Slashdot Mirror
No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2
An anonymous reader writes "Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling (aka fourzerotwo), in an interview with BashandSlash.com on October 17th, announced that one of the mainstays of PC multiplayer gaming, dedicated servers, won't be in IW's upcoming sequel to Call of Duty 4. Instead, players will use the unknown 'IW Net' for matchmaking purposes. No dedicated servers means no player mods, no player maps, no organized competitive play, no clan servers, etc., and strips away what makes PC gaming different from console gaming. Many vocal gamers have canceled their pre-orders, and a petition to reverse this decision is already past 86,000 signatures."
Won't it raise their bandwidth costs and potentially cause bottlenecks ?
Well, I guess not if players aren't using it. Then, are they shooting themselves in the foot ?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
let me sign it
Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned.
As much as I agree with the petition and the sentiment behind it. I doubt it will sway Infinity Ward or Activision to do anything about this. While 86k signatures is alot, and this will surely cost them some sales I doubt it will have any effect on the profits made from the console versions.
If the sales of the PC version tanked it would also give them a good reason to drop the PC platform all together which is understandable from a business point of view.
Here's the petition.
Say hello to your new friend Mr Foot.
For the sake of the further growth of the battlefield community i surely hope they don't introduce a serverbrowser nor dedicated servers :)
That'd give DICE such an advantage on the PC.
It appears that there will be no community mods or maps for MW2.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Mods/custom maps were half the fun of CoD4 on PC. Paintball mod on the Simpsons map (mp_simpsons) was awesome, and most custom maps I've played were pretty awesome, several of them could even have been official maps.
You just got troll'd!
If everyone who signed the petition canceled their pre-order and/or boycotts the game, that's already over $5mil in lost sales. I'm guessing that through word of mouth that number will certainly go up.
The same thing appears to be happening with the newly released Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the long awaited sequel to the original Cold War Crisis version of the game. This time the game was released for PC and consoles with no word on dedicated server software for the PC crowd. The apparent migration from PC multiplayer to console multiplayer rather than expansion of online play to consoles pisses me off and I believe I am not alone.
Look at the difference between L4D and TF2, if you are going to do stuff like that match maker in L4D, don't even bother with dedicated servers, I do not wish to provide welfare servers, as such was the case w/ L4D, w/ no way to see return players who may have an interest in seeing the server grow and donating to keep it going. PC FPS gamers are a different bunch then console FPS gamers. I do suspect that this has more to do w/ the game being modded then anything else, not too sure why that would do that, it is one of the bigger drawls for PC FPS games. Comment written as an admin at teaminterrobang.com a TF2 community.
My comment on this on Kotaku about sums it up.
YAY! Now I can't escape horrible lag and the unwashed masses by playing on a reliable, closely-moderated server full of people who aren't mentally-defective monkeys! Fucking awesome.
Seriously, what the hell? I've always loved clan servers. You find a good one with the gametype and map(s) you want, get in there, play well, and you start developing rivalries and camaraderie with the regulars and even gang up on the occasional asshat griefer/defective who joins. They even tend to have several servers running different maps/gametypes that the same subset of people play on. For the uninitiated, this is called A COMMUNITY. Look it up.
I don't want to be thrown into an endless stream of random assclowns with the exceptions of the 2-3 people on my buddy list, and I don't want to 'friend' every goddamn person I wouldn't mind playing with again. Not to mention the fact that this kind of hosting setup is going to mean the game plays like shit 80% of the time, with no guarantee of stability or performance.
I knew MW2 was too good to be true. I worried they'd find some way to completely fuck it up. Oh well, at least we'll have the singleplayer... Unless they suddenly require us to play with a fucking 360 controller.
Infinity Ward: If I wanted a game console, I'd buy a fucking game console. kthx
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
i'm looking forward to downloading this game for the single player and just ignoring the multiplayer
The beauty of this whole thing is that they will then use the low sales on the PC to justify cutting the platform for their next game, as obviously all PC gamers are pirates, who refuse to buy their awesome game.. It isn't PC gaming that is dying, it is PC games, but I guess the few companies that understand this stand to make quite a bit of money as the competition shoot themselves in the foot one by one..
Looks like they want some other games to fill the void that they will create. Or is there something fundamentally wrong, in that they are not able to create a dedicate server anymore?
Epic Fail.
