By Jim Rossignol on October 18th, 2009 at 12:21 pm.
Hmm! Over at BashAndSlash, a Call Of Duty community website, Infinity Ward’s community manager, Robert Bowling, confirmed there would be no dedicated server option for excruciatingly-anticipated super-shooter Modern Warfare 2. Really? Apparently so: dedicated servers will be replaced with a match-making service called IWNet. This will place you against players of your own rank, and remove dedicated server lists. There will also be options for a private matches. Take it with a pinch of salt, however, because the fact that it’s the community manager making an announcement two hours into a fan-podcast suggests there’s going to be some clarifying statements to follow. Bowling makes clear he’s not totally clear on the tech aspects, but he does seem certain that everything will run through IWNet, in conjunction with Steam. That seems to imply no mod support.
On the upside, the game isn’t delayed on PC after all. Ooh, what’s that noise?
18/10/2009 at 12:24 Sparvy says:
Wow, that would be really stupid, definite lost sale of this is true.
18/10/2009 at 12:25 SprintJack says:
It’s sad. They forgot theirs roots.
18/10/2009 at 13:20 Dracko says:
yeah i liked their earlier material too
18/10/2009 at 12:26 Glove says:
*sobs*
18/10/2009 at 12:28 Paul says:
It’s like they never heard the backlash over no dedi servers for Dragon Rising or something.
18/10/2009 at 12:31 Mr. Eh says:
That sound is me yawning. Again. Seems like I’m the only person in the universe who thought MW sucked and couldn’t care less about this one.
18/10/2009 at 12:45 Stupoider says:
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. :)
18/10/2009 at 13:09 sockpuppetclock says:
Well, there are plenty of people who enjoyed the multiplayer in MW.
I don’t see why you have to come in to a topic you don’t even want to talk about to announce you do not care about the topic!
18/10/2009 at 13:28 Mr. Eh says:
I care about the fact that I don’t care, which clearly I do want to talk about.
18/10/2009 at 15:06 JKjoker says:
actually i was just playing it for the first time yesterday (never played it before and i got a copy with my new vidcard) and it really sucks
it sacrifices fun for realism and it doesnt even manage to draw you into the “war experience” like the old COD games because you get killed 100 times a minute while the game seems to never autosave before real danger, it either saves 10 minutes before danger or when you are already screwed plus i made the mistake of taking veteran without knowing that the difficulty gets screwed up near the end, in older CODs you could always use your allies as bulletproof vests when things got too hot, in MW most of the time you dont have allies or they just wont move from cover
i did like some parts of it tho, the “first person coup d’état + execution simulator” level was well done (the *other* death scene was not as good, it felt like a waste of time, i dont know why ppl praise the second one and not the first, i bet its because the second one is a us dude) and the “get to the snipping point without being seen” level was excellent (too bad it gets ruined by the you against 200 omniscient enemies part, why cant you just hide ? or take shelter in an easier to defend location like a building ?), but still, not enough to pay for it, maybe ill get it for free again with my next vidcard
18/10/2009 at 15:10 Dracko says:
Haha! You think Modern Warfare is a realistic simulation of its namesake.
What next? Die Hard as an accurate depiction of hostage negotiation?
18/10/2009 at 15:29 JKjoker says:
actually by realism i meant that you get killed by 1-2 bullets and that its almost impossible to identify friendlies from enemies
18/10/2009 at 15:34 JKjoker says:
hmm, that sounds like i said its realistic again, its not, what i mean is that it *tries* too hard to be realistic and sacrifices fun by doing so
18/10/2009 at 15:44 Senethro says:
Joker, you played on Veteran which is the Unfairly Hard Challenge mode for the masochistic, so all your comments on difficulty don’t really apply because you played the game in the wrong way. I suspect that you spent so much time being dead that the intended flow and experience of the non-scripted bits was somewhat lost on you.
18/10/2009 at 15:49 JKjoker says:
@Senethro: yes that sounds about right, of course there is no way to change it without restarting, the game recomended veteran to me thats why i picked it
18/10/2009 at 16:12 Ado says:
Indeed, you ain’t alone mate. I’ve already had enough of the hype for this one. This just goes to show how much IW seem to have sold out to the console crowd now…
18/10/2009 at 17:47 Dracko says:
Yeah man, I hear you. They’re no longer interested in the good stuff (i.e. making money), now being shills for the Man (for money).
JKJoker: Yes, Veteran difficulty is an unflattering aberration to the game, no doubt there. I’d avoid it at all possible costs.
19/10/2009 at 10:23 Subject 706 says:
Oh, I also thought the first one sucked, and Activision sure aren’t doing anything to convince me that number two is going to be any better…
18/10/2009 at 12:32 Evangel says:
He’s an idiot if he said that stuff and wasn’t sure.
Infinity Ward are idiots for not keeping a tighter leash on him.
Infinity Ward are even bigger idiots if they think this is going to net them sales.
18/10/2009 at 15:58 cliffski says:
Infinity ward are incredibly successful games developers with close to zero staff turnover, very high morale, making the exact games they love and getting huge sales and critical acclaim for doing it.
But clearly they are in fact idiots, because one guy has said something that may not be 100% accurate on a podcast.
I’d happily be as stupid as infinity ward in return for their freedom, success, and sales.
18/10/2009 at 17:35 rocketman71 says:
Cliffski, if IW are doing the exact games they love, and they’re cutting the mapping, modding and server community’s with no influence from upstairs, then they not only are idiots, they’re also saying FUCK YOU to all the people that put them where they are.
I’m certainly not buying their game now, same as I’m not buying SC2.
And all of this because a million of idiots where willing to pay $10 for 4 stinking maps. That and Kotick, and these is the result.
18/10/2009 at 12:34 Bogie says:
Everyone please go sign the petition here:
To: infinity ward
Get Infinity Ward to review their decision not to allow fully dedicated servers for their forthcoming game release CoD:MW2. Remember that this Call of Duty was made popular by PC Gamers who have supported the series throughout.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
http://www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/petition.html
It going up exponentially, 7000 and rising!
F**k IW. F**k MW2.
18/10/2009 at 12:35 Magnus says:
Let me get this straight…
It requires IWnet, as well as Steam? (and no doubt, Windows Live will be tacked on)
And after all that, you won’t be able to play on a dedicated (say clan) server?
It’s like they don’t want my money at all…
Oh and isn’t this one of the games Activision decided to increase the price of, but just for us in the UK?
18/10/2009 at 13:16 Theory says:
I don’t think IWNet will be a separate program. Since, according to this guy, it’ll be run through Steam it’s presumably a Steam-exclusive too, which unless IW cock it up removes the need for a separate user account too.
No DSes though, yuck!
18/10/2009 at 12:38 Gl3n says:
Bit rubbishy isn't it? I don't really understand why developers seem to be trying to impose console matchmaking onto PC versions. Laziness?
18/10/2009 at 12:54 Jim Rossignol says:
Piracy.
18/10/2009 at 12:59 Magnus says:
To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “Piracy: the cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems”
18/10/2009 at 12:41 Tony says:
A lot of people are saying “fuck this” over this.
I’m probably not going to pick it up either at this rate.
18/10/2009 at 12:55 Sheol says:
It’s the singular sound of a million facepalms in the distance…
18/10/2009 at 13:03 teo says:
Well to top it all off
There will be no mod support
18/10/2009 at 20:11 Buemba says:
No dedicated servers, no mod support and a pricetag of $ 60.00.
What’s next? No mouse and keyboard support, forcing you to use a 360 controller?
18/10/2009 at 13:05 HexagonalBolts says:
we’re an army of three
18/10/2009 at 13:05 Dan says:
Strangely, MW2 isn’t listed on steam yet… how would they use Steam if they don’t sell it through it (yet)?
I played almost exclusively on a single MW server , which was populated by people who I’d gotten to know, who weren’t complete douchebags, that had a good ping to me. I really hope that whatever they’re planning, they’re not going to mess up that side of the game.
18/10/2009 at 16:26 meeper says:
Same. Modded to effectively remove helos.
18/10/2009 at 13:10 Xercies says:
It doesn’t matter what us PC Gamers say about this,, the thing is it will sell billions of the consoles and IW and Activision couldn’t care less about us. 7000 signatures is a very small minority to them.
18/10/2009 at 13:12 SirKicksalot says:
I only care about the SP in Call of Duty.
Were there any important/good/well-known mods for a COD game?
18/10/2009 at 13:12 merc says:
Looks like I won’t be buying MW2.
18/10/2009 at 13:14 Grunt says:
I don’t normally care much for this sort of thing but there is an online petition to get them to support dedicated servers. Over 7k names in less than 24 hours so maybe it’s worth noting.
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw&1
18/10/2009 at 13:28 Ybfelix says:
How many did L4D2 boycott amass?
18/10/2009 at 15:51 Psychopomp says:
It peaked at about 50K, and then slowly went down for some reason.
18/10/2009 at 13:17 MrWolf710 says:
Interview on Shacknews says exactly the opposite…basically.
Shack: By the way, have you changed the way multiplayer games function on the PC at all?
Robert Bowling: PC will be the same as it always was.
That was from Sept 22. Less than a month ago.
