Valve are updating Left 4 Dead 2 servers with infected bots, which isn’t the first stage of an attempt to destroy the world it sounds like.  While death itself doesn’t stop zombies, disconnection does, with millions of enraged undead doomed by the loss of one player.  It’s a great help for versus modes, but - as a hybrid of AI and infected brain-munching - it’s also an incredible combination of two of the greatest video game enemies ever made.

So we got to thinking about which other game servers could co-operate:

The worst thing is, one terrorist with an AWP could still take it.

Day of Complete Total Defeat

Aperture Science is all well and good, but he solves practical problems.

After two years of trial and error, Valve have finally release the update to end all updates!

You’ve beaten out the flames with the axtinguisher, your mouth has watered for the Sandvich, and you’ve realised that steel’s final point is broken by the Force-a-Nature - but you’ve never seen an update like this.

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We live in the greatest gaming age that ever was: people can not only plow hours into online entertainment, enjoying every second, they can then show their love by livening up our internet with fantastic fanart on the subject. Even after you filter out the idiots who think a screenshot serves as art (it doesn’t, no matter how many photoshop filters you apply) there are plenty of pictures to decorate your desktop until you connect to your game server.

Twenty-ten’s already here and we still haven’t got HAL nine thousands, but that’s probably for the best.  For one thing he was pretty terrible at graphics (outputting only plaintext and embarrassingly limited vector graphics), and for another we prefer our AIs not to kill us in the real world.  Instead it’s time to make New Year’s Resolutions!

Don’t leave!  They may be traditionally terrible self-scourging instructions to enjoy yourself less, which - for not entirely unrelated reasons - rarely survive to see a second month, but they don’t have to be.  Here at Lowpings we actually enjoy life instead of laying guilt-trips on ourselves, so we’re releasing resolutions which will enhance your enjoyment of online game servers.

1.  Try New Classes

The great thing about game server self-improvement is that you’re never digitally deprived: you don’t need to think green when firing plasma weapons, you’re getting exercise by sprinting every second of every day, and no matter how many health kits and hunks of raw meat your character absorbs he’ll never put on any weight (unless you count all the shrapnel).  Instead of giving things up you should take more on, and nowhere is that more evident than the wallpaper while waiting to connect to a TF2 server: the “time spent as class” chart.

Resolve to do better!

Spend some time as those cursed classes at the bottom!  You might not play them because you hate them, because you only play Sniper (in which case you suck), or because of the “Medic Malady” (if a team of twelve people are stupid enough not to have a medic, you don’t want to be the one looking after them.)  But each class is a whole new way to enjoy the game.  You might find you like them after all, and more importantly, you’ll learn how they think (and how to avoid and kill them when you return to your beloved first choice.)  A few days as Spy and Sniper is the most educational experience a Heavy can have.

2.  Try New Modes

Left 4 Dead 2 servers don’t offer many classes (at least until someone unlocks a way for Coach’s mass to count as extra health, or at least as cover), but there are more modes than the average Transformers episode.  Everyone ends up with a favorite - from the movie-style slog of the campaign to the pick up and play instant enemy action of Scavenge - and they’re all awesome.  But why limit yourself?

Whichever you play, pick a different one next time!  The mechanics may be the same, and the chainsaw might always be the best thing ever, but the mood differs with playtime and the bonding experience over the whole campaign.  Spitter goo detonating the racer’s fuel is an annoyance in Scavenge, but an adrenaline-soaked catastrophe after two hours of versus play.  And adrenaline-soaked catastrophes are awesome.

3.  Counter-Strike New Maps

Not every game rewards different modes.  Counter-Strike servers occasionally offer hostage rescue maps, but you can replicate the experiment by playing bomb defuse, randomly turning on your toaster, then declaring that you lost for no reason at all when the stupid machine goes off.  This will save you from smashing the screen when the hostages ‘hide’ inside a hail of terrorist fire.

No dust at all!