Kept in the dark and feed bullshit. I guess those cool night-vision goggles are for when the Execs have their heads up their asses. I remember the the Tribes series was killed by a locked down version and blew away the fan base.
I read this over the weekend and went mental. This seriously upset me. I'm off to a massive LAN in the UK in 3 weeks and there's talk of Activision being there to sponsor/promote an MW2 tournament to be held there. (the LAN runs from 13th-16th November, just a few days after the game launches). If they are, they are getting 1500 gamers in their faces telling then to take their shitty console game and FUCK OFF. I'm seriously tempted to run around with people spotting people playing it and removing it from their PCs. We'll stick with CoD4. This also affects the Gamer Server Providers too... alot of them have had preorders for MW2 servers up for a while and now they will have to cancel and refund every single preorder, all becuase some stupid asshat wants to turn my PC into a games console.
Nooooo way. I think it's more likely this is fucked in teh head marketing. *Every* hardcore gamer is going to be aware of this one. IW you just made my shit-list (one day i'll have an actual list).
No LAN mode for SC2 ...
No community servers for CoD:MW2
They are fscking their customers - just vote with your wallet *eg*.
I was looking forward to buying and playing MW2, but not so much anymore. Now how will we be able to find a match that isn't ruined by idiots? I really liked having a couple of favorite stable servers with good admins and no idiots. I liked coming back to the same server every day, to compete with the same players I played with last time. I hope, but guess it's too late for them to realise their mistake and change this :\
"This is the problem with ActiBlizzard, they know people will pay for WOW many times over, they have all the money they will ever need, now they just like to see how much they can get away with."
Just curious here but just how much money do they actually need? I'd like to try a similar argument with my boss tomorrow. Tell him I don't need any more pay because I have all the money I'll ever need.
There's no technical reason for the lack of dedicated server support. It has to have bene a purely business decision, so fuck you Activision. Why are you doing this?
I've heard some developers/publishers say that PC gamers complain a lot. When they pull shit like this, can you really blame 'em?
... I'll save $60. I'll have more MMO time. I'll be able to examine other FPS options, hopefully from IW competitors. Bad news: The dedicated servers (2xDell 2950s) I was prepping to serve this game + mods + maps in our data center just got flushed. Infinity Ward (like SOE) gets a big ban stamp from the gaming community. And apparently they've disabled forum registration on their site just to keep the mad folks off of it. But maybe I'm a singular case. If I was the IW CEO, everybody between me and the person that came up with this idea would be fired. Business should have zero tolerance for stupidity, and apparently they've got it in spades.
Seriously, even the former COD World at War, had sucky dedicated support, as they officially only made a windows version, the linux server was community created.., and i never got it to work. I mean, why can they not learn from the most success full games out there (half-life!) that had a half-life on about 10 years be course they made really good linux server support, created a really nice open mod system and generally was some jolly nice lads.
Somehow I have a feeling the pc gaming industry is trying to screw themself over.. with steam leading the way followed closely by Activision.
I have a cyber cafe in denmark, we have been in the pc gaming business since '97, and it is getting worse and worse to make new games work properly. Steam is playing a big part here, as we have a cafe license from them, and are locked in.. well fine, it works okay. But new games coming out on steam like "Dawn of War 2", we can not make work with our cafe steam accounts. No we have to make new accounts etc.. it is just so messed up.. arrrrrrrgggg
Why do game companies follow software companies and do stupid stuff like this?
It all seems to follow one general timeline of events:
1) Make top-selling product.
2) Reap millions.
3) Follow up top-selling game with sequel, with plenty of fanfare.
4) Reap more millions.
5) Follow up sequel with yet another sequel.
6) Make horrible, blatant mistake that customers tell you NOT to do.
7) Defy customers and release product anyways.
8) Lose millions.
9) Keep product franchise on life support with mediocre sequels.
10) Franchise dies.
11) Lose millions more.
12) Blame customers, second-hand sales, piracy.
13) Be replaced by other company's products.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Perhaps (gasp) he just doesn't play games?!?!?
Nice to see that a firm that needs paying customers will shoot themselves into their own legs with decisions like this. Maybe they took some example from battlenet and valve's "successfull" lobby system in L4D but they maybe forgot that blizzard can fund their own systems better with wow and Valve has users dedicated servers with their lobby system.
