No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2 313
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 ... ? (Score:2)
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 ?
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Most likely, they made this decision so that they can use server-side copy protection (aka, Show me valid cd-key, bitch!), not unlike Starcraft2 removal of LAN gameplay in favor of battlenet, so expect centralized system. Otherwise, there is no point.
So, you will be out of luck with piratey thing unless piratey people take time to write their own servers.
Open source games (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [slashdot.org] 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.
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"How do you plan to financially support Open Source games? Coding, arts, music, running servers and so on cost *a lot*."
Considering the fun ones, like Scorched3D, and the like, DON'T COST A GODDAMNED THING BUT TIME - no need to support open source gaming FINANCIALLY.
Hell, I'll just whip up some music and offer it for free. You seem to not understand the nature of open collaboration.
Re:Won't it ... ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dead on. I am in a COD Clan, which I will not mention here. We were in existence as far back as MOH Spearhead...and later hosted servers for COD UO, COD2, COD4, and now, WaW. We typically support (modded) servers long after others have left the game...and are currently still running servers for COD2 and COD4 in addition to WaW.
We buy our games on release day. Actually, we pick them up on release day...we buy them well in advance. We have about 150 clan members and another 100 or so associated regular players...in addition to our guests. We don't pirate...and we run PB...so they are free to check what they want for our members, regulars, and guests.
We pay over $400 a month for a dedicated physical server (on which we host multiple game servers). We also pay for a separate host for forums, map redirects, and a Vent server.
In the past, we have also run BF2, BF2142, MOH Airborne and other titles, but CoD is our primary game...and we were really looking forward to MW2. No longer.
We run only games that allow us to host our own server. We finally were able to swing that with BF and that's why we ran it. For us, the community is *at least* as important as the game. We want a single place (or set of servers actually) where our members, regulars, and guests can join us. We also want control over the maps, mods, and admin. We run a mature server and do not tolerate immature players, cheaters, or folks who lack sportsmanship.
Frankly, I have limited expectations for this petition...or any type of boycott. That said, my clan is out. There is no way that we support a game that doesn't allows us to host it. i.e., a game that ignores the importance of our community. We have had a fairly sizable number of members cancel pre-orders...and now have switched our attention to BF3. It's a big leap for us (sad, but true), but as the dude says, this will not stand.
The clan abides,.
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uh, dedicated servers means they don't have to use their bandwidth, so I don't get where you're going about that.
Meanwhile, yes, this is when a game decision is so asinine that people have a reason to pirate. Again, brought to you by the same people who killed off LAN from Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.
"better experience" = we're a bunch of greedy assholes and we want to use the phrase 'better experience' to rationalize our imaginary fight against piracy to shove DRM up your ass and prevent you from playing on t
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After playing Left4Dead, I cant really bitch about its match-making system either tho. There are no server lists and you can easily just jump in to game. But if you like to, you can also invite your friends via steam to same server, or set up your own lobby where they join (and then open it up for others to fill rest of the player slots if you dont have as many)
Granted, with MW1 there was some servers I liked and I added them to my favourites list - mostly because they were administrated good, they had (usu
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Probably they're trying to switch it to a Xbox Live/Left4Dead model, where the game will randomly pick someone (after a brief test of their bandwidth) to be the server, then not tell them they're the server to prevent that person from being a jackass. The problem is that although the game tries not to reveal who the server is, there's usually an obvious "tell", so the guy who happens to be the server can still be a jackass.
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master severs are for n00bs.
You probably mean server lists. Servers and clients still auth against master server, which obviously doesn't work if its down.
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Exactly. Both systems rely on the master servers being available, so this argument doesn't really hold any ground. If it dies, both systems die.
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In the long run that is kind of the point. Keeping the MP ball in your court means never having to say that someone doesn't owe you.....a possible subscription fee to keep them going.