Link: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1200
18/10/2009 at 13:20 Fat says:
That’s daft, especially considering the price they’re asking.
Are they still asking that ‘inflated’ price? I haven’t cared to check. After i saw how much they wanted i wrote it off my ‘DO WANT’ list.
Either way, it sucks.
18/10/2009 at 13:32 Baris says:
Thank god, I was having trouble fitting all the games I want into my ‘To Buy’ list.
It’s sort of like when you run out of HD space and can’t think of anything to delete, then a 10GB game throws a brick wall at you. Sure, you’re frustrated, but on the inside, you’re glad you can uninstall it now.
18/10/2009 at 13:48 Heliocentric says:
If the match making is awesome i don’t care about dedicated servers. But every game i’ve ever seen dependent on p2p is a mess of hacking and laggy servers.
But, maybe they have some coding genius in place, who knows.
18/10/2009 at 14:13 subedii says:
Well according to the podcast they’re dropping punkbuster but instead going with VAC, which in personal experience has been pretty decent with getting rid of cheaters.
Then again, Valve are also smart enough to know how important dedicated servers are. Heck, even Left 4 Dead supports dedicated servers, and that’s for a game that has 4-8 players max.
18/10/2009 at 13:54 Tei says:
Any serius player of multiplayers games play on dedicated server. Not having dedicated servers for this game mean the multiplayer part is no serius. What is strange, because it has been advertised as a good multiplayer game. But It seems that the MP part is not important enough, so has ben sacrificed…
Maybe this game is just a “XMax” hit, and the dev’s don’t expect people to play it from now on in 4 months.
18/10/2009 at 13:55 Dmitri says:
Not piracy, a platform for delivery of for pay DLC.
18/10/2009 at 13:59 mrrobsa says:
Ah, this seems likely. Although IW’s name will be mud with PC gamers.
18/10/2009 at 13:58 mrrobsa says:
This is foolish. Piracy will still be rampant on the title so they’re giving us a worse experience for no good reason. Didn’t they sell over 10 million copies anyway?! Christ, I guess some people aren’t satisfied unless they sell 20 million.
18/10/2009 at 17:24 lumpi says:
As always, pirates will be the only group not affected by this since some hacked dedicated servers will be available a week from release.
18/10/2009 at 14:04 Mooglepies says:
Huuur.
I think it’s going to be interesting seeing how they justify this choice if the implications are correct.
18/10/2009 at 14:07 tapanister says:
Yeah, I already tried playing Gears of War without dedicated servers, I won’t make that mistake twice. Fuck IW if they pull this off, and fuck their IWNET too. This treatment towards gamers has got to stop.
18/10/2009 at 14:11 subedii says:
Oh come now, host advantage wasn’t that bad.*
* It really really was.
18/10/2009 at 14:08 Hoernchen says:
Let’s face it, the multiplayer part is the one and only reason why most of the people spend money on a game. Combine this lackluster multiplayer part which will alienate any potential buyer interested in competetive mp with a short singleplayer campaign and you get the receipe for piracy.
18/10/2009 at 14:25 Baris says:
Actually, a large majority of people who purchase games play single-player exclusively.
18/10/2009 at 16:28 JKjoker says:
I play only single player in games, i never care or consider about the mp component when i buy a game, i used to touch MP for LAN play only maybe once a year (but that stopped after i got into university and lost touch with my highschool buddies)
ppl assuming “multiplay is everything” pisses me off
18/10/2009 at 19:20 Alexander Norris says:
People assuming that single player is everything or multiplayer is nothing in a game that is clearly designed to be primarily the vector for an online multiplayer game (you know, using CoD4′s six hour campaign and multiplayer that is still popular down the line) piss me off.
If you only play single player on “core” titles, you’re in a dwindling minority of people.
18/10/2009 at 20:27 JKjoker says:
i didnt generalize, i said “i” as in “for me” mp is worthless, sp is everything, so ppl that handwave problems with the sp like nothing are killing all that is fun for me, im not blind enough to ignore all those ppl playing multiplayer, but you should consider that sp-only players tend not to be online as much as multiplay oriented ones so we tend to be less visible but we exist and we are quite a lot
18/10/2009 at 21:08 Alexander Norris says:
I have no doubt that there are SP-only players, and I have nothing against SP-only players. My point is, if we use CoD4 as an example (tiny campaign, multiplayer that I have been playing for two years), then it seems fairly obvious that MW2 is multiplayer-centric with the SP campaign thrown in as an extra.
I’m not really ranting at you so much as people who feel that their point of view is obviously superior to everyone else’s or to the facts, I guess. :P
(Not saying that that’s your opinion, just that that’s sort of what it came across as.)
18/10/2009 at 14:10 subedii says:
Well in the podcast he does say that piracy didn’t really factor into the decision, and I’m inclined to accept that. It’s doubtful such a structure would affect piracy in any way.
That said, no servers = no real mod / level support. Also, host advantage. Also, no possibility for community servers. Heck man, I don’t know where I’d play TF2 if it wasn’t for dedicated community servers.
Throw in the fact that they raised the price to match the console version and yeah, dumb all round. I’d be getting my rage on except, eh, I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t really interested in the first place. For those that were though, yeah, this sucks.
18/10/2009 at 14:15 subedii says:
No that’s just childish and stupid, not to mention NSFW so it shouldn’t even be here in the first place.
18/10/2009 at 14:23 Cheezey says:
More like amusing and accurate.
18/10/2009 at 14:19 NubeMassive says:
and with the iw’s peer to peer you don’t choose where you play and is based on how good you are is bogus, like even if we have private games what is the fun in that with no promods and shit, and if me and a few clan members want to play together online we have to be of the same skill level is just bullshit, thus now im really considering taking off my preorder and probably just download, saves me paying overpriced garbage
18/10/2009 at 14:20 coupsan says:
I can’t wait to not buy this.
18/10/2009 at 14:28 Nathan says:
The internet rage machine is not happy.
And nor am I :(
18/10/2009 at 14:33 Ash says:
Aside from anything it’s a big step to killing off the community that naturally grows around these games.
People find a server which tends to fit their style of play. Those servers will mostly likely attract like minded people. Sure you can create a system to match player “skill” but what about player prefeences? What happens If you’re the kind of person who wants to play everything completely dead pan seriously or you’re more a social gamer who wants to have a bit of a laugh? How can you matchmake that?
The communities that grow around these desires die with this. There is no formation of friendships based around a community, somethign I cherish about my online games.
I play TF2 a lot and I have my favourite community server. Most of the time I hop on there and you know what the nice thing is? I say “Hi everyone” and about ten people will greet me personally. How can you have that with this idiotic system? everyone becomes the faceless gamers of yesteryear. It’s this kind of community atmospehre I feel which has helped reduce the amount of 12 year olds screaming fuck at everyone and turned PC gaming into, in my opinion, a much more mature and friendly place thn the consoles.
The only thing they can hope to achieve is that the developers will hold a tighter leesh around the community. either you buy into their way of running things or you don’t get any community structure. I don’t want that. I love playing the games on the PC because of the community aspect. I’ve met some great people online through our shared passion for playing games and having a laugh. There wont be time or insentive enough to do that if this statement is true.
The sad thing is if this is true the PC market will mostly likely either not bother with the game or just pirate it out of defiance (and I don’t really blame them) This game will of course sell stupid amount on the consoles so when it comes to the next COD game and they see massively deminished PC sales compared to huge console sales. Guess what their next move is?
19/10/2009 at 01:09 merc says:
RIght on.
19/10/2009 at 12:15 oceanclub says:
That’s an excellent point. Dedicated servers aren’t just for clans. I’m a very occasional TF2 player, but still have a list of servers in my favourites (including RPS and PC Gamer UK) because I know that people there aren’t usually muppets.
P.
19/10/2009 at 12:21 oceanclub says:
And the irony is, COD4′s game browser was great – incredibly fast. One of the reasons I liked having a quick COD4 multiplayer game was because from the time I clicked the launch icon to being in game was a matter of 20 seconds or less – much faster than Valve’s games. And they’re getting rid of that?
18/10/2009 at 14:36 TheSombreroKid says:
looks like an attempt to combat the absolutly rife cracked servers, lol cod4s network stuff was aweful anyway, and it never had mod support, it went as far as to not have a map rotation setting in game and to delete your config files every 5 minutes meaning a manual edit job got your map rotations deleted everytime you shut down.
18/10/2009 at 14:37 Gl3n says:
Touché!
18/10/2009 at 14:42 jeff says:
Could have predicted this. I remember recently using the server browser in CoD 4 and thinking how it was unique to the PC version, and kind of wondering if that meant it wouldn’t be around much longer. So I’m not surprised. If I had to guess I’d say they removed it purely so that the code would be more portable and they wouldn’t have to spend as long doing additional work on the PC version. Yes, my guess would be laziness is the reason for this, resenting having to do extra coding for the PC version when it doesn’t sell as well and the platform is beset by piracy.
Anyway, personally I don’t care that much, server browsers are definitely nicer than matchmaking, because it’s usually very simple to find a low-ping server with lots of people on, and matchmaking always seems to take longer and result in less reliability, but as long it doesn’t take too long and isn’t too unreliable I’m sure it will still be possible to have fun this way. Still, it is a shame they are getting rid of dedicated servers, for sure, it’s just seems like dumbing-down. So no, IW, this is not cool, it’s lame!!