As a casual gamer who has never gotten involved with the "clan" scene, it has always irked me that after buying a game like something from the Battlefield series - which is marketed as an online game - it turns out that to actually play the game online one has to use servers rented or owned by independent parties. One's access to the multiplayer content is then restricted to the whims of the server admins and whomever they deem fit to exercise admin powers. Why should this be so? I agreed to an EULA with Electronic Arts; I didn't agree to anything with the administrators of the InsanE KillaZs 64-player Conquest server. If EA is going to sell something as an online game they should provide a network for that game to be played on, and the terms of play should be clearly stated in the EULA and enforced if necessary by the company. Not subject to the moods of the hardcore gamers whose server rules change on a day-to-day basis.
Hitler is also disappointed by the lack of dedicated servers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XSOxS_1XBI
On-line "petitions" probably carry 1/100th (if not 1/1000th) the effect of a hand-typed, printed, and signed letter. This applied doubly so to letters to politicians. If you really give a damn, put in the effort. It will make a difference to your cause.
Errr, IW aren't providing a network to play on. The network is just a matchmaking service.
There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it shouldn't be the only option for a game like CoD.
Instead of the server admins, you're at the mercy of whichever user happens to click the 'host' button instead of the 'join' button. If they disconnect in a hissy fit because you fragged them, game over. If they've got a shit connection, or their roommate fires up bittorrent, expect big pings as 32 players flood this poor sap's connection past breaking point. Oh, and say goodbye to mods too, and by extension, the next TF2 or Counterstrike.
In short, the convenience you think you're getting in exchange for your freedom and the existence of a gaming community just isn't there at all.
I understand now - the system you describe really does sound like the worst of both worlds. It's too bad, I was looking forward to having some good multiplayer snowmobile battles.
I can't help wonder whether this is a way to enforce copy protection, as an online system would more than likely require a legit cd key with activation. Given how easy the original was to copy, this could just be another attempt at DRM, much like starcraft 2.
And dont forget, it's also a problem with the hosting users hardware at that. I know of 9 CoD4 and 5 servers (4 of those at 48 players nearly 24hrs a day), running on one dedicated box, that can handle said abuse, running around 8-35% cpu depending on time of day, and constantly pushing around 10mbit/s but as high as 50 when all the servers were loaded up. Top that with 4GB ram used just on those 9 servers. Thats on an 8 core server w/ 8GB ram on a 100mbit line. (Purchased with intent of using the left over ram on CoD5 servers) Now imagine this on the whim of a 15 year old who cant afford to get anything better then mommys 5 year old hp media center pc... Consoles have one thing, consistency. We lack it as we prefer to build our own pc or buy a premade one from some no name manf. This will be hell on hosting a "session" for other people if your computer cant handle it, much less network. I know that of the people I'm 100% positive who have canceled their pre orders, myself included, 12 of which could handle it system wise, 8 of those 12 could do it network wise. 8 people couldnt do it system wise at all. 20 people they arent getting money from in just one small group. I know of about 5 people who, despite hating no dedicated support, will still pay for the game. As a side note to Aim Here. CoD4 and 5 dont require excessively huge amounts of bandwidth to host a simple multiplayer dedicated. Operation Flashpoint 2, requires FIVE TIMES the amount of bandwidth as CoD4 or 5. Am I saying most home users could do 32, or even 10 player sessions ... no. But, a FIOS, or higher end cable or DSL plan, could do it. In the US, it'd be a pain to accomplish since many users are on simple 768kbit dsl or cable plans. 50 a month (around the cost of cable internet usually, and 10-15 more then a verizon dsl) will get you around 20-25 players. 65 would get you around 60 as a maximum, but higher is very possible.
Yeah, I'm sure the non-lazy will find a way to enable private servers. It's just too bad that they're likely the pirates.
LAN on SC2 didn't bother me, because in RTS games I like to play random people. So I rarely plan on a lan.
FPS games are a different story. I work at a college and we frequently have large scale LAN games hosted on campus for play. That doesn't work very well if there is no dedicated server software for us to run.
It was my understanding that this came at the tail end of a 2-hour podcast by a community manager who sounded decidedly unsure of what he was talking about. Any chance this whole bruhaha is a misunderstanding?
I know for a fact Quake 3 had a dedicated server, I ran one on linux for years, I'm pretty sure Q2 had one, but I haven't played it in like a decade. . .
