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."
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:Won't it ... ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This will end well (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cry me a river.
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?
Re:So P****d off right now... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, so you're one of THOSE people. Nice. Not suprised Activision has little or no regard for the opinions of your type.
Good news ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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:Over 88,000 Already... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 even be making a PC version if the market looked like this?
/Mikael
Stop being lazy. Clicking "sign" is meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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. :)
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:2, Insightful)
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 past era.
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.
Re:Doubt the petition will have much effect. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 oppression by multimillion megacorps? Hardly; dedicated game servers aren't exactly a human right.
Well, I'm beat. Surely they're the only reasons that people pirate?
Re:Open source games (Score:3, Insightful)
"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:Um, yay! (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, what is being proposed does nothing to address your complaints, and will be presenting you with an inferior gameplay experience in terms of ping time and latency. Not even mentioning the fact that if the person who hosts the game decides to drop out, *POOF*, they're goes everyone's session. You think you dislike joining official servers? Wait until the service of your game depends on whatever "bastards who just got the OK from their mom to play" gets to be in charge of hosting your games.