Sadly, this proves that PC gamers are utterly worthless at this point. IW/Activision can offer some extra DLC for "free" and recoup any looses that would have happened with a few thousand PC gamers deciding to boycott.
Hell hath no fury (Score:5, Funny)
Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned.
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It will be superior to the rental version in every way.
FTFY
Fuck The Fuck Yeah?
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Fixed That For You.
Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
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which will accomplish... what exactly?
Will it fix the problem of no dedicated servers? Nope.
Will it send the message that gamers want dedicated servers? Not really. It more sends the message that PC gamers will take any unrelated excuse to pirate, and by extension, lessen the chances that the developers will bother with the PC platform in the future.
Will it stand up for our freedoms and help prevent oppr
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Well the problem apparently is that they're doing this to curb PC piracy. I wanted to exceptionally buy MW2 (I haven't bought a game in 10 years) because playing only on cracked servers on MW kind of sucked (mostly when the few servers out there have PunkBuster turned off so you know that's where all the aimbot/wallhack noobs go), and to know it'll most likely use Steam (is the Steam app still as annoying and intrusive as a few years ago?) and that there will be no dedicated servers has me reconsidering tha
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Not to mention those of us who made cod4 go on Linux w/ wine, alas. Cod4's PB doesn't work, since it checks the integrity of various Windows API calls.
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cry me a river.
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I don't see anything there where he is admitting to piracy or saying that he is going to pirate MW2. You fail.
Really? He says "I haven't bought a game in 10 years", but played CoD4 even though "playing only on cracked servers on MW kind of sucked". CoD4 came out 2 years ago, during a period where he was not purchasing games, and could not play on official servers. That's an admission of piracy.
Of course, he doesn't then claim he will be pirating MW2, just that the thing that he would have bought it for (good dedicated servers) might not be there anymore.
I have a really hard time feeling bad for someone who pira
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And yet, they will encourage it, as people will want cracked versions they can use with private servers.
Alanis, are you paying attention? *This* is the definition of "ironic".
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lol, yeah, not too sure about that, I mean, things can get complicated. Like with GTA IV, last time I checked you needed to get on a VPN to play it online on private servers.
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If there's no dedicated server support originally in the game, it means crackers will need add and code it fully *in to the game* to begin with. That is a *lot* more work than just patch some code so that the pirate server doesn't authenticate with main server.
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this is stupid. Punkbuster is such a piece of crap it doesn't even work on most modern gaming systems which require it. XP was about the last thing to support it.
Piracy is an excuse for "we want to be even lazier and not even put in effort anymore. also, micropayments".
Nobody likes steam, their DRM is marginally better. You know what'd be the best? No DRM! What an idea!It's just they're the only one with a remotely acceptable solution (and not entirely, at that). Everyone else is even worse dinosaurs of a p
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Nobody likes steam, their DRM is marginally better. You know what'd be the best? No DRM! What an idea!It's just they're the only one with a remotely acceptable solution (and not entirely, at that). Everyone else is even worse dinosaurs of a past era.
I'm not too sure about that. Steam has always worked great, and I actually prefer buying from it because of the easiness of it. On top of that you get the additional community features of steam with every game. And it's a lot easier to just download your games again if you ever delete them or go to other computer / friends place. I now a days actually prefer Steam version over physical versions (and no you dont need to be connected to internet to play them - just a few days my internet was broken for the wh
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Last I checked, L4D has no dedicated servers. I can play mods all I want.
What they need is a peering system that lets mods be uploaded to game players who don't have the map/mod.
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Last I checked, L4D has no dedicated servers. I can play mods all I want.
L4D has plenty of dedicated servers, provided both officially by Valve and by private individuals and groups.
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not understandable if it tanked through their own hamfisted restrictions. PC gamers like dedicated servers. It means clans have somewhere fixed to play, they can make mods, they can moderate who gets on, they can run game matching front ends etc. More importantly, it means the players can run servers beyond a game's commercial life.