But the best playmode isn’t limited to de_dust, as infinitely playable as it may be.  Sites like FPSBanana offer an awesome selection of user-generated map, many polished by thousands of hours of competitive play.  And “competitive” on CS servers is a lot like “murderous” everywhere else.  Set up a selection, and enable an add-on like mapvote to find out what your players like.

4.  New Games

There’s nothing like a new game, even if it’s old (and therefore much cheaper!)  You’ve a fantastic first-person-shooter spectrum to enjoy, from the chunky gibbage of Quake servers to the frankly unlikely DIPRIP destruction derbies.  It’s a real concentration of joy – the first few rounds of a new game are an array of incredible sensations, literally blowing things up like never before.  We live in an incredible world where we can say things like that.

Enjoy more of it in 2010!

3D destroyed dozens of beloved characters back in dark days of the late nineties, now known as the “Plague Of Broken Polygons”, forcing them into a third dimension they weren’t ready for. The N64 Castlevania was a catastrophe of careening cameras and clumsy controls, and we’re going to have to pray our secret NES shrines forgive us for even mentioning the Playstation’s Mega Man Legends. But now we have professional 3D rendering tools, an army of innovative internet fans, and people who still love what made the titles good in the first place. Here we see how they’ve brought the old days onto modern game servers.

1. Super Gordon Bros

An awesome modification that’s half parody, half retrostalgic, showing exactly how things look for the Mario Bros in their flattened world. M0rtanius’s Super Gordon Bros teleports Gordon Freeman into World 1-1 of the greatest platform game ever made and it’s a view like no other.

It’s an incredibly fun little level despite being dangerously close to fan-fiction - but with the HEV suit coming out of the mushroom question block, and even the ability to “use” a pipe to enter the underground coin room, it’s about a minute of incredible joy. You can even load the level into a HL2:DM server for some side-scrolling shooting insanity. Not exactly the most balanced (or even possible) level but an awesome idea for a fun clan-server event.

Watch it here, or download it here.

2. TF2 Mario Kart

I don’t think we’re in Dustbowl any more

Teleporting Team Fortress 2 into a game where Mario was adapted into racing - this map involves more worlds than a Starfleet war. The team deathmatch level thrusts players into a psychedelic world of memes, mario karts and moving vehicles. TF2 servers running the map are usually heavily 4channed (meaning they’re not homes of fine teamplay or even coherent thought) but as long as you’re ready to mute the worst of the micspammers you can derive insane enjoyment from this lunatic level.

In fact, I don’t even want to know where we are

Get the files here, and thank the awesome Xenon for making it.

3. Half-Life Vania

We’re back with the best, with M0rtanius taking us to Transylvania - and giving us a crowbar. The instant you spawn you’re transported back in time, not to the days of Dracula, but the 8-bit eighties. The music immediately engages your grin response and the attention to detail is fantastic: you get power-ups by breaking candles, scanners patrol hallways in the classic sine-wave pattern, and the hidden healthpack is still in the right place for those who know where to smash up the wall.

It’s a Source server fantasy for anyone who’s taken the long road through gaming: if you’ve ever blown on a cartridge to make it work, if you’ve ever sighed and started again from the beginning after dying on the last level, if you remember the first time you saw something in 3D, then these treats are for you. And your friends. And the Garry’s Mod server applications are only limited by your imagination.

Watch it here, get it here.

Let’s be honest:  first person shooters live on PC.  They might survive as crippled console versions, thumbsticks turning at the same speed and accuracy as the average wheelchair, hooked up to auto-aiming life support to stave off Terminal Lack Of Mouse, but it’s only on real computers that the ability to aim actually means something.