18/10/2009 at 14:44 suibhne says:
“Matchmaking” killed any community growth in both Gears of War and L4D. (Look at the differences between the L4D “community” and the TF2 community – and that’s with dedicated servers in L4D.) Add this to the fact that Bowling already told us, point blank, that PC multiplayer would work exactly as it had in the past. This is unmitigated bullshit.
I rather expected IW to treat the PC version of MW2 with some version of benign neglect, as they arguably did with CoD4. This approach, however, is far worse.
19/10/2009 at 10:20 deer says:
L4D is different it is coop (or versus coop) game, it is more about playing with friends so building community is rather hard still there are dedicated servers for it. Matchmaking in L4D is not working as it should but with latest patch I see some progress. I hope L4D2 will have better matchmaking (4 vs 4 matchmaking) . But with games like tf2, bf, cod where 16(24) to 32 plays on a server it is easy to build community and befriend with some people. I don’t understand why IW is trying to kill this.
18/10/2009 at 15:01 Smurfy says:
ALTHOUGH, they do say it’ll have Valve Anti-Cheat and Steamworks integration :D
18/10/2009 at 16:05 Wooly says:
If that were ALL, I’d be happy!
18/10/2009 at 15:01 Kingmarzo says:
Infinity Ward made its name from Pc games so it hurts that they’ve decided to do this. So many previous games tried this and failed. I just wonder how much the drop in Pc sales will affect them?
12000 have signed a petition already.
18/10/2009 at 15:31 Cit says:
But what if your petitions are a PR stunt and a clever way to avoid receiving 12,000 emails/letters instead?
Aha! :P
18/10/2009 at 15:25 Crush says:
I just find this highly amusing, Infinity Ward publicly poo-pooed Games For Windows Live and now they are implementing their own version.
18/10/2009 at 15:33 Pundabaya says:
I much prefer matchmaking, just because everything is nice and simple, you aren’t wandering into someone’s ‘hallowed domain’ and you aren’t going to get kicked for daring to get into a vehicle, or using the wrong gun or whatever.
I hate looking at long lists of servers and trying to work out which servers are A) run by fucksocks B) download shitty soundeffects C) are likely to be inhabited by screaming elmos, griefers or any other multiplayer gaming twats, or D) all three, and avoiding the hell out of them.
I much prefer the ‘band of brothers’ neutral battleground style online experience that matchmaking creates, compared to the ‘this is our land whatever happens’ style engendered by dedicated servers.
Anyway, who cares, I’m getting this on 360, like I do for most games nowadays.
18/10/2009 at 15:49 Psychopomp says:
You need to find, and favorite, servers.
18/10/2009 at 16:07 Cit says:
But a gaming twat sounds like a perfect match…
18/10/2009 at 16:35 coupsan says:
I didn’t think anyone could be such a fucking zombie.
18/10/2009 at 17:54 CryingTheAnnualKingo says:
@Pundabaya
You make good points. I’d still rather have it the old way, but I do find a measure of joy that these power tripping admins who get off by lording their ability to kick/ban people at their whim over everyone’s head are having that power ripped from their grubby little hands. It’s quite pleasurable to think about, actually.
18/10/2009 at 15:48 Psychopomp says:
Why in the name of hell would they do that?
L4D barely got away with this, no way a competitive game is going to get away with this,.
18/10/2009 at 19:12 DarkNoghri says:
Technically, L4D does have dedicated servers, which is probably the only thing keeping the community from imploding totally. The matchmaking, though, is still borked. So your point still stands. There’s still rage-threads flying back and forth on the Steam forums about too-modded dedicated servers vs too-laggy official Valve servers.
18/10/2009 at 15:54 gryffinp says:
Good gods.
I have no interest in Modern Warfare or any of it’s sequels, and I never have. Even I am angry at these people for being so stupid.
18/10/2009 at 15:57 FaceBash says:
This is going to end badly.
I am in accomidation with a NAT type that doesn’t allow me to connect to such things of GameSpy (no RA3) and some local hosted games.
CoD4 mulitplayer, ur in a game in seconds with all the options u wanted to play with.
Why do they think they can make something better when its already perfect?
Also . . . .
BUT
if it has improved it (which im douting) then IW well done u geniuses, <3 u!
18/10/2009 at 15:59 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
I’m glad I got The Three Musketeers: The Game instead…. :D
18/10/2009 at 16:02 Susan says:
It’s like they’re *trying* to make people not buy it.
18/10/2009 at 16:09 Forscythe says:
Console high price. Console matchmaking. No mods.
This isn’t a PC game, it’s a port.
Nothing wrong with that. I do expect this is going to be a superb game on its home platform, the Xbox 360. I certainly wouldn’t buy it on PC, though.
18/10/2009 at 16:12 Senethro says:
Its not a port, but it is an attempt to gain control of how people play on the PC platform. That makes it worse in a way, as they’re going to extra lengths. You’d have to be that little bit extra corporately evil to leave out features present in previous games.
18/10/2009 at 16:19 JKjoker says:
They took out mods probably because they work against DLC, which is funny considering a few years back they were relying on the modding community to “finish” games
18/10/2009 at 16:15 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
“People, we’re getting many complaints about the pc being delayed! What must we do!?!”
-”Uh, I dunno. Maybe we can just do a quick port and remove the dedicated server support, that should save us some time, right?”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
-”If it fails, we’ll patch it up anyway.”
18/10/2009 at 16:26 guisim says:
Dedicated servers are the very heart of PC multiplayer games.
18/10/2009 at 16:33 Spoon says:
Agreed. I know IW is just trying to stop pirate servers from being made, but this is not the answer. I doubt it would be cost effective for IW to maintain more than matchmaking servers, so does that mean that MP will be peer-hosted like the console versions? Ten dollars more for a peer-hosted multiplayer is not my idea of appealing.
18/10/2009 at 16:34 JKjoker says:
so is LAN but a lot of ppl were defending Blizzard when they gave us the finger about that
18/10/2009 at 17:44 K says:
Were they?
I seem to recall lots of complaints. And a petition. It doesn’t get more serious than that, man.
18/10/2009 at 18:12 po says:
Activision/Blizzard didn’t provide a dedicated server for WoW, and that didn’t stop pirates/people who wanted a game with GMs you don’t have to wait 24 hours for/more gameplay options/prompt solutions to problems, from making their own private servers.
Yep, Actard is a very well suited amalgamation for such a stupid company.
18/10/2009 at 18:22 Starky says:
LAN is a minor issue compared to dedicated servers…
No LAN would be fine, if you could host a dedicated server in the same room as you at a LAN party.
That’s what most of the LAN’s I’ve been to in the last 5 years do anyway, because it allows a few people to connect from the internet and play, I’ve never been to a LAN party in those 10 years that didn’t have a decent broadband connection.
Hell if you don’t have a decent (10meg or so) connection you shouldn’t be hosting a LAN at all these days.
Besides, I’m still wagering that SC2 will have LAN, just that it will require you to be connected and logged into battlenet to set it up through their service – using a LAN peer to peer setup.
Which is just LAN that requires an internet connection + account to use – which is fine imo.
Peer to peer is fine for up to 8 players, but I like to play 16-a-side cod4… and I know that without a dedicated server that isn’t going to be a reality.
18/10/2009 at 18:31 JKjoker says:
@Starky: i doubt it will work peer to peer, that would make cracking it and using hamachi too easy, im pretty sure packets will have to go though bnet so youll get lag even when playing in the same room
18/10/2009 at 16:34 Lobotomist says:
What a shame
I didnt care for MW1 singleplayer. it was short and very consolish. But multiplayer was only thing giving counter strike run for its money.
But this?
It singlehandedly kills PC multiplayer interest.
Guess they dont give a damn about PC sales anyway ?
18/10/2009 at 16:36 Senethro says:
Was it my email that lead to the B&S link? Please say it was. Me am contribute! :3
I’m wondering if IW are setting themselves up for a big fall here, as they’re going to be facing an unholy alliance of pirates wanting cracked servers, modders wanting custom content servers and competitive players who want servers they can control. Given this push, how long will it be before there are dedicateds of some kind out there?
18/10/2009 at 16:38 coupsan says:
Looks like they’re trying to…ward people off!
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
18/10/2009 at 16:45 Gabanski83 says:
http://l.yimg.com/l/tv/us/img/site/44/99/0000034499_20061021001105.jpg
18/10/2009 at 16:39 Nikica says:
I guess that sucks, but I’m not interested in multiplayer in games that much.
18/10/2009 at 16:41 Monkeybreadman says:
The internet has nearly melted in rage. The IW forums have been cleaned up of rant threads but last night there must’ve been at least 6 threads all 60+ pages long saying FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!
TBH i’m remaining positive as the guy clearly didnt know much about the PC side of things, so he may well have either got it wrong, or not have all the facts. Another reason i’m staying positive is that this is so short sighted and just stupid, i’m finding it hard to believe IW thought this was a good idea. If piracy is the reason (which i think it probably is after they complained about COD4 piracy) then its a case of cutting your nose off to spite your face. They will lose more sales than piracy wouldve lot them.