It doesn't stop Infinity Ward running their own official servers, or offering some form of single sign-on, or medals / points / rewards, or even selling DLC, or even preventing piracy. They could provide their own server as a value add, and I'm sure the service would be popular. But I see no technical reason for taking away a feature that many people want, especially since the code already exists.
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up! His right in the spot:
More importantly, it means the players can run servers beyond a game's commercial life.
When MW3 arrives, they'll pull the plug on these servers to force everyone to buy the new game.
I still play UT99, ten years after release. I won't but games with planned obsolescence. There is no good reason to do this except screwing the costumer.
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It is an odd decision, for sure. At first glance, it seems counter-productive, because leaving aside any potential lost sales (and to be honest, I doubt too many of those will actually materialise), there must surely be more cost in providing some bespoke matchmaking system than in sticking in a server browser and letting people host dedicated servers. However, thinking about it, I can think of a few of the factors that are likely behind this. Note that I'm not saying I endorse them; just that I think these
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they're going to try to nickel and dime the gamers for every little addon and component. Want to play? $50. Want to play with actual weapons? Another $5 per weapon. Or some other equally idiotic requirement. Somehow they think micropayments are a good thing and there is lots of proof that it's not.
Thus, these 92 thousand signatures add up to way more over time, you know, like what is probably 1/4 or more of the people that were supposedly going to buy this game (not me, especially not now, not before this e
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Here's the petition (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the petition [petitiononline.com].
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An Internet petition! I'm sure they're shitting themselves now!!!
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I would like to know the last time one of those online petitions actually worked.
Hmm... it appears never [snopes.com].
On a more upbeat note, slacktivism [snopes.com] is our word of the day!
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Battlefield (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Battlefield (Score:5, Funny)
So you're going to switch to DICE and EA?! DICE, who makes legendarily buggy games? EA who would gladly kick your grandma for a buck?
Oh yah, much better option.
No fun (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Over 88,000 Already... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Over 88,000 Already... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Assuming people have the balls to actually cancel their pre-order and not buy the game. There are a lot of people who bitch and moan about game companies decision's concerning their games, but very rarely do these people seem to do the most effective thing to tell the game company that they don't like it, which is to NOT BUY THE GAME. Its like the people who complain about securROM yet who still buy the game and just send a letter(or so they claim) to the company. They don't give a shit about any of that letter crap, once they have your money they could care less, and if you continue to buy their games you're just perpetuating the problem. Vote with your wallets people.
Re:Over 88,000 Already... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually worse than that. A lot of people will end up pirating the game and make it clear on forums or whatever that they pirated the game as their way of "protesting". But all that does is two things:
* It shows that those complaining can't really be that serious as they aren't prepared to do without, which makes one's position much less credible, and
* It gives publishers another data point when talking about game piracy numbers.
If you really truly have an issue with a particular software company, and you feel that the only way to make an impact is to not give them any money, then you also have to accept the fact that making a credible stance HAS to also include not using their software, even for free. Otherwise, you're part of the problem.
Having said all that, sticking to these principles can be rather difficult. Particularly when one is young and was brought up on having tons of pirated content on their hard drives. :)
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Imagine the lost sales if Valve had blocked mods on half-life and we never received counter-strike, I know that is an extreme example of mods driving sales, but they do to a point anywhere.
Well I think the big thing is that Half Life was made incredibly popular by the mods that were made for it. I played Counter Strike before I even knew what Half Life was. Once I played it, it was definitely an amazing game, but it still is what got me indoctrinated into the series.
I can honestly say for a fact that I was planning on buying this game (Fuck preorders, I'm not that hellbent on getting it), and now I won't because of this. I'd run a dedicated server on my spare computer in my house and my frien
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Are you seriously suggesting that the sales of the PC version are likely to be 1/1000th of those for the various consoles? You do realize that this would mean that if the console versions together sold 10,000,000 copies there would only be 10,000 copies sold of the PC version. I find that highly unlikely....
