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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."
After reading your comment I have to say that you are probably right and I was wrong. Now I probably still do the piratethingie because of the following reasons. I like games. I like that games give me a taste for 'true freedom' with things I could never do otherwise. Chances are pretty slim I would sign up to be the bitch that dies for his country in another country (lol) to shoot with really cool weapons at another son of a mother who has done absolutely nothing to piss me off. So games give me the opportunity to do that. Now let's take another example of a really big game that is going to hit the stores this week in Europe. Forza 3. Console game, no way to set up your own servers. But the team behind it realized that their game is a great success mostly due to the exceptional community of gamers backing it up. So they gave us in forza 3 the chance to still meet with friends, reserve slots for them on their own servers and just letting us do on the xbox what you would except on the pc for a racing game. No modding allowed, but you can easily organize a clan/club of enthusiasts. And even on the pc no-one wants modding or cheating abilities. We take forza very serious and will not stand up for cheaters. I think this is where MW2 goes wrong. We on the pc have come to expect modding and own servers for this genre. Why? Well... because it enhances the gaming-experience and therefore the value of such game. I don't see this preventing piracy though. Mw1 was a great game, nice singleplayer, albeit a bit short. But the people who pirate today often do so because they can only spend their hard earned dollar, pound, yen or euro once... You don't want to spend that on a lousy product that you know could have been so much better if only the devs would let you...