Sad Rage for the moment, until i hear an ‘official’ announcement, no doubt next week. If it is confirmed my Sad Rage will turn into Rage Rage. Then i will do the only thing as a consumer i can do, and NOT buy this game
18/10/2009 at 16:54 Monkeybreadman says:
And if you’re a COD playing Liverpool fan, you had a very bad day yesterday
18/10/2009 at 17:11 lePooch says:
It is sad that IW is just following the same vein as every other publisher out there: lock your content and the means by which people connect, then nickel and dime them with paid custom content and ad supported online play(well, probably).
Monkeybreadman, I doubt they will “lose more sales than piracy would’ve lost them”. Even after hearing this, me and a half dozen other friends are still buying the game. The effect on pirates would be more drastic, since they would be locked in single-player only till they ponied up.
Perversely, this makes excellent business sense. If IW decides a few months down the line to release a few free maps for the legitimate buyers, the incentive for pirates to legitimize their copies of the game increases.
The people I know who pirate on a regular basis would never actually buy the game anyway. They’re not from the United States, or the EU. In terms of purchasing power, buying a single game would eat up a quarter of their paychecks. IW’s actions may encourage people who actually want to experience the multiplayer to pay, but it’ll have no effect on anyone else.
18/10/2009 at 17:17 Bobzy says:
There’s really no incentive to buy the game for multiplayer now. The idea that people playing cracked cod4 servers are really lost sales is ridiculous. Anyone going to that much effort to avoid paying for it is pretty damned committed to not buying the game anyway.
18/10/2009 at 18:31 cliffski says:
I guess those same people had to sell their lungs to buy a PC that will run the latest FPS, which will cost at least a years salary by that measure.
18/10/2009 at 18:50 JKjoker says:
i think this “lock-in-your-content” trend is more about kidnapping the player so you fill him/her with DLC and micropayments than DRM, once you have your players captive you can sell them anything you want, keep them away from competitors and even demand monthly fees for “premium” content/services, modding also becomes undesirable at that point, why would you allow fans to release stuff (usually as good or better than official DLC) without you getting anything for it ? you either forbid mods or you find a way to get paid for them, check out Blizzard’s Starcraft 2 – Bnet2 “ideas” and youll see what i mean
18/10/2009 at 19:35 Funky Badger says:
cliffski: +1
18/10/2009 at 17:16 lumpi says:
Not much to add to the general rage about this… but if they seriously wonder why their games won’t sell as well on the PC as compared to the console releases, they have a severe perception problem.
HINT HINT: It’s not piracy.
18/10/2009 at 17:19 Gurrah says:
This is just a slap in the face of the PC-gaming community. I don’t want to be thrown onto a ‘server’ that has people with the same rank as myself on it – rank doesn’t mean ANYTHING. I want to choose my servers, servers where I know people play fair and act mature. Private games I hear you say, Infinity Ward. Fuck that. I don’t want to manage yet another stupid list with ‘friends’ on it. My Pre-Order is cancelled.
18/10/2009 at 17:40 tapanister says:
But but… It’s for your own good and enjoyment to play with other people of your rank :( :( :( You don’t trust Bobby? He makes Guitar Hero awesome every 3 months!
18/10/2009 at 17:57 Stupoider says:
Ranked matchmaking doesn’t mean squat if you’re forced to play with idiots. Maybe they should rank players on maturity instead.
People would rather play with friends, people they enjoy playing with. That’s what I assume, anyway.
18/10/2009 at 17:25 rocketman71 says:
More Kotick idiocy.
The fucktard/developer ratio at Activision keeps growing steadily with every day that passes.
18/10/2009 at 20:38 Buemba says:
I know Kotick is as close to a mustache-twirling villain as the gaming community has now, but let’s face it – IW has enough cache to do pretty much whatever they damn please nowdays.
I’d be surprised if this decision didn’t come from the IW staff itself.
19/10/2009 at 12:57 oceanclub says:
I thought you were exaggerating, but then I read his Wikipedia entry:
“Kotick later stated he tries to promote an atmosphere of “skepticism, pessimism, and fear” in his company”
Even his picture makes him looks like “Asshole Boss” from central casting:
http://www.businessweek.com/it100/2005/executive/ATVI.htm
P.
19/10/2009 at 13:01 abhishek says:
That wiki quote is severely out of context.
19/10/2009 at 14:58 lumpi says:
Oh, there are much better quotes from him, up to the point where context could only make them worse. Let me have a try (and those surely aren’t the worst):
“The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.” ( http://kotaku.com/5359567/bobby-kotick-wanted-to-take-all-the-fun-out-of-making-video-games )
18/10/2009 at 17:26 Lee says:
There’s a petition been started in protest of this decision: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw
Over 17000 signatures and rapidly rising.
18/10/2009 at 17:48 lumpi says:
… 18310 signatures.
18/10/2009 at 20:27 Wooly says:
25453 signatures… o_O
18/10/2009 at 17:50 born2expire says:
no dedicated server, no sale.
I was on the fence about this game already (high price, bad single player, noob multiplayer, ect), but now with no dedicated server support is a clear sign that they don’t wan’ t PC gamers money and are giving us a reason to justify low sales and pulling the plug on PC dev all together.
18/10/2009 at 17:53 Michael Hughes says:
The only reason I ever got halfway decent at the first Modern Warfare (which I still play a couple of times a week) is because of playing with guys who were way better than me on dedicated servers. That way you can learn from how they play, and develop your own skills. Playing with people of similar skill levels is boring, and goes against pretty much everything PC multiplayer is about. You’re supposed to get your ass handed to you by people who are ridiculously good, it’s part of the multiplayer experience.
If this is true, then I no longer have any interest whatsoever in buying MW2, as much as I was looking forward to it. It simply cannot be true, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Maybe he misspoke, and was referring to an optional multiplayer mode.
18/10/2009 at 17:55 Lavitz says:
I just can’t believe they would do this. It really changes call of duty experience for me in a quite a dramatic way. Only reason I haven’t bought an xbox or ps3 as of yet because mouse and server list support u get to decide what server You want to go in pick the ping etc. Find a central server so You can play WITH UR EURO friends with decent ping all thats not going to happen. Competitive gaming is gonna get shafted server companies that provide servers ARE going to LOSE 50% of there business. I Guess I won’t be spending $1700 on a computer i was going to build just for modernwarfare 2 compete its a really a pity. SIGN THE PETITION hopefully that does something.
——
ps: We really don’t what IW.net w/e is yet so things could still be okay.
18/10/2009 at 18:06 Vinraith says:
I care about neither MW2 nor adversarial multiplayer shooters (usually), but this still strikes me as an act of lunacy and a frightening precedent in that it totally destroys the possibility of mod support for the game and constrains the player base in unprecedented ways.
18/10/2009 at 18:06 Real Horrorshow says:
Are they fucking serious? First the $60 price tag now this? What does IW have against the PC? They will never get a dime from me ever again until they get their shit together. I’m completely stunned right now.
18/10/2009 at 18:11 Starky says:
Well, another game to add to the “will not buy until it drops to £15 or under, Rent or Pirate for the SP until then” list.
Hell this game was an auto-buy for me, even with the stacked retail price, I really didn’t think there was anything they could have done to lose my £30-40. I’d have put up with limited activations, games for windows live, their own version added to that (rockstar social club style) – I’d have eaten that down and more and still lay my money down.
With every FPS game I’ve ever got into big time, and got good at (CS, Natural Selection, CoD4, AvP2) and the games I play more casually but keep going back too (TF2, UT2K4 and others) the only one that didn’t have server lists was L4D. And L4D frustrates and annoys me 50% of the time I play it, for every fun, even sided game you have to suffer through 3-4 (in my experience) failed games, horridly stacked, rage quit, that 1 retard that screws up the match for your whole team…
Friends lists are okay, but sometimes friends are not online – and unless steam lets me categorize my friends lists into groups That’s not an answer. I like my friends list to be filled with friends, not spammed full of random people just because they are not utter fecktards at L4D.
I, like most gamers (I’d wager) tend to find 2-3 servers and stick with them – It’s nice to be a server reg, it’s nice to play with the same names, get to know them, and improve your skill.
Oh well, if this is true and there will be no dedicated community servers – there will be no money from my wallet for Actard.
18/10/2009 at 18:15 Flappybat says:
This is the sequel to a game that sold 13 MILLION copies and they still worry about piracy?
18/10/2009 at 18:19 Vinraith says:
This isn’t really about piracy (not of MW2, anyway), it’s about setting a precedent and getting people acclimated to the idea of all multiplayer shooters being this way. A change like this would sink a smaller game, but they figure demand is so high for MW2 they can get away with it, and once people are used to it via MW2 they can do it with any other shooter they put out down the road without it raising a stink.
18/10/2009 at 19:32 Alexander Norris says:
I’ll probably get lambasted for being this dramatic, but it’s effectively about taking our goddamn rights away. I think the most soul-crushing part of this is the large number of otherwise-invested-in-the-hobby console players who can’t understand how this is a bad thing. I’m going to Godwin myself, but I’m sure we all know the poem: “Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.”