Even though I was already planning on buying the 360 version (older laptop can't run it) I still think this is a terrible idea. Dedicated Servers are what make pc FPSs, pc FPSs. This a very bad direction for pc gaming to attempt. Relying upon Infinity Ward for servers means that in a decade this game will be unplayable online... It is DRM in a new form!
http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/movie-uk-31de7bb64cbf9e4a316dbbd1a6b769ad.html
Friends help you move... Real friends help you move bodies...
Huh? Launching "quake3 +set dedicated (1|2)" worked fine for me back in the days. 1 starts a LAN server (no heartbeats sent to the master), while 2 starts a public server.
Methinks you don't know what a dedicated server is.
This is a good reason to boycott MW2 but the better reason is the higher price point. All the retailers are selling WM2 for at least a fiver more than a normal triple-A title. If it sells well then you can guarantee all new games will move to this price point.
hmmm.
Methinks you don't know WTF you're talking about. Q2 and Q3a definitely have dedicated servers. Does q3ded ring any bells?
A full-time listen server is beyond retarded.
No coop?
No dedicated server support?
I guess I'm buying Borderlands and will continue playing MW1 for my hardcore FPS.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
How did this get modded up? Both Quake 2 and 3 had dedicated servers. This is the REASON that we were able to set up clan servers and the REASON that online play got so fierce and competitive! We were able to set up our own servers, with whatever rules we so desired.
I am sure that there will eventually be support for private servers, but this will almost certainly require the DRM to be cracked, which, as we all know, is a violation of the DMCA. This leaves you open to prosecution from the bastards at IW, which is hardly a reasonable solution. Not only that, but making these options illegitimate ensures that there will be no unified community like we saw with Quake 2, nor will we see that richness of user generated maps and mods. I was planning on buying this game on the release date, but this omission has led me to decide that I don't need to play MW2 that badly -- I will simply take my gaming dollars elsewhere.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
How do you plan to financially support Open Source games? Coding, arts, music, running servers and so on cost *a lot*. Add to that the fact that even open source applications usually lack in GUI design and it doesn't really sound like a good plan.
Linux, open source apps and standards get financing for development because they help companies in other aspects. Nokia opened up Qt because they are a hardware developer and having a community developing Qt too helps their bottom line. I just can't see that happening with games, it barely helps other companies revenue who could support it (except maybe NVIDIA and ATI, but they're not going to throw millions of development money in to random, uncoordinated projects, especially when game industry is already working good)
And even any indie developer (we have many here on slashdot) can tell that developing even indie games cost in range of $100,000+
There's a reason why all the open source games you see are still something like TuxRacer and LinCity. You are not going to develop something like Modern Warfare 2 that way.
Can someone clarify this for me, as this seems pretty unclear:
I was under the initial impression that this service, being a matchmaking one would use players' internet connections on a P2P basis, not one player acting as the host. If this is true then no amount of community tools is going to make this playable (ie low pings).
There is a trailer of MW2 however that shows a host transfer ability, so one could presume that one player acts as the host, in which case dedicated servers should be possible.
You do not need a dedicated server; you can host a Battlefield game from your own PC. Besides, CoD will not have servers provided by IW either; they still rely on games hosted by players.
I am a casual player of BF2, not into clans, but... I still rather like the ability to pick the game to join. If I find a good and stable server with an interesting map rotation, good moderation, and with a few grown-up regulars playing there, that server goes on my Favorites list. Even as a casual player you'll sometimes make a few friends on those servers. And in general, I found most BF2 clans have a stable and fair ruleset, and fair moderators when online.
Semi-random matchmaking means you are thrown in with the asshats, and you cannot find and play with your friends. There's a few games (Farcry 2 or Crysis IIRC?) that do this and it's awful. Worse, those games throw you back to the matchmaking screen after evry round, so even if you find a good bunch of people to play with, the group's broken up after the round is over. I've not bothered with multiplayer on those games since, and if this is what COD/MW2 will offer, I will not pick it up. A shame.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Just went to voice my opinion on the Infinity Ward Forums. The link to the registration page is dead. Points to "/register" instead of the real registration page..
Simple mistake or way of avoiding new folks from voicing their concerns??
Go here to make a new comment in the petition thread.
http://www.infinityward.com/forum/ucp.php?mode=login
Click Register.. End up here:
http://www.infinityward.com/register/
Anyway, I think this is the right page:
http://www.infinityward.com/registration/register.php
I can't remember the last time I was booted off a COD4 server. Probably because if I did get booted, I just wouldn't go to that one any more.
I have a list of favorite servers where I know I can go and get the maps I like, and play with the people I like, at a god damn ping I like.