Second honesty: single player is practice.  That’s all.  It might be the most cinematic practice you’ve ever seen, with incredible set pieces and innovative action scenes allowing to you to indulge in every Hollywood fantasy, but as long as the enemies are AI it’s just a glorified Tutorial.  You played through Modern Warfare for the fun, World at War for access to the Zombie servers, but it’s all sort of pointless unless you’re plugging people so that victory means “You’re better than someone”, not “The computer was programmed to let you have that.”  That’s what game servers are for, and that’s why we’re looking at the most popular multiplayer FPSs:

1.  Counter-Strike

If this is news then please, stop wasting time here and get your ass onto a Counter-Strike server right now.  Right now there are more people playing CS than there are holding hands, which might sound like it says something scary about society until you realise romance never killed any terrorists.  Various versions take up the first, second and seventh positions on the most-played list - and that’s not just shooters, that’s in terms of every game Valve has (to say nothing of the thousands of pirate players out there).  Counter-Strike: Source is now outperforming 1.6 servers (despite the complaints of purists), and even the relatively unpopular Condition Zero servers are stuffed with several thousand players at all times.  Or to put it another way: statistically speaking, Counter Strike is more popular than Shakespeare.

2.  Call of Duty 4

Things can get a little hectic

Modern Warfare servers continue to crush even their own sequel, with World at War servers lagging behind because of “Less impressive weapons”, “Not being made by Infinity Ward” and the all-important “Being yet another World War II game even though the reason we were excited before was because Modern Warfare didn’t do that” factor.  Cod4 is the top FPS on X-fire’s total playtime charts ranking only behind World of Warcraft overall - and ranking below WoW in playtime is like ranking below the universe in size.

3.  Team Fortress 2

It’s all about class balance

Valve’s magnum opus of online play, and proof that a decade of development time pays off.  Team Fortress 2 servers rank second only to Counter-Strike on Valve’s charts, and even outperforms Football Manager 2009, the biggest non-shooting-people-in-the-face title on their service.  For some reason.  The constant addition of new maps, fixes and unlocks keeps the population pumped up, although it’s still a factor of four behind even the closest Counter-Strike game.  But then, many religions have less devout followings than CS.

4.  Left 4 Dead

This game is fun

Multiplying the number of players by the average game bodycount, L4D servers shoot through three million zombie corpses an hour.  It seems those protesting the sequel were an extremely vocal minority, with most players far too busy “actually playing the game” and “enjoying themselves” to waste much time on such silliness.  It also means that at this very second there are at least four kilo-Louii running around with machine guns.

5.  Day of Defeat

There’s a slight learning curve

Ruggedly hanging in at number five are the Day of Defeat servers (both Source and old-school) - guilty of being set in the same time period as 90% of all known games, but at least with the excuse of coming from a time before the problem wasn’t quite so bad.  It also shares the status of being a Half Life modification, meaning that the altered adventures of Gordon Freeman literally have the entire FPS table surrounded.

Gamers dressing up as the gamees is a tradition dating back as far as disposable income, but what about the characters themselves? Can they cackle in costumes for all hallows eve? Since we don’t waste opening paragraphs around here, the answer is “Yes”, and we look at seven skins to spice up your servers:

1. The Creepy Counter-Strike Skull

Counter-Strike servers are already stuffed with Skullz and Killaz [sic], usually embedded in usernames between clan tags and half the number row’s symbols. Modder “Laca” enables the anti-terrorists to become even scarier than “someone with an assault rifle out to kill you” by skulling things up under the creepily human eyes.

2. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Those playing on Medal of Honor servers shouldn’t suffer because of the age or authenticity of their game - so “Vdog777” has built an in-character costume, and is far better at 3D modeling than coming up with a name. The French resistance fighter adds another option when you’re dressing to impress (and shoot several times in the head) those fashionable Nazi chappies.

3. Team Fortress Halloween

Halloween costumes are something fun and awesome, so of course Valve are involved. We’re only talking about this because we enjoy it, anyway, as anyone on any TF2 server has already enjoyed the new koth_harvest_event map, exploding pumpkins, brand-new hats (to pile on top of all the other awesome headgear), and the incomparable ghost costume of Zepheniah Mann.

PS We love our Gibuses, though proper grammer sometimes makes for odd pronunciation.

4. The Classic Spy

Just because you’re ten years behind the times doesn’t mean you can’t dress up - though it can mean you wish you were more advanced. That’s the lesson behind the awkwardly-named |WS|*Nikon’s smooth spy skin, disguising a Team Fortress Classic server’s Spy as: a TF2 spy!