If we assume that the aforementioned 89,000 complaints is the entire PC market for the game then that would, by your logic, mean that they will end up selling 89,000,000 console copies. Why would they ev
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That's closer to 6%.
One of the questions I asked in the first [...] had to do with how many units of CoD4 were sold before Christmas of 2007. The answer was approximately 7 million total, but only 400,000 on the PC side (source: NPD group, Jan 2008 stats).
From here [bashandslash.com]
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Those are old numbers, COD4 sold nearly 2 million copies on PC.
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Oh please, PC gamers bitch and moan about everything. Bitch, moan, bitch, moan. At the end of the day, they'll buy the game anyway, and nothing will change. Canceled pre-orders doesn't hurt anybody but GameStop and Amazon, and they'll make the money back in a month with the gamers buy the thing anyway.
And has an online petition ever gotten any company to change their policy on anything? I don't have the imagination to think of a *less* effective way to protest.
This will end well (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This will end well (Score:5, Interesting)
1. You get assigned to a lobby where someone (lobby host) is from Australia and you from Finland. ERR, thats a 370ms latency right there
2. You join into a game that is already going. ERR, that's a 150ms latency there between you and the server which hardly is playable as you cannot predict the zombies hits properly.
3. Lobby assigns you to a modded server where there are some shitty mods going on, the option "back to lobby vote" is disabled. Shit outta luck there. Too bad that the modded servers and 3rd party servers are in same pile (which SUCKS).
4. You cannot select a server where to go, unless you revert to console commands and are a lobby host or use direct connect to particular server through console.
5. Custom maps are a joke. You have to pre-download them and it takes too long time due to maps (campaigns) being over 100 megs, even 300. Once you download them, imagine 30 KB's a second. Thats 1 hour right there. At the point where you get it downloaded, no one is even playint it anymore. Next time you play, same thing but you get to download whole new campaign. At the moment i have 5 Gigs of custom campaigns downloaded from which i have played 3 out of over 20 campaigns.
On the good old CSS/TF2 system, you could just connect to a server and download the campaign from there directly and fast, if the server used a fastdownload host. I guess there was a reason for this, so the slow downloaders would not reserve a spot but Valve should have had the custom maps available over Steam.
6. You end up on a gameserver that is running within a server that is overcrowded aka overloaded aka running too many goddamn gameservers. Even Valve does this with L4D. The official L4D servers were running only 10-20 ticks per second while the optimal is 30. This is caused by the overhead CPU usage in panic events, such as finales and small fight scenes. At that point the CPU usage peaks up 100-300% compared to regular usage. Imagine 30 servers running fine and then all having panic event at the same time. Sheesh!
7. There is no community in L4D. I have one server in top 150 played L4D servers in the world (valve rank, which you see when entering the gameserver). It has served over 26531 players at that time from which 99,99% are people who see:
- Good server running
- Wonder how they could go there through lobby again
Valve builds a system where players keep in touch through Steam so they get together through random system and them meet up on some server
8. No one is actually looking after the players at the servers. There are stats about ragequits, teamkills, and such but not for the server owners. All they can do is look at the logs if someone killed the whole group in some random game and left the server. That sucks, really. And who reads those logs, there are tons of text for crying out loud!
9. The lobby search fails with filtering. If i put difficulty level to Any, i get multiple servers. If i go back, select filter to Expert, i see none or only 1, 2 campaigns with expert on, even though previously with setting any, i saw over 10. If i go back and set it to any again, i see them again, all of them.
10. A lot more stuff that i just can't now remember.
Lobby works to a certain point, perhaps for games like this but needs work - a lot.
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On the good old CSS/TF2 system, you could just connect to a server and download the campaign from there directly and fast, if the server used a fastdownload host. I guess there was a reason for this, so the slow downloaders would not reserve a spot but Valve should have had the custom maps available over Steam.