This is not much to ask. This is how online gaming was for years until the 12 year old console crowd came along and they had to make the system retard proof.
PC gamers are generally a more clever bunch. We have to change out graphics cards and deal with driver updates.
This filters out a lot of ADHD medicated 12 year olds who just learned how to scream "Fuck" down their mics.
I mean this is the only reason I prefer playing PC FPSs. I love being able to go to the same server over and over again and knowing the regulars there. I am also part of a clan atm. There is something to said about dedicated servers and even though they cost a lot of money and activision running servers for us makes people have to spend more money but all in all the reason people are willing to fork over so much for a server is because it adds a new dimension of community.
It's hard to play matchmaking all day because there is no sense of community and its just one random game after another. There is nothing like going back to a dedicated server that you always go to and playing with a bunch of people you played before.
Eventually I ended up running a CS server off of the servers I used to sell shoutcast hosting (business got kinda slow meh) and damn was it fun. I had the zombie mod installed and I was running my own little clan.
How can activision stick such a massive middle finger to their customers. This is ridiculous.
Whats even more ridiculous is how the OP put up this slashdot post and even mentioned the petition without linking it.
http://www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/petition-sign.html
cmon guys sign that petition and vote with your wallets, if we allow them to do this then other games will see this as the go ahead to do the same.
They have gone on record saying that they are going to take the fun out of games (out of context but amusing) and finding any and all ways to add commodity video games (definitely in context and not so amusing). To that end, this move fits right in: By removing private, stand alone servers they remove the mechanism of mods and player generated content. Now any and all content must come by Activision's blessing, often lining Activision's purse.
They see the loads of money console gamers shovel to Activision and want the same situation on PC. Good luck with that where they more likely sealed that platform's fate. There is little reason for the die hard PC gamer to bother with the game where if they don't skip it they'll just get it for a console they own instead.
Seriously, I've played *plenty* of 1st. person shooters. If they neuter this one with no way to easily play on custom maps and so forth, it just means it has little value to me, vs. the others that were capable of those things. Why would I pay my hard-earned money for THAT? Simple, I won't -- because it's just entertainment we're talking about here. My world won't end if I don't own the latest revision of the CoD series. I'd rather keep on playing my CoD 4 with custom mods and maps that keep it "fresh".
If they're really doing this to generate an excuse to drop PC gaming platforms? Again, so be it. That's their decision and ultimately, their loss, as far as I'm concerned. I own a PS3 as well as both PC and Mac systems I can game on, and I practically never buy the PS3 console version of ANY 3D shooter type game. (I did it with Unreal Tournament 3, only because of the promise it actually supported a regular USB keyboard and mouse on the console.) I guess it's just habit, but I'd much rather sit down to a good 1st. person shooter on a computer system, where I have my comfortable chair and desk with everything just where I want it - and the display is just the right size so you can take in the whole view without your eyes panning left and right (like they would to see it all on my plasma TV I've got the PS3 attached to).
Back in the early days of online FPS gaming, games were often found through a matchmaking non-dedicated server arrangement on a piece of software called mplayer, among others. It worked very well and was better for community involvement than the later random dedicated servers of later games, which was on gamespy for a while. (That was quake 1 dm/ctf/mtf)
In mplayer, all the competitors were on the same lobby with their own clan channels, player profiles, voip chat, etc.
One of my personal beefs with dedicated server games is the people who put up seemingly normal games with weird server rules, or weird admin like "don't sprint to avoid bullets", or "don't take my team's vehicules!".
This is a big slap in the face of existing PC communitys of CoD2 and CoDM.
They're banking on us spending money up front to then have them give us maybe something similar to what we want. Ok, fair enough, but trusting someone with their money that haven't been open enough with their goals so far is a little icky.
JaredOfEuropa, I play BF2 as well as a casual gamer, but I frequent the same servers most of the time for important reasons. One of those are the maps and gamestyles, the other is the crowd I meet there.
In no way can CoD MW2 compete with its lousy punk-ass system that puts the private servers in to home-users with their crappy upload pipes, thereby constraining player numbers dramatically and breaking performance big time.
This is the bad aspect of console gaming they're pushing, and they are definitely barking up the wrong community tree with this.
IMHO they need to let people do what they want to do. Their matchmaking is all fine and dandy, but let people do dedicated servers as WELL, even if they need to register and checksum-verify all their files when each starts or something.