5. The Red vs Blue Crysis

In the most insanely complicated meta disguise outside of Major Smith in Where Eagles Dare, “not so l337” lets Crysis commandos disguise themselves as the staff from Red vs Blue, who in turn are played by Spartans, from Halo. It would be impossible to add more layers to a costume without forming a human pyramid or dressing up as a double-decker bus.

6. Day of Metal Gear Defeat

Dr. Cloud understands exactly how to guarantee an Allied success on Day of Defeat servers: staff the side of the angels with an endless army of Solid Snake clones. With the Axis forces represented by far inferior GRU cannon fodder it’s quite likely the sheer psychological pressure will force them to fold (despite their advantage in heavy machine guns).

7. Left 4 Dead

The most popular costumes over the last week come from the Left 4 Dead pre-order exclusive demo, with our four favorite survivors sporting spanking new skins.

Bill: Everyone’s favorite armed uncle-figure swaps Vietnam flashbacks for a love of candy, and an incredibly convincing Coach fatsuit.
Zoey: The apocalypse’s only female pulls an incredible double reverse-Michael-Jackson, both turning from white to black AND staying alive to play Rochelle.
Louis: The hard-working everyman goes even further than Zoey to become Elllis’s engineering Suthan bo-ay.
Francis: Why hate everything at random, when Nick can hate and distrust everything as a scumbag conman?

The best bit? Game servers can be dressed up every day of the year!

“Exploiters” is linguistically impossible: despite having three syllables it sounds exactly like “scum.”  A plague on every game server, exploiters exist only to apply every unfair advantage they can - like playtesters hired by the Grinch to ruin Christmas every day.  Assuming every game is Christmas.  The metaphor doesn’t bear close examination.

But what drives these despicable denizens of dustbowl and No Mercy?  What brings someone to de_dust only to snipe from the skybox?  Here we look at three types of exploiter (in order increasing abomination against everything online games are about.)

1.  The Desperate

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that’s because they existed in the boring time before games.  They had to read ancient latin texts to get undead characters which went around forgiving people instead of feasting on them.  Nowadays we know the road to hell is actually paved with a trip to Mars colony and/or out of control genetic weapons experiments, but the good intentions problem remains.  Especially in Killing Floor servers where your teammates respawn if you survive the round, the Flesh Pound is bearing down on you like a  - well the fact we’re alive proves there is no real-world analog for a Flesh Pound - and you know that hiding inside that map glitch will get everybody to the next stage.

In fairness, if anything would make you hide inside a wall this is it

It’s a dirty dishonorable trick and the way those words shouldn’t apply to the undead doesn’t matter.  Small studio creations are especially open to exploits as ambitious maps outstrip their testing resources.  Don’t punish them by breaking their game!  Do you really want world where the only levels are perfectly tested, empty, and two feet across?  Get out there and take your death like a man!  Knowing you can hide inside a protective rock whenever you want is fine for Alicia Masters, but in turns a desperate death-struggle into a boring hobby.

2.  Peer Pressure

A unique pressure brought about when you have to work with other players to survive the onslaught.  It’s not the worst form of exploit as you aren’t screwing over other players - you’re just destroying everything the genius game designers worked to create for your enjoyment. Which isn’t that much better.  The problem is when your teammates all jump into the map glitch safe spot, and suddenly you’re the asshole for wanting to “play” the “game.”

As well as hordes of the undead, the virus created horrific trimutated glitchers

Or rather, not play the game because you’re being slaughtered by every single enemy on the map and your anti-fun teammates won’t leave their glitch-haven to come save you.  It affects Killing Floor, but is a particular problem on Left4Dead servers.  At least on Campaign mode it only ruins a set-piece or two, but you’ll always end up with an idiot on Survival (check!) shouting at everyone to glitch themselves onto a ledge where nothing can touch them “because we’ll totally get GOLD you guys!”)