I’m still hoping that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning to find Rob Bowling going “er, whoops! Matchmaking is just for SpecOps!”
18/10/2009 at 20:20 JKjoker says:
@Alexander Norris: i agree, they are slowly taking away things we took for granted getting us into a position where they can grab us by the balls and squeeze all they want, meanwhile those of us screaming about it get tagged as the “rage machine” and these changes defended by fans with “i dont use lan anyway” or applauded like the Batman drm without considering that chance of legitimate customers getting left in the dust because of it (and that it was fixed so fast by a new crack that while the publisher guys were patting themselves on the back every pirate was playing the full thing)
18/10/2009 at 18:18 darthpugwash says:
Maaan, this was going to be THE game of the year for me, if this is true then it’s a huge blow against the multiplayer component, I don’t know if I’d even bother. I think the internet rage is actually mostly justified on this one. Veerry disappointing if true, Infinity Ward. :/
18/10/2009 at 18:22 skyturnedred says:
This is just silly. Plain silly.
18/10/2009 at 18:28 Bigfoot_King says:
I wonder how long it will take before someone breaks this system and creates there own decicated server system i’m guessing its not that long
18/10/2009 at 18:33 Real Horrorshow says:
I’m still in shock at how fucking dumb this is.
18/10/2009 at 19:16 Bob says:
Lack of dedicated servers was one of the reasons Fear 2 PC’s Multiplayer died very quickly. Good thing i didn’t preorder this.
18/10/2009 at 19:17 compuguy1088 says:
I am seriously considering canceling my preorder with amazon……..this is a real punch in the face to pc gamers! And I thought Infinity Ward understood how to make a good game for all platforms. Then again…I guess this is the way that all developers are going, with PC gamers being second rate citizens. :(
18/10/2009 at 19:26 Real Horrorshow says:
There’s always valve.
18/10/2009 at 19:51 Dracko says:
Good one.
18/10/2009 at 21:00 compuguy1088 says:
That’s great and all, but there have been good examples of games being ported to the pc, like Mass Effect (an example).
18/10/2009 at 22:30 Stupoider says:
Valve are probably one of the best PC game developers, if not the best. Their games are great to play, they are always active with the community, and they’ve given us the tools to allow our modding communities to thrive.
18/10/2009 at 19:24 DarkNoghri says:
“Ooh, what’s that noise?”
It’s as if thousands of gamers suddenly cried out in horror… and then added an extra turret to their angrytank.
18/10/2009 at 19:34 lumpi says:
Millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced… by $20 million PR budget.
18/10/2009 at 19:26 DMJ says:
I wasn’t buying it before, I’m buying it even less now.
18/10/2009 at 22:31 coupsan says:
Yes, this is on my negative purchases list.
18/10/2009 at 23:33 the wiseass says:
@DMJ
This comment just made my day :)
18/10/2009 at 19:31 Some Guy says:
i am very near to canceling my preorder for this game now. i’m gona give it 5 days to wait for a response, if i dont like what i here im canceling it.
petiton for dedicated servers. http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw
18/10/2009 at 19:38 BobbyKodick says:
Fuck, just when they entice me with a trailer of a war-torn D.C., they gotta pull this shit.
This is Activision: “Herp derp. PC gamers are just like console gamers and connect to online games the same way. Durrr hurr.”
18/10/2009 at 19:41 Nero says:
At least I can spend my money elsewhere now.
18/10/2009 at 20:01 Aaa says:
Send an email instead of signing a petition.
Inbox(20000)
I’m sure they’d appreciate it more.
18/10/2009 at 20:09 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
By the time I will buy this (1-2years+), it might have dedicated servers again :D
18/10/2009 at 20:40 InternetIsAHellovaDrug says:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BOYCOTTMW2
Boycott MW 2 group.
(*chuckle*)
18/10/2009 at 20:50 neems says:
Has there been any clarification on this yet? When I first read it, I assumed he was talking about the console versions (I’m sure I heard somewhere that the console versions of Cod4 had dedicated server support).
If the PC version genuinely has no dedicated servers then it’s dead in the water. Angry Internet Man isn’t really my thing, but I belong to a Cod4 clan, and it’s looking like every single one of us is cancelling our pre-orders / refusing to buy. I’m so fucking bored of Cod4 as well.
18/10/2009 at 20:56 Hermit says:
I wonder if Acti are thinking of actually selling the Map Packs on PC this time round (They were free on CoD4 PC). The advantage from their point of view with a system like this is they can manage access to that sort of content – with Dedicated Servers you’re stuck hoping people don’t just run cracked versions of the maps. No proof they’re planning to sell the maps, mind, but it seems like the sort of thing they’d do :p
I’d given up on MoW2 when they announced the price hike – useless protest or not I don’t want to support that sort of thing. But this is like they’re actually trying to piss off the consumer base.
18/10/2009 at 21:03 Heliocentric says:
I still want to get mw2 for the single player, even if the multiplayer is bollocksed, but thats a major hit to the value proposition. I guess it will drop in price faster if its a car wreck. I hope reviewers get a chance to try out the multiplayer with real people before passing out 10/10, actard will likely be very careful to make sure journalists have a perfect experience. What about joe blogs.
18/10/2009 at 21:09 Heliocentric says:
They came for the lan play, but i had no lan so i did not speak out.
They came for the mods, but i had no mods so i did not speak out.
The came to delay the launch on pc, but i had no pre order so i did not speak out.
They came for my dedicated servers, but no one was left to speak out for me.
18/10/2009 at 22:38 Senethro says:
ffffffffffffffffffff
Just to put a slight break on the histrionics, the delay turned out not to be real and if you can’t find MW2 for under £25 then you’re not trying hard enough.
18/10/2009 at 22:51 Heliocentric says:
2 things, i know the delay was denounced, this post was just being silly comparing iw to nazis because other people had done it above. Secondly, i never bitched about the price, but with botched multiplayer £25 is too much to ask.
18/10/2009 at 21:29 Mark says:
No private servers…Im not buying…canceling my pre-order.I will not buy a console for the same reasons…nickel and dime for the online stuff…no thx.
18/10/2009 at 21:56 Sobric says:
This has grown so large, there is a Downfall version on YouTube already!
IW must know that this is srs.
18/10/2009 at 23:14 lumpi says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vOMuAhz6rE
19/10/2009 at 03:03 Clovis says:
Oh, wow, that was really great! You can’t beat Hitler screaming, “I’m a PC player!” Also, the line they made up for the girls standing outside was perfect.
18/10/2009 at 21:57 Javier-de-Ass says:
talk about shooting themselves in the foot
18/10/2009 at 22:17 nayon says:
What's really funny is that this will cost them PC sales, and they will claim they lost sales due to piracy. That's kind of true, they 'implemented IWNET to reduce piracy' which will reduce their sales, so if you take out the IWNET part, they reduced sales to reduce piracy. Or not. I hate consolization.
18/10/2009 at 23:36 Funky Badger says:
Clearly consoles rather than priacy is the underlying issue here.
Hmmm…
18/10/2009 at 22:38 Centy says:
Well what is there to say that hasn’t been said already this is a complete dick move and the cash I had put aside for buying this can now happily go towards Borderlands. There’s still good games coming and I’m trying to see the silver lining and think about them rather than what complete fucksocks Infinity Ward are.
The hardest thing here is to see another developer respected for their PC gaming past suddenly drop us and move on to something more profitable. Profit may be the aim of the entire industry but you don’t have to deliberately fuck people over in order to make some.
18/10/2009 at 23:47 compuguy1088 says:
I have a feeling it has more to Activsion strongarming the developers to enact these things, to prevent piracy. I’m SERIOUSLY considering canceling my preorder. I doubt there is little they will do, even with the backlash. They jacked the price up $10, and the removal of dedicated servers pushes this to the extreme!
19/10/2009 at 12:11 Sobric says:
but are you actually going to cancel? Will the pull of the MW2 probably great single player not still make you buy the game?
a petition is great and all (I’ve signed it) but if 50,000 people cancelled their pre-orders (assuming the 50,000 who’ve signed even had pre-orders) then IW and Activision would take notice.
18/10/2009 at 23:08 Monkeybreadman says:
I think this may take the Angry Internet Man All Time Rage Award.
EVERY gaming site i know has some sort of thread filled with dumbfound hate
And lols DICE has already made a comment, follow this…..
http://twitter.com/L_Twin/status/4964309159
18/10/2009 at 23:12 lumpi says:
Yea, lol. The internet feels like family to me today.
18/10/2009 at 23:41 FaceBash says:
Write them a nice letter about re-thinking their decision
Infinity Ward Inc.
15821 Ventura Blvd
Encino, CA 91436-2915
(818) 386-0072
and also sign this :
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw
19/10/2009 at 00:03 Flappybat says:
Almost nothing can stop this game selling 15 million copies and Activision know it.
19/10/2009 at 00:12 Tei says:
foot. shot. meet.
19/10/2009 at 00:19 Digit says:
I am somewhat reeling from this announcement. I can’t understand how precisely match-making, is meant to replace dedicated servers… ever, in fact? Granted I wasn’t going to buy MW2 anyhow, but if I’m looking for a PC shooter, not having dedicated server support is an instant deal-breaker for me. I tried a few games like that in the past and I just can’t have my gaming experience rely on when some teenager has to go have dinner. :o
19/10/2009 at 00:21 Kevin says:
Because the least you can do is sign an online petition. Literally. The least you can do.