I can't believe they're this dumb. Some games that depend on server infrastructure provided by the publisher/developer have a long multiplayer life these days, ON CONSOLES!! I'll wait a few more days but if IW doesn't come up with a better answer or a promise to deliver dedicated servers AS WELL, then I and a couple of people I know will cancel their preorders and just forget about this game.
dedicated server means - "a server run as a service not as a client"
if you are talking about company run servers, then specify this
Time to emulate the service's functionality with PvPGN!
The original Command and Conquer games never had dedicated servers, yet they still had plenty of player mods. I'd think it would be much _easier_ to mod it without dedicated servers. Because all you have to do it mod your own local machines. What do servers have to do with mods and clans and tournaments?
Ok, so I've never been into the ladder/clan scene, but I've always hated being tied down to a company's servers. I MUCH prefer to play with friends and often play Terrorist Hunts, Coop levels, etc., on games like Vegas2 and other Rainbow Six titles (and by often I mean daily). Personally I've found that Consoles are the ones that get into the ladder/clan scene more than PC's, half the point of a PC game is to allow the PC to be a server as well as a game machine, so other people can connect directly to my box and I know that it will work LONG AFTER the company is gone and their servers die or have their funding cut.
Now, I can see where some people would be annoied at this, but I think this basically cuts out the areas of online multiplayer that I don't like. I hate play deathmatches against whiny bastards who just got the OK from their mom to play. I hate being tied to one company's servers who will end up cutting off support long before the game is out of date. I hate being told I have a laggy connection to the one company server when I've got a better connection than half the other people that can join (Battlenet I'm looking at you). In fact, I hate having to involve anything other than my pc and the pc's of my friends joining me.
-=JML=-
They didn't want what happened with CS:S to happen to CD402. Every single one of you would get into your clan match and instantly say, everyone lets go back to CD4, this is shit comparatively. Although this problem is probably more based on the fact that they want you to buy a console, I just know this would've happened too.
I guess it's no better that a lot of people won't play though.
Do you know for sure that their new networking model is going to be this primitive or are you just speculating about that?
How do you know it wont be more like matchmaking on the XBox (which would make sense, then they could have a standardised codebase). On the XBox it figures out who has the best throughput across all the players and lets that one host, if they disconnect it migrates them to the next best host. In that respect it's more solid than dedicated servers because the game will continue as long as there are players whilst even dedicated servers can go down or be laggy. For what it's worth, I've never had any problems with lag on Halo, CoD4 CoD5 etc. on the XBox either so whatever algorithms they use seem pretty solid.
Back in the Quake days it used to be rare for a server to be running on a 2mbps connection. Nowadays that's below average in many parts of the world, not to mention networking code in games has drastically improved since then. The chance of someone in a group of people having a connection capable of hosting is extremely high nowadays. The issues you speak of were certainly true some years back, but they don't ring true nowadays as XBox live successfully demonstrates.
I'd say the mods thing is the biggest problem by far, mods are really what made PC gaming great. Quake was fucking awesome in its day, but Teamfortress made it even better again, and I have fond memories of the likes of Alien Quake, Special Forces Quake and so on.
What about when that company decides running the multiplayer servers is no longer profitable to them?... "oh, we released a new game, lets kill the old servers to get people to buy the new game".... usually it only happens after 2 or more games have been released but I believe it has already happened with the C&C series
Forgot this one, or when the company goes out of business
On-line "petitions" probably carry 1/100th (if not 1/1000th) the effect of a hand-typed, printed, and signed letter. This applied doubly so to letters to politicians. If you really give a damn, put in the effort. It will make a difference to your cause.
COD:MW2 has gone from 9th most popular to 100th, and falling as we speak. I already canceled my pre-order, I'm pretty sure alot of others are to.
The terminology seems a bit weird. A dedicated server sounds to me just a server that is being used just to serve up the game (and not also play as a client). What people are complaining about seems to be a lack of private dedicated servers.
Why is this any surprise? It seems that today all the game developers either want to develop or are being forced by the publishers to develop for consoles. As someone who has grown up gaming on a PC (since 1983-84), I for one am getting sick of all the crappy console ports, crippled 3D engines and dumbed-down interfaces of games designed for consoles. Gaming has taken several steps backwards over the past few years in many areas. PC's used to push the envelope of what was possible in graphics and gameplay. While there are still some good games out with decent gameplay, graphics has really taken a beating from the console-centric game engines and their console hardware imposed limitations (draw distance, texture resolutions, etc.). Even once-great PC champions Carmack and id have largely given up on the PC market and moved to consoles, although they lay the blame on game piracy. There are no true leaders left championing PC gaming these days and all the publishers are too much "me-too" to do something about it. The casual games market explosion and low-tech "franchises" like the Sims selling huge quantities of drivel doesn't help matters. Call me bitter, but it used to be a lot better than this.