The "sv_downloadurl" cvar was put in place long before CSS came out. I ran a 1.6 server in late 2003 to 2005 and once I talked my host into giving me some webspace and bandwidth I immediately saw a massive increase on people joining my server and more donations to pay for the server bill. Sometimes I didn't even pay for it because of the amount of cash coming in.
This was all before any idiot could run a server and you had to hack away at configuration files and manually install mods, maps, etc -- much like
I was pretty excited about MW2 until.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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The real joke to all of this is that I never play multiplayer games on the consoles for the sole reason that the multiplayer is always, without fail, completely terrible. Now they want to bring
Ah the beauty.. (Score:2)
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..
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And here's why the PC market won't die : because pretending like there's no demand doesn't make the actual demand go away. Therefore even if some decide to cut the PC platform off you'll still have some left to provide PC games and reaping larger fruits. Which means inevitably those who want to cut it off by principle and to make a point (instead of cutting it off for profit-maximisation purposes, when making a PC port costs them less than the money PC sales make them) will come back to it. That's basic fre
So P****d off right now... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Oh, so you're one of THOSE people. Nice. Not suprised Activision has little or no regard for the opinions of your type.
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If you're blaming the net effect, maybe you should look at the cause.
This is like saying that music "piracy" is bad, yet the real reason is because consumers aren't getting the crap that they want. Oh wait, lets blame piracy.
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I'm seriously tempted to run around with people spotting people playing it and removing it from their PCs
Oh, so you're one of THOSE people. Nice. Not suprised Activision has little or no regard for the opinions of your type.
It's called "raising customer awareness". People buy these games on the assumption that they can be modded. (I bought Half-Life 2 on the assumption that there would be cool mods for it, which is different, but equally disappointing — there are mods, but all of them are pretty weak.) People deserve to know that a major feature is being removed. Activision makes ads which essentially lie to you, why shouldn't gamers tell each other the truth? I didn't see anything about forced uninstalls on people's per
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Maybe you should take your medication?
You could just simply not buy the product, if you don't like it. Instead of vandalizing random people's computers, or pointlessly swearing at somebody.
This makes me sad (Score:2, Insightful)
Damnit Activision (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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Good news ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The halflife of Half-Life (Score:2, Informative)
Somehow I have a feeling the pc gaming industry is trying to
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Half-Life didn't have such a long lifespan because of linux support, don't kid yourself.
Bullet Meets Foot..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bullet Meets Foot..... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Call of Duty Devs know exactly how many stolen / cracked copies are around for COD:MW, http://kotaku.com/344848/piracy-makes-call-of-duty-4-devs-sad [kotaku.com]. So their thinking (behind closed doors) is if you lock down the servers so people can't pirate / mod / customize servers you make more money.
Reality piracy != sale. All of those people who crack / share cd keys are not going to go ahead a buy a copy of the game. Especially if it is crippled so only pirates can mod / play on outside servers.
So Lather, Rinse, Repeat 6-13.
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Maybe your point number 8 isn't exactly so. Maybe customers keep buying it, regardless of a minority of hard-core fanatics that complain, yet most of them also probably still buy it. I call it the StarWars eps I-III effect
Stop being lazy. Clicking "sign" is meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
That solves that. Borderlands for me. (Score:2)
No dedicated server support?
I guess I'm buying Borderlands and will continue playing MW1 for my hardcore FPS.
Hmmm, Register Link at IW Forums is dead (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:petition (Score:5, Informative)
There you go [petitiononline.com]
Re:Suits me just fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 somet
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I think the reason codemasters didn't add dedicated server support is because the engine the game was built on does not support dedicated servers.
I'm still hoping they add them soon though.
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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.
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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. . .
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dedicated server means - "a server run as a service not as a client"
if you are talking about company run servers, then specify this
Re:Quake 2/3 anyone (Score:5, Informative)
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.