19/10/2009 at 01:08 Jayt says:
Its not like MW2 would be competitive anyway, so who cares.
19/10/2009 at 03:05 Kunal says:
Along the lines of the hitler video
http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/movie-uk-d247752b3936b67d88d8f53e66be67d5.html
Feels good to see Indian movies invading the meme space :).
19/10/2009 at 04:01 Hug_dealer says:
we all know activision and infinaty ward want your money. If infinity ward wanted anything else they would have tried something different instead of milking and milking and milking and milking the cod series.
This is just the next step in milking it again.
19/10/2009 at 05:45 InternetIsAHellovaDrug says:
Lots of clans cancelling pre-orders, switching games, closing their Modern Warfare 1 servers out of spite (according to threads at the Idiotic Wankers official forums).
Anxious to see how they spin this tomorrow.
19/10/2009 at 08:21 Aftershock says:
THIS IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL. FUCK.
But really, it is. This kind of DOWNGRADE since the first is simply horrendous.
19/10/2009 at 08:34 Lambchops says:
“the singular sound of a million facepalms in the distance”
This tag has to be used more!
19/10/2009 at 08:52 StalinsGhost says:
heh.
Wasn’t really that interested anyway. I was going to just wait for a Steam sale before, now that’s a definite. If anyone’s tried to play Operation Flashpoint DR via a system with a lack of dedi-support, you’ll know that the system simply does not work in any playable fashion.
19/10/2009 at 09:58 deer says:
DICE is happy. I guess we will have to wait for Battlefield Bad Company 2 then …
19/10/2009 at 10:14 Player1 says:
As much as i hate this move myself i can’t help but feel that part of the problem are the gamers themselves, especially those running illegit copies of the game and cracked servers in the past. I can understand that Activision is trying everything to reduce that. On the other side this will surely put off a lot of honest pc gamers out there (we have the evidence already) that feel betrayed and put in the same melting pot with the console gamers. It’s a shame really.
19/10/2009 at 11:04 Marc a.k.a. 12kill4 says:
well the petition has reached 48,000+ and refreshing every few seconds tends to net increases of 5 or so each time… maybe some notice will be taken by those insidious community and PR managers…
19/10/2009 at 11:16 Larington says:
The central problem with this, is that where players previously had the ability to choose where to play, that choice is being taken away in the sequel. Gamers like choice, yaknow.
19/10/2009 at 11:18 Larington says:
They also don’t like it when someone takes a toy (that choice) away from them, regardless of whether or not any claim of it being done for their benefit is made.
19/10/2009 at 11:22 Hermit says:
It’s a shame that a lot of multiplatform and console port developers don’t seem to understand that matchmaking on the PC has never been successful. I’d have played an awful lot more Red Faction Guerrilla online if it didn’t take 10 minutes to find a game. The less said about DoW2′s matchmaking the better. And I use the server browser over L4D’s matchmaking system, which also has an annoying habit of trying to force players to host the game themselves, even if there are perfectly valid servers that could be used.
On the upside it was nice to see DICE folks over the weekend extolling the virtues of dedicated servers – rather looking forward to the PC versions of 1943 and BC2.
19/10/2009 at 11:44 abhishek says:
Very poor decision by Infinity Ward. I hope they will review it at some point in the future.
19/10/2009 at 12:27 EBass says:
Always devs saying “the PC is an equal partner in this” and then totally screwing us, do they really wonder why we’re deserting them in droves? If this is an anti piracy measure it will (surprise suprise) totally backfire. I’ve bought most CoD Games, (well 1,2 and 4) but I’ll be pirating this one. Their logic – “This’ll force people to buy the game to play multiplayer” – A Real PC Gamer’s Logic – Well with this decision multiplayer’s gonna be totally kack so theres no way I’m buying it for the multiplayer and hence not at all. Whilst there are obviously loads of cracked servers the people playing on them are the ones who’d never buy the game or most games, anyway. Anyone who can be arsed to put in a substatial shift in the game online is usually a buyer just because cracked games are so often a bitch to get working and stay working.
Another finger to the PC gaming industry and they wonder why we pirate? Well its a yo-ho-ho for me.
19/10/2009 at 13:01 Hermit says:
I suspect it’s less about the anti piracy and more about building a platform from which they can sell the DLC map packs to PC users, instead of free updates as with CoD4 – with dedicated servers people could run cracked versions, or stick with custom maps. With matchmaking, you’re gimped and unable to play with a large portion of the player base if you don’t buy the updates; as an example, about half of Halo 3′s gametypes can’t be played with just the retail disc these days, so in effect you’ve got less content than you had when you bought the game.
20/10/2009 at 05:29 K says:
It’s not an excuse to pirate it. It’s only an excuse not to buy it.
Yes, where could they possibly get their irrational impression of gamers from, I wonder…
19/10/2009 at 12:41 XM says:
I’m glad we know now if we all got the game then found out I hate to think what would have happened.
The game industry needs to get away from the mainstream grove before all good games are lost forever. The future of FPSs is $60 games with 5 hours SP and 8 vs 8 MP 10 map deathmatch.
Then sell you the rest of the game and MP features with expensive DLC.
But it’s not games to keep people entertained it’s who makes the most money. They forget money will not bring happiness if life is plain and simple.
19/10/2009 at 12:41 Wisq says:
I guess I’m the only person that bought COD4 primarily for the singleplayer, then?
I was hoping I might also like the MP, but I think I actually ended up spending less time with it than the SP content. On the other hand, aside from the “infinite respawns until you hit an invisible checkpoint” mechanic, the SP content was essentially perfect in my opinion, and I did feel I got my money’s worth out of it.
Granted, I picked it up for a fair bit less than what they’re asking for MW2. And while my knee-jerk reaction is to be excited about MW2, my rational side knows it would take a serious step upwards in the MP department for me to even consider paying full price. This announcement certainly isn’t helping that. :)
19/10/2009 at 15:41 oceanclub says:
“‘I guess I’m the only one who bought MW for the single-player”
I waited for the price to go down as I assumed I’d only be interested in the single-player campaign. It turned out I found iSP so on-rails it was tedious, but the multi-player was fun (if fairly short-lived, think I played it a couple of weeks).
P.
19/10/2009 at 12:45 Larington says:
Yeah, I only played the single player in Modern Warfare, frankly, if I wanted a multiplayer war game that badly, I’d just go back to Planetside, even if it does have balance & gameplay issues these days.
Activision had spent all their credit with me when they’d put up the price of the game anyway. Stuff like this is icing on the cake.
19/10/2009 at 12:47 cctoide says:
But people are making a complete mess of the issue. They could have this IW.net crap without taking out dedicated servers. Battlefield 2 had an account system which meant you had to log into your EA account before playing, and of all the accounts online only one could be using a certain serial key at a given time.
People aren’t angry at IW.net, just the fact that they ripped out something that’s been in pretty much every successful multiplayer shooter for a decade.
20/10/2009 at 00:19 Pod says:
Half life 1 had Won.net ffs. That sorted out illegal keys for the most part. How is it that we’ve regressed?
19/10/2009 at 13:55 Harper says:
“It’s the singular sound of a million facepalms in the distance…”
Haha QFT.
This was an automatic “wait a year for the price to drop” for me anyway. Now with this it has been downgraded to a “pick it up for $10 from the bargain bin for the single player.”
Matchmaking is crap.
19/10/2009 at 14:44 Cicjose says:
Consider COD4 Modern Warfare won more than 80 awards when it first came out.
Please stop their nominations for game of the year because im sure it has already been nominated so please take this game off ALL the shortlists for categories of awards they could win until the most basic of multi player issues is either fixed. Dedicated servers MUST be reintroduced or they should cancel the release of this game PERMANENTLY.
19/10/2009 at 14:56 Totalbiscuit says:
‘I guess I’m the only one who bought MW for the single-player’- What, all 5 hours of it?
19/10/2009 at 15:44 frymaster says:
I didn’t buy MW for the multiplayer, haven’t played a lot of the multiplayer
I’m still buying. COD isn’t a “multiplayer game”, it’s a game with a multiplayer element. CSS, TF2, L4D, battlefield heroes – they are multiplayer games. Half-life 2, for all it had a multiplayer mode, isn’t.
I’ve signed the petition, because a lot of people in my community were really looking forward to the multiplayer, and it _IS_ a totally idiotic move on IW/activition’s part, but I’m not going to boycott the game. (Note that I haven’t preordered it either)
19/10/2009 at 19:37 Tristan says:
I tried going to the IV forums to see if there was any updates there but apparently I have been permanently banned for spamming. Problem is I have never registered or posted on the forums and only visited it once yesterday. I guess now that they got caught deleting petitions on their own forums they have decided the best policy to stop the word getting out is to prevent anyone going to the forums?
19/10/2009 at 23:59 Alexander Norris says:
They’ve accidentally banned a few IP ranges belonging to certain ISPs, mostly Australian by the looks of it. If you’re from Oz, then odds are that that’s what has befallen you. That said, I very much doubt they’ll be looking into solving your problem right now.