Wrong.
If the host leaves, the rest of the players will continue their game. The first MW2 preview video I watched showed this in action. Play paused, a new host was negotiated, and play continued. (I can't comment on what happens when the siblings are torrenting.)
I'm pissed about not having reliable servers to connect to (to avoid "random assclowns", as someone else put it), but at least you don't have to worry as much about hosts dying.
playing ON the same computer that is hosting is a terrible, terrible idea.
It gives the host a massive advantage
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
If they disconnect in a hissy fit because you fragged them, game over. If they've got a shit connection, or their roommate fires up bittorrent, expect big pings as 32 players flood this poor sap's connection past breaking point. Oh, and say goodbye to mods too, and by extension, the next TF2 or Counterstrike.
In short, the convenience you think you're getting in exchange for your freedom and the existence of a gaming community just isn't there at all.
IW has said the matchmaking service will pass off hosting responsibilities intelligently to another player that is capable of hosting the server. I don't know what it takes into account for this to happen. Essentially, a game will not stop just because the host quits.
May I suggest you take your gaming dollars to Bad Company 2?
Chas Sorry you are dead wrong! (Please don't mod people a '3 insightful' when they are so wrong) Q2 and Q3 both had dedicated severs for both windows and linux. Obviously you know nothing of what you speak. I'm running my dedicated Q3 server right now and I ran a Q2 dedicated server for years. You are thinking of a listen server you ran from the menu, A dedicated server was run from the command line.
Bungie implemented similar matchmaking for Halo 2, and those servers are still up despite the new Halo games. I doubt they'll pull the plug as long as there's still a substantial population.
In the beginning, there was null.
not interested in the game but I don't think that's a good direction to take any PC game.
With no user mods and additions, the add on packs and new maps can be sold for profit instead of added on by end users. Hell, I still play the old ass Battlefield 1942 that still has a decent following because of all of the user maps and mods. Almost no one plays the stock EA supplied levels. If EA was controlling it with their servers and prevents others from serviing, they would either sell their own additions to exdend the usefullness of the game and keep people interested or don't sell them at all so you will buy Battlefield version X+1 for another $59USD. EA did something similar with The Sims, restricted user content and plans to sell more "additions" to make up for it. They figure if regular old users can make interesting content for free, they can make it for profit. It remains to be seem if their add-on content will be interesting and if people will pay for it.
Piracy is a cop?out. My friend has an Xbox. Guess who modded thier console to play any game? A hacker is a hacker and they arent limited by hardware or software.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
Simply supplying the software to run in server mode is not a "dedicated server".
Sorry that people modded you troll, but you are misinformed.
The term "dedicated server" comes from describing an executable that runs the game without the client code. In the Quake series, so far the only one without a publicly available dedicated server executable is Quake Live.
Two most active petitions atm:
Dave Wilks To infinity ward - Dedicated Servers for CoD:MW2
Christian Sørensen To Blizzard Entertainment - LAN in Starcraft 2 Please.
Is Blizzard working on some kind of World of Modern Warfare, or is it just me?
Sorry Chas, but you have to take the word of the majority on this one. I have no idea why or where you got that idea. It has nothing to do with ownership or who runs it. I do know Chas I've been involved in the industry for close to 20 years. I know why we call it that.
Maybe the change will make the new CoD tolerable on multiplayer. Currently the multiplayer scene in CoD4 is overly littered with servers run by anal-retentive, overcompensating neckbeards keeping it TACTICOOL by making up way too many stupid rules and fervently enforcing them. I look forward to the day I can log in, jump in on a game and get my pwn on without having to deal with these outrageous wannabes. In the meanwhile I'll stick to CS:S and TF2.
cry me a river. 88k people signed the partition. That is an insignificant number compared to the overall sales this game will have across the console platforms. They probably will sell 2.5 million copies in the first week of release. The direction this is heading is further solidifying the unfortunate fact that PC gaming is a dying breed.
