleplayer gameplay as "Verses Ops Uniforms," for decorative purposes as well as the various suits they had accesss to in singleplayer for tactical purposes in multiplayer. Players could also recieve downloadable uniforms were also available to players via Passcodes and DLC. They would aslo be permitted to choose which weapons to use in gameplay, which had been collected in singleplayer, however equipment would be restricted to a shield and Fulton balloons, the latter of which would be used to neutralize (not recruit) stunned or tranquilized players by non-lethal means. (See: Peace Walker weapons and equipment) Players also had the option of CO-OP for a multitude of missions. There were missions that involved 2-player CO-OP on conventional sneaking missions and 4-player CO-OP vs. Boss battles, both of which were available in story missions and Extra Ops missions. Players had the option of playing as Snake, assuming they initially managed to register as his character before anyone else in the server. Players could also choose characters of certain traits that would help boost the effectiveness of the mission being carried out. (See: Character Traits Peace Walker Section) Some of the Extra Op missions excluded Snake from gameplay, leaving the players with recruited characters. Players also had this could also only be played though a wireless ad-hoc network on the PlayStation Portable, however in the newly released Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection has ported this onto the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 where online play is compatable through PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, respectively. Each Versus-Op can only still be played byonly 6 players, however.

Future
It's unknown at this time what a future MGO installment will look like, and whether there will be one in the upcoming Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance remains unlcear at this time. So far Kojima Productions has yet to make any official announcement relating to this otherwise. Though there has been speculation arisen with MGS5, and how he will carry over the same gamplay of MGO2 towards the upcoming MGO3. Yet nothing concrete outside of internet rumors.

Metal Gear Online shut down
On February 15, 2012, Konami announced (via Kotaku) that the game will end in several phases. In late April, making new characters will be unavailable. On May 21, the Online Shop will shut down. Finally, June 21 will see the closure of the in-game client, finally shutting down the game entirely, exactly four years after its release.