20/10/2009 at 01:46 JKjoker says:
go proxy man, google for a free anon proxy, open advanced network settings in your explorer/firefox/whatever and drop ips until one works, yeah dont do anything that might compromise your “privacy” or passwords but you can browse “banned” sites just fine
my country is going the way of China so ive been forced to use them lately -_-
19/10/2009 at 19:54 seras says:
This game had so much potential for the multiplayer tactical FPS scene….really sucks that IW just pissed in that community’s face.
complete deal breaker for me and my clan, pre-orders canceled.
19/10/2009 at 22:54 Terrible Mistake says:
I bought cod4 for 360 and loved it, after about 3 months it got boring. Then I saw my friend playing mods like zombies on the PC. So I bought it for PC. I have been playing it for an entire year for an average of an hour a day. I just bought my new gaming computer in prepare for MW2. I think I’m just gonna get it for 360 now. Worst decision ever. Could of saved $750…
19/10/2009 at 22:54 Dante says:
I absolutely adore Modern Warfare's single player and never touched the multiplayer.
That said, what I have a real worry that what I liked about MWs single player (the grim, realistic portrayal of war, almost like newsreel footage rather than the war film aping of other titles) has been abandoned in favour of a lowest common denominator action movie approach.
Which is sad, because I doubt it'll be judged on that, as most people see it as a multiplayer based affair.
19/10/2009 at 23:10 Kurt Lennon says:
I suspect a lot of people who would have bought the game will just pirate it for the single player and forget the multiplayer.
I know I will, and before this I was a definite sale.
20/10/2009 at 00:12 Railick says:
I disagree considering COD:MW had extensive Multiplayer elements built into it from release including unlocking weapons by getting all sorts of achievements you can only get online. Couple that with the extremely short single player game and I would say that MW was a multiplayer game with a short single player tutorial to prepare you for online play. Out of all the games I've played online MW has been the most fun I just wish it had some of my favorite game play modes (mainly capture and hold domination ala Day of Defeat)
20/10/2009 at 00:15 Neut says:
Oooh a game I’ll actually feel good about pirating \o/
20/10/2009 at 01:20 Cheezey says:
Talk about this turning into the proverbial kicking of the hornets nest haha. Bollocks to the angry tank, more like the Angry ICBM.
20/10/2009 at 01:53 born2expire says:
epic fail.
20/10/2009 at 05:00 NoExtraLife says:
I don’t think this comes as a big shock, I mean come on its Activision pulling the strings and its the best way they can force pc players to pay for downloadable map packs.
20/10/2009 at 05:46 Red Avatar says:
Heh, it will backfire. PC gamers don’t tolerate this crap – we’re not 14 year old console kids you know. It will still sell but they’ll get a bad reputation and by the time their next game will be released, it will have spread and those unlucky enough to have bought the game before knowing the lack of dedicated servers won’t want to step into the same trap a second time around. Besides, what game every successfully managed to sell downloadable content on PC?
20/10/2009 at 20:59 Psychopomp says:
I’m with you until the end. I think that last bit is where it’s okay to call PC gamers spoiled twats.
“I WANT MORE, I WANT IT NOW, AND I WANT IT *FOR FREE!*”
20/10/2009 at 06:14 Efields says:
I have supported this game from COD 1 all the way to WAW, I will not buy into this BS, I will encourage whom ever not to buy this game for PC. PC gamers is really who got this game going it was us, not the console users. We shoved millions and millions of revenue at Activision, and now they want to rob us blind. Thats not the way I play it. I truley hope that everyone who is a COD enthusiast for the PC will not touch this game untill Activision gets ther head out of there ASS! I signed a petition not too long ago, and no I dont think it will do much but it cant hurt. There are over 84000 signatures that translates in to over $5,000,000.00 in revenue if all of us were to buy it. buttom line is WE DONT TOUCH THIS GAME UNTIL THEY FIX IT AND FIX IT RIGHT!!!!!!!!
20/10/2009 at 07:05 purplespud says:
Part gamers did it to themselves with epic piracy, part Activison are a-holes who, in doing what they are supposed to as a craporation, want to extract maximum dollar for minimum product. Don’t blame IW to much, it’ s not like their opinions matter when it comes to business matters. Hopefully this news is also part marketing hamster getting some of the finer points wrong… and that through the STEAM stuff already announced there will be a spot for communities and clans.
OR.. Craptavision is setting this up so they can use non sales of PC version as final reason to stop PC development all together. Many COD people came from the MOH franchise, maybe it is time to move on.
20/10/2009 at 07:32 Tei says:
The piracy line is a lie. There has been piracy on videogames forever. Lots of piracy on the C64, on the Amiga, on the Atari, the first PC’s, lots of piracy on the 80′s, 90′s, etc… nothing has changed.
Other than… the consoles getting from the PC the online multiplayer aspect. Since the consoles are simpler, and there are more users, it make sense to make the “products” only for consoles, and re-release for the PC only as a by-product.
But Movies, Music, Videogames… are much more than a “product”,.. need to have a quality aspect, and a artistic aspect. Here the quality aspect is damaged for the PC, the p2p gameplay for a FPS is not good enough, and is full of problems for the users. So the MP aspect of the game is almost killed on the PC…. If theres no way to create dedicated servers, or no one will create these… I highly doubt there will be no dedicated servers, It would be something amazingly stupid, some people can be stupid, but not everyone is stupid. So there will be dedicated servers, I think.
20/10/2009 at 08:12 12kill4 says:
The thing I found most interesting about this event is the way it has catagorised the various communities into distict subgroups..
Group 1: the boycotter
Group 2: the apologetic pirater
Group 3: the piracy blamer
Group 4: the rational argumentist/corporate apologist
Group 5: the single-player
sure there is a bit of cross-over, such as the bootleg boycotters (I.e people who want to protest without inconvinencing themselves and/or integrity and thus pirate the game), but for the most part there us some pretty distict separation going on here…
I fall under my own group… The douchey observer.
20/10/2009 at 20:49 lumpi says:
“Group 4: the rational argumentist/corporate apologist”
Really? You put those in the same group? I don’t see anything rational about defending corporate greed/idiocy. Especially if you do not personally own any of the company’s stocks.
20/10/2009 at 10:10 rockstar says:
When i heard about this I never believed a company would make such a fundamental mistake! COD4 sold millions world wide..I hope for us; the gamers MW2 barely reaches the thousands. Only then will IW see the error of their way.
Another sale lost from here.
FU IW
20/10/2009 at 10:12 rockstar says:
Forgot IW = Craptivision! (my bad) :)
20/10/2009 at 18:30 Adam says:
Hermit, you hit the nail on the head mate.
20/10/2009 at 18:57 PCGaming...LOL says:
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2009/10/20/modern-warfare-2-dedicated-server-response.aspx
“We’re just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners,” says West. He points toward the mounting feedback IW has received from PC fans of Modern Warfare who couldn’t find a decent server to play on between all of the cheaters, the insular communities, and huge skill level disparities that the original game’s community fractured into. “We thought maybe it would be cool if the fans could play the game,” he laughs.
20/10/2009 at 19:07 Psychopomp says:
What kinda dumbfuck can’t find good servers?
I don’t even like CoD, and the shear amount of bullshit their spewing is ridiculous.
20/10/2009 at 20:50 lumpi says:
“[...]he laughs.”
Shortly before getting punched in the face by a PC gamer.
20/10/2009 at 19:05 Ardaddict says:
Awesome logic…I haven’t pirated yet, but now I’m going to because Im mad and that makes it alright. Wow…..some people.
20/10/2009 at 19:33 R. Paulson says:
I’ve never pirated a video game cause I wanted to support the industry I enjoy so much, but the second I heard about this that went down the drain……i will be pirating this game just to burn it in a burn barrel……k i will at least play the single player before i do that………but i don’t really think illegit copies is the problem in fact I think have the backlash spore experienced over a simple DRM most companies know that’s not the way to go about pirating. making the move in the interest of the PC gaming community, obviously he has no fucking idea what makes this community. Man first I thought us PC gamers got the shaft when they weren’t going to have any collectors editions for the PC……granted they are gimmicky I would have still bought one cause I have been playing COD since the beginning. Eat a bag of dicks you fucks!!!
20/10/2009 at 22:24 the wiseass says:
Bowling explains himself (or at least tries to):
http://www.fourzerotwo.com/?p=745
22/10/2009 at 22:03 maan says:
We had cod servers from the beginning. We are not going to rent a server for MW2. And why not? coz our members cant pick a server themselves if they want to play. The server you are going to play on will be picked by IW.
No self controle over servers anymore. Thats not what our clan, and i think the whole community wants.
if we wanted console games, we would have bought a console and not a pc for gaming
22/10/2009 at 22:27 nayon says:
Unfortunately there are two other groups:
7: The people who are oblivious to this fact and will buy the game, either because they don't care/know enough about the situation or they just don't follow educated online media or something similar so they don't know the situation.
8: The console "gamers" who will laugh at PC gamers being "whiny f@ggots"
The msot saddening thing is probably group 8 is about a hundred times larger than groups 1-6 combined. And group 7 purely doesn't matter.
