Combat Arms

Combat Arms is a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter developed by South Korea based developer Doobic Studios and published by Nexon. It uses the anti-cheat program HackShield made by AhnLab.

History

 * May 30, 2008:The closed beta started by exclusively through FilePlanet and ran for one week. It ended on June 6th. This beta was limited to users from North America, South America and Oceania. In the closed beta, 4 maps and 30 weapons were available.
 * June 26, 2008: Combat Arms went into in Pre-Open Beta Phase, whereby the game was open to the public, but it was still being tested and changed to prepare for Open Beta. Pre-Open Beta was also limited to users from North America, South America and Oceania.
 * July 11, 2008:The Official Launch of Combat Arms started.
 * August 8, 2008: Nexon announced that a Combat Arms service shall be started by Nexon Europe, for European Players.
 * October 28, 2008: Closed Beta of Combat Arms EU started; ended at November 11, 2008.
 * December 16, 2008: Nexon Europe launched Combat Arms EU Open-Beta exclusively through Euogamer.
 * February 17, 2009:The Offical Launch started for EU players, and is currently played by many countries in Europe.

Gameplay
Combat Arms is entirely a multiplayer game with no single-player mode, and contains 9 Game Modes, including the all-time classic Elimination and the hunter-versus-the-hunted Quarantine mode (see Game Modes link for more modes). As of now, the game consists of 16 maps: Warhead, Pump Jack, Snow Valley, Gray Hammer, Junk Flea, Cold Seed, Two Towers, Brushwood, Waverider, Sand Hog, Death Room, Rattle Snake, Showdown, Desert Thunder, Overdose and Power Surge, and they may vary in appearance in some game modes (like Quarantine).

Players who start a room, (known as the Room Master) are able to choose the map, game mode, set score, and controls the weapons other players can use or not use, (for example, Melee Only, or No Sniper Rifles). If the Room Master has bought an Elite Moderator item from the Black Market, the Room Master can have the ability to kick other players during gameplay and in the room lobby.

Players are able to obtain in-game money known as Gear Points (GP) and experience after a match, allowing them to rank up and buy new weapons and equipment, such as armor, uniforms, and backpacks, for their persistent characters.

There is a rental system of equipment instead of actual purchases of the weapons and gear. The rental periods are 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days, each rental period costing more in-game money. This rental period has caused much criticism to the game as players are upset that they cannot own weapons that they buy forever and that they have to keep playing to make up for the GP they used to purchase weapons and gear. This game design was based on a game known as Heat Project, a game made in Korea.

The game also uses a customizations system where players can buy silencers, larger magazines, and different types of scopes to improve the modified weapon's capabilities.

The Combat Arms game engine has also been criticized for the inaccurate statistics of the weapons, as well as the extremely strict profanity filter. For example, if a player wishes to say "sniper", it will show up as s**er, filtering the "nip" out of the word (any profanity, no matter how many letters, shows up as **).

In August 21, 2008, Nexon's server maintenance also came under fire for the "witch-hunt" style player bans being put in place. While results are mixed, it is believed that all players confirmed to have been cheating were banned or demoted to the lowest rank, Trainee. Many of these players claim innocence, saying that they only did it once or by accident.

During the first year of the game, there has been drastic changes to the game. This includes lots of more content, like the Black Market, Female characters, Voting and reporting system, and popular game modes and items. Other changes included loading screens changes, layouts of the menus and lobbies, and even the theme music (which didn't change until the end of September 2009).

All in all, many players claim that Combat Arms allows many capabilites of a "real" (meaning using money to buy it) First-Person Shooter game. However, endless multiplayer gameplay, weapons that are used over and over again because of their exaggerated stats, and almost everyone favoring to shoot each other down (as in preferring to keep on playing Elimination or One Man Army) causes a small loss of popularity, but the new arrival of more content, events, abilities, and game modes had been successful to bring in more new gamers and possibly some former players. Nexon proudly announced that more than two million accounts have been made since March of 2009, and the number of players have been growing since....