Yes there is a war being fought that nobody knows about. Its not on some distant battlefield on some forgien land, no politics, no public relations, no media... just pure war. This war is happening every day and is fought by those who you would never suspect.

This war is being fought on the virtual battlefield of ArmA 2 in the digital world of Chenarus. Yes, every day massive amounts of fighting happen on the front. There is still no clear winner after several months of fierce fighting. The casualties on both sides have been high, but neither side seems to be letting up.

Little do you all know, I am one of those soliders. I have been fighting the fight ever since the first bullet flew. My squad, the 502nd Blackhearts, has been called upon time and time again to try to put and end to this infinite war...

Here are some pictures from the front line.

If you can't tell this game is beautiful and I thought I would show some pictures off.

I play a game called World War 2 Online. In the late 90's, a group of developers got together and wanted to make the worlds most realistic WWII game. Cornered Rat Software was born. They saw games like Everquest and Ultimate online and how a massive, persistent world would be perfect for the most realistic WWII game. They decided to make the first MMOFPS ever.

After years of building up their own graphics engine and some unique coding that strung together multiple servers to allow one giant game world, they had finally made WWII Online: Blitzkrieg.

I never got to play this game, I was only in 7th grade, I ran a computer with a ATI Rage 128 graphics card, and I was to busy with my new PS2. Though I am glad I didn't. Back in the day you had to spawn into a town with whatever class you wanted, then join up with other players, drive to another, enemy held town, and attack it. These attacks were fought on the largest video game world to date and lets just say that it was very empty. For a person to get into an attack it would take upwards of an hour, only for you to get shot and you to have to wait another 20-30 minutes. This game was truely only for the most hardcore... especially with graphics like this...

Even with these graphics, this game somehow kept a population of players. It combined navy, air force, tanks, and infantry all into one, massive world. You really feel like your just a part of a battle. Some battles contained over 500 vs 500 in the early days. These numbers even today are not heard of. This game was doing things that Battlefield 1942 did several years sooner. It was truely revolutionary, if you could get passed the horrid graphics.

Well throughout the years, the developers CRS started to change the game. They added in mobile spawns so that you could get into battle faster, they focused the attacks with a high command system that had to place attack orders onto towns, they expanded the maps, created brigades that moved with the front line, changed the sound effects, and eventually changed the graphics.

In 2006. CRS re-released the game as WWII Online: Battlegrounds Europe. This fundamentally changed the entire game to make it much easier to play and MUCH easier on the eyes. Hell I remember X-play did a review on the game. Unfortunatly the same problem followed. The game may have the largest video game world every created, but its 99% empty all of the time. For the new players its extremely hard to find a good battle.

Here are some pictures...

As you can see it looks just a little better.

Well since 2006 there have been many new features added to the game to make it even more accessable. They had added a stronger tutorial, more towns to fill the game world, a new brigade system that makes supply move just like real life, more tanks and planes, and many tiny features to make the game more smooth.

Now in 2009 they are planning on giving the game one more massive graphic upgrade. While not as noticable as the first major one, this one will move WWII Online, a game built in 1999 and released in 2001, look pretty decent. You have to remember, there is a minimum of a 15km draw distance on all computers and all computers must beable to run the same graphics so nobody has any advantages ever. Its very tricky.

This is what CRS has in store for us for the next update...

Rag doll physics, more clutter, higher resolution textures, shadows, and a few new models on the tanks and planes. They upgraded their game engine for quicker updates and more graphical effects. In the next months they will be continuing to upgrade everything in this game, every tank, every plane, every ship, every building is getting an upgrade in one form or another. The game looks now pretty impressive for its size.

Its amazing to see this game grow through the years. I started playing in 2006, I may be currently unsubscribed becasue of my time limitations, but I am awaiting this new update. I cannot wait. The latest graphics upgrade really shows how capable this old engine is. They are not done yet with this upgrade. When the patch 1.31 comes out, this game will look and play completely different than before. I will continue to update my blog regularly with it.

Hate on me all you want, but backwards compatability is massivly overrated. I never find myself playing ANY old Xbox or PS2 games ever, especially this far into the generation.

I have never understood why people want backwards compatability so much in a console. As technology changes, games change with it making the old games obsolete. Its the reason why we make new consoles ever 6-10 years. There is no point to keep going on and on with the old games.

When Sony droped BC from the PS3 it was because it would lower the price. If they would have kept full backwards compatability the price would have risen significantly and we would not have seen a price drop.

The fact is when it comes to production costs, you can never have everything you want. Backwards compatability is nice, but when trying to push gaming forward, stopping to support old games is completely pointless and actually detracts from the entire reason of research and development.