So IW will still make truckloads of money.
23/10/2009 at 21:02 Mike says:
Don’t worry about pirating just don’t buy, If they are wrong about pricing and multiplayer then they will see the decline in sales and be forced to change up. I hate matchmaking because you always get matched up with idiots or it’s always laggy for me so I don’t think I will buy this game for $60. I’ll just wait for a really good sale before I buy. It just doesn’t sound all that fun anymore.
25/10/2009 at 04:21 203 says:
amen.
some people might say that it proves IW’s point that there are too many PC pirates out there ruining their business… in this case they’ve created a huge problem themselves. i too was a certain sale, pre-ordered the game over a month ago and was genuinely excited for the ‘game of the year’ to arrive on my doorstep on 10/11.
multiplayer gimped, pre-order cancelled, torrent crawling for the single player on 11/11. good job IW/Actard.
25/10/2009 at 04:33 Vinraith says:
Mostly it proves to them that people aren’t strong willed enough to do without, so if they could just make their DRM restrictive enough you’d pay for the game.
So yeah, on behalf of the PC market, thanks a bunch for being a f#@&$*) pirate..
26/10/2009 at 05:02 Olympia says:
I don’t really understand why people are calling this a ‘huge mistake’ on Infinity Ward’s part. I believe it has little to do with piracy, and more to do with keeping the Multiplayer mode fair.
The main draw of MW2 is the Multiplayer mode, which includes an incredible number of unlockables, such as things that directly affect gameplay, like guns, attachments, grenades, streak rewards, perks, to titles, medals and other rewards. The experience, leveling and reward system is the spine of the Multiplayer system and IW spent a lot of time perfecting and balancing it.
What WOULD HAPPEN, and what is happening with TF2, a game that also has a reward and an achievement system is that people would create servers that only served as a farm for the unlockables, so people didn’t have to spend the time and do the things that would get them the perks, weapons, et cetera. Look at the list of servers for TF2 and there are many, many, achievement farms, and these are for just achievements, something that doesn’t actually affect gameplay!
If IW allowed for dedicated servers, the multiplayer system would fall apart immediately because people would devise ways to exploit the unlocking system. The Multiplayer system is the baby of IW and they’ll be damned if they’ll let it fail because they wanted to please modders and tournament players. It WOULD fuck up the leveling system, ruining things for everyone.
IW made a decision that would have benefited much more people. So far, they haven’t made any missteps, and I doubt this is one. To me, it’s an incredibly trivial complaint.
By they way, I played COD4 on the PC for a long time, as well as on Live and PSN. I do play PC games, and I care very much about the issue.
26/10/2009 at 05:07 Olympia says:
PS I hate matchmaking, but I hate cheaters way more.
26/10/2009 at 05:55 Psychopomp says:
Congrats, you’ve been indoctrinated.
26/10/2009 at 09:24 Olympia says:
Cool, way to refute my argument.
26/10/2009 at 09:35 Psychopomp says:
It’s an unavoidable issue. People will just party up with friends, and farm if they have to. If anything, that’s even *easier* than achievement servers, because you don’t have to deal with people griefing a server forever.
26/10/2009 at 09:37 Heliocentric says:
You didn’t really deserve it, match making has never really been connected to anti cheat. Now, a dedicated server with an admin? That is protection, especially when the admin can do things like demand screen shots off punkbuster.
IW’s choice to remove dedicated server benefits IW financially, but no one else.
I’m not saying they don’t have a right to mess with pirates and force feed players dlc as the only content or even break the usability of multiplayer for even paying customers but non of that actually helps real customers and certainly not match making’s influence on cheating, which is to make in unmoderatable.
Even if IW hunt down cheats on the pc in the begining, what about when cod6 comes out and actard wants to sell it to all the mw2 players, surely they’ll drop support for cheat hunters in mw2, what reason would they have to continue.
Then you are forced to buy a new game, just to be able to avoid cheaters, because no dedicated server admins can help.
26/10/2009 at 09:50 Moot says:
Having played MW on the XBox 360 rather than PC, the one, massive, steel-toed boot in the face of fairness is that of host latency – or lack of it.
The advantage the host gets over those clients joining his/her game can be hugely significant in a fast-paced game. A ping of zero vs a ping of >50 between evenly matched players will tip the balance in favour of the host.
If you are looking at even higher pings, even an unskilled player can whitewash decent competition.
It was the aspect I found most frustrating with the first MW on XBox: As I am stuck out in the Middle East, unless by some fluke I got a match with someone else in Dubai I was paired with competition further afield and game-breaking latency ensued…
By being able to run geographically central servers, pick and choose which of those servers you join and by removing host advantage/zero ping for individuals the game balances out much better.
26/10/2009 at 09:52 Moot says:
oops – dp.
26/10/2009 at 10:16 Heliocentric says:
I’m going to post for the other side of the arguement for a second.
“You are in the middle east, IW don’t care about you. Why don’t you go out side and play modern warfare for real, because you are in iraq?(remember, this is the other side) I bet you are a hacker anyway with all you dubai hotel money to buy hacks off the internet. (lets finish off with a little bit of direct repetition of what iw said) This is going to improve the average players experience, thats what matters”.
26/10/2009 at 10:36 Psychopomp says:
It depresses, that I could see someone actually using that argument in other corners of the internet.
26/10/2009 at 10:26 Jochen Scheisse says:
ANGRY TUBEHOUSE ATTACK!
26/10/2009 at 10:30 Moot says:
Problem with that argument is that it is very silly.
:-p
Taking the last part which is really the only valid bit, I would say that your "average" MW gamer – on PC at least – is a fairly technically savvy and demanding gamer due to the type of game, the relatively high system specs needed to play effectively etc.
The petition and general uproar would suggest fairly conclusively that the "average" MW gamer has made it clear that the changes will not benefit them and indeed, may just impact their enjoyment of the game enough for them not to buy.
Of course, the lack of dedicated servers and the new proposed model for multi-player may well benefit IW in the short-term, but if the furore results in lost sales…
I also think that my geographic location doesn't really alter the argument on host advantage.
26/10/2009 at 19:37 Railick says:
It may be a silly argument but at the same time in previous CoD games IW has exactly been very senstive to middle eastern people. In Cod 4 they were just bad guys, they had "good guy" russians but not "good guy" muslims or middle easterns, they were all durka durka Jihad running around shooting everything in sight with RPGS and beat up trucks with machine guns attached ect. there isn't a single civilian or helpful resistant fighters that assist your character when you're fighting in the middle east part of the game. (just as an example I believe the older medal of honor games do have one section where some german civilians assist you in defeating the nazis by allowing you into their home, I'm not sure which one)
27/10/2009 at 14:52 eXiLeD says:
btw the russians were the “bad guys” along with the Opfor.
Good guys would be considered the British SAS and Marines….
27/10/2009 at 14:50 eXiLeD says:
PC gamers need dedicated servers in order for us to make a MOD to play competition. THIS is why the pc community is in an uproar. Why would we want to play a game stock, like cosole competition? Its just retarted. Who wants to use gay perks like martydom where money is involved? PC competition is 10x better than console competition. And don’t say I am biased, cause I’ve played both throughout my life. PC wins hands down.
28/10/2009 at 07:59 ashlee says:
No promod?
:(
Such a step back I think.. I’m super disappointed
Oh well, cod4 ftw.
11/11/2009 at 15:20 Fukurmother says:
This server is just pissing me off. I cant get into online play and yesterday worked fine. Nobody that I played with yesterday could get anyone to join there game.(invite). If it doesnt work by the end of the day I’m taking this shit back.
11/11/2009 at 17:21 Psychopomp says:
You can’t
Also, l2forward ports
11/11/2009 at 17:19 Hug_dealer says:
never should have bought it in the first place.
30/11/2009 at 01:52 learntoplaylosers says:
I’m actually glad they finally removed support for dedicated servers and knew this was coming for a long time. I kept telling people to stop banning people and complaining about martyrdom/last stand perks, but none of these assclown admins listened. Now this is the result. People are forced to play the game the way it was meant to be played, without stupid rules. I remember playing on servers where the admins would actually ban you for JUMPING!!!! I also played on another server where they banned me for RUNNING!!! Seriously, if your aim is that bad, then learn to fucking aim. Play the game and STFU or better yet, PLAY SOMETHING ELSE!!!! Thank you InfinityWard!!!!!
PS : If you want a game with no jumping, go play wolfenstein 3D and fuck off!!
30/11/2009 at 05:19 Nickosha says:
Why did you revive this, possible troll?
28/12/2009 at 17:16 Walshy says:
Matchmaking is such a console thing. PC gamers are above the console curve when it comes to tech savvy things, we understand Ping and ways to make it better and the such, i.e the amount of packets sent.
I think this revolution of blurring the line between console and PC has gone too far.
I played COD:MW:2 online and one of the game types was GROUND WAR 12-18players. That is very bad news. Servers often get 30-40 players to a game, but nay we’d rather fight our wars with 6 soldiers facing six enemies. WTH! infitity Ward.
@ALL THE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THE MUSLIMS
seriously, who cares?
@LEARNTOPLAYLOSERS
Why don’t you just go on another server, or make your own server.