I like this move. I'm sick of every server of CoD4 having rules about how I'm allowed to play or not play the game. I've seen servers that have rules like "no grenade launcher, no martyrdom, no last stand, no dead silence, no running, no jumping, no walking without using iron sights, no blind grenade throwing, no blind shooting." It would have been easier to list the things that people were allowed to do. Hopefully in MW2 I'll be able to play the game the way it was meant to be played without everyone else making up artificial house rules. Because there will be no houses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUpZVnceJx4
Just as an addition to this, the Quakeworld (Quake 1's enhanced netcode modification released by id software about a year after Quake 1 came out) client executable was called "qwcl.exe" (quakeworld client), and the dedicated server was called "qwds.exe" (quakeworld dedicated server). It wasn't until recently through open source modification that the two were merged into one executable.
>Q2/3 had no dedicated servers.
Stop spreading FUD. Quake2 and Quake3 sure did have dedicated servers. Not the same day they were released, but soon after.
I ran Quake2 and Quake3 dedicated servers for years, when I was in the hosting business.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
This simply makes the game more disposable. Playing older games is great for the gamer but not so good for the developer/publisher. They need to be shifting new product.
This leaves you open to prosecution from the bastards at IW, which is hardly a reasonable solution.
Probably more like the ones at Activision-Blizzard, who own them. Who would have thought the same company not offering lan support for both Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 would do the same for Call of Duty 6.
IW really are stupid doing this, l want to know how they can possible think this will benefit the PC community.
Coming up with stupid comments about, just being able to play the game etc. What a load of crap!
What they should have said is “We at IW are greedy bastards and have decided to impose the same substandard gaming experience found on consoles, if you don’t like it then you can sit and swivel on it.
Also while your swivelling on it we are going to charge you for DLC because now we can muahahahha because you can’t mod or tweak anything in the game and in doing so we spit in the face of all the hard work and dedication that all the map makers, moders etc have put into our games. So now you have to buy our content while we sit in our headquarters rolling around in your cash and laughing at your degraded gaming experience”
Time for a few points:
Ask any pc gamer and I’m sure that 95%+ would not mind paying for good DLC, forcing it on us does not win our hearts and minds!
Surly if you have put so much effort into screwing the pc gamer to the wall with this matchmaking, skill selecting server rubbish. You could of found a way to charge pc users for DLC content and making it non pirate-able. I’m sure some bright spark would eventually figure out how to crack it, but most maybe even all pc players would still buy it rather the having to install a cracked DLC and mess around trying to get it to work.
Matchmaking – Surly you have seen how well this doesn’t work on L4D2! And you expect it to work with IW.NET REALLY?!? What’s soooo different, do you use some sort of voodoo or Harry Potter magic to make your matchmaking experience better then L4D2?
While on the subject of Matchmaking, you expect me to believe this will give me a better experience then our clan server? Where l can join our 40-50 player game and get a ping between 20-45ms! If we think logically about this for two seconds my connection at home is not the best in the world 150-180kbps download and 45-55kbps upload. Now how in the world is my connection going to support more than 16 players and give them a gaming experience similar to a dedicated server. It’s just not going to happen!
Laggy gaming – As l mentioned above about people with poor connections trying to host a 16 player server, have IW not though that running round on a 16 player server with a ping of 300-500ms isn’t going to be fun at all! Ow and not to mention that the host will have the luxury of a 0 ping!!! Not that’s not really fair is it and some may even go as far to say it’s cheating! And if it is a form of cheating then surly you should ban the host lol that will work well (host starts the game looking for players. Players join the game, host starts the game and host gets kicked for cheating)
While on the subject of cheating, if game developers haven’t learned already then they really are stupid. If people want to cheat then they will find a way! It’s been proven time and again, everytime they come out with a cheatprof system someone finds a way to crack it and l hope they do crack the anto-cheating system on MW2 as it would be a lovely kick in IW’s meat and two veg. And force them to come up with another pathetic excurse why there should still be no more dedicated servers.
Piracy – Now I’m sure that many of you know that COD4 was one of the most pirated (if not the most) game/games when it came out. So l can fully expect IW to be cautious of this fact, as they are in the business to make money. I think we can all agree on that, but by segregating the PC’s community many of whom have been following the COD series for years or been moding and mapmaking for years that this will most likely cause them to do one of two things 1) Not to play the game at all 2) And tbh l feel the far more likely action is that people will pirate the game to play the single player and if there happens to be a multipla