3.  Pure Unadulterated Scum

In the above you’re ruining the game for yourself, but once you’re killing people with glitches instead of guts you’re officially ruining it for everyone.  Counter-Strike servers suffered from serious game-breaking glitches over their history, massively amplified by the incredibly competitive nature of the players, but years of patches have boiled most of them out.  Now the worthless simply install their own hacks, another subject we’ll deal with in due time.  Once the IP-tracking missiles are ready.

Laughing at people trying to play the game, before building a sentry on an unreachable ledge and screeching “If they didn’t want us to it wouldn’t be possible!”

The modern exploiter adventurelands are TF2 servers, where every update and added map (fun free gifts for gaming enjoyment) is immediately broken into and abused (by people who don’t understand a single word in the previous brackets).  The barrage of brilliant new levels and extras has the exact opposite of the intended effect on exploiter scum:  Hiding outside the level, firing new taunts through the gates before the game begins, sentries installed in utterly unreachable locations by jumping on dispensers - truly these masters of modern gaming show their expertise in online entertainment.  At the small cost of turning themselves into mockeries of even the concept of fun.

If you’ve been stressing about who has a Halo you’re either St Peter, working for Bungie, or really need to chill out about Team Fortress servers.  Valve recently revenged themselves on cheats, not by banning them or suspending their accounts (as every other online game company does), but instead giving a whole new free surprise item to every honest player.  If you predicted that this led to an insane whirlwind of internet rage congratulations on understanding Nerf’s Law: It is utterly impossible to ever make hardcore gamers happy.

When I get a hat I’ll show them - I’LL SHOW THEM ALL!

The problem came from the current method of hat distribution.  It’s basically “Hang around forever and hope,” and the hilariousness of a game about blowing people up needing hat logistics isn’t enough to distract people from the fact that method sucks.  But TF2 servers have shown connecting even the most pointless extra (and the only point in these hats is the one on the Medic’s helmet) toachievements would just destroys gameplay for days as armies engaged in grind; while just instantly giving the extras to everyone removes any sense of value.  Or at least, any sort of value for the fanatics focused on getting them.

“Idlers” attacked the random distribution intended to add treats to players’ inventories by setting their computer to think it was playing forever.  Downloadable programs spoofed the servers into thinking the user was an inhuman Team Fortress 2-ing Terminator who needed not stop for rest, food or even the barest bathroom break.  They racked up the items at only the minor cost of turning themselves into absolute mockeries of the whole idea of playing games.

It is vital to my self-esteem that I look like this!

When Valve shut these shenanigans down it set off the stupidest civil war since the “Meat Eaters vs Vegetarians” battle in that ancient “Peace on Earth” cartoon.  (You know, the one you sat through one Saturday when nothing else was on, with talking squirrels preaching about war in final proof that kids will watch absolutely anything if it’s animated.)  Some TF2 servers set instant kick options to boot those either with or without the angelic addition, depending on whether their owners were pro cheat or not, and there was even a Steam group for medics who “don’t heal halos.”  Because punishing people who just play the game and wanted to try out their new hat is obviously how to have fun.

The halos themselves suffered from a stupidly short life - going from everyone excitedly trying out their new hat, to almost everyone taking them off again as they realise that a hat everyone actually has isn’t very exciting.  If any realised the irony of removing the halo because it was now boring only to loudly complain that all the “proper” hats should be unlocked for everyone instead, they sure didn’t show it.  Everyone wants to have the rare item and honestly doesn’t see the problem with that statement (similar to the flood of Jedi that destroyed the old Star Wars MMO a while back).

But it’s only a matter of time before more intelligent options are on offer.  Valve are working up a trading system (and it’s only taking so long because it has to be built to be exploit-proof against the same sort of people who caused this) and after that we should all have options for our over-full inventories.  And maybe then we can get that awesome Spy fedora.

Pictured: not as awesome as being befedora-ed

Nucleus embodies everything that is King of the Hill - a central slaughter zone built entirely of explosions with just enough complexity around the edges to make tactics possible.  The new mode is more than just maps: even the oldest player gets that great “new game” rush as they work out how classes contribute to victory.