There's no denying the Modern Warfare 2 server uproar this week has been a hot topic and Infinity Ward has responded in length outlining the reasons behind its move away from  dedicated servers.

IWNET is in and dedicated servers are out and that's the decision Infinity Ward has made as part of the largest investment they have pumped into any product according to Robert Bowling's Blog. Bowling has outlined some of the key reasons Infinity Ward has moved to IWNET which include better matchmaking, smoother gameplay, premade server types with the playlist feature, private match functionality, a party system with friends lists, and cheat and hack free games. 

A large portion of the community certainly thinks that these features are not enough to warrant moving away from the dedicated server platform which puts the players in control. I think we all agree that dedicated servers are great as they allow full control and customisation of game types as well as a variety of geographical locations, but does it put too much control in the community's hands?

Some may argue the community would then have the power to control the game's popularity; after all, there is nothing worse than buying a game and being annoyed at the lack of servers a few months down the line from release. There are, of course, cases when built in server browsers and company controlled servers just cause an immense amount of frustration with poor features, difficult support structures and lag.

One thing to note here, the game will sell by the bucket-load regardless of the vocal community. Modern Warfare 2 will probably prove too irresistible for shooter fans in the end and this is the biggest title for Activision this year. Will the community really boycott the game? If they are really angry at this decision they could hit Activision where it hurts, its bank balance. Time will tell.

Comments

fadorrr (1) Posted: 05:26 on 21 Oct 2009

I've bought every call of duty game to ever come out on pc, this is the first that I wont be buying, and its the one I was looking forward to the most. I will never buy this game, no matter how good it is, and I hope that other pc gamers follow suit. After spending 200+ dollars over the years on IW games I think I deserve better from them than this. MW2 is basically running on the same engine as the first game, instead of simply using the server list from that game they came up with a whole new system designed to make money. Remeber how long it took to get the new maps for cod4 on pc? Thats because they had no way to charge us, now they do, at the sacrifice of everything that makes pc gaming great. I will still play this game, but I wont be paying 60 bucks for a dumbed down multiplayer and a six hour single player.

Asteria (2) Posted: 15:32 on 21 Oct 2009

Why are official servers not welcomed? If they insist on having the games played on official servers than users can hold them to providing the best possible support, ping time and geographical placement of servers.

Doolittle (3) Posted: 15:56 on 21 Oct 2009

This'd leave less of a bitter taste in my mouth if the PC version's price was standard rather than £45. Combined with that, this IWNET thing is almost certainly a piracy prevention system as well as a money grab. No unofficial maps, no mods, no "personal touches" like clan servers - which is a big thing for the hardcore. It's still going to do well, but it's not going to have the varied and thriving community that it would if they hadn't made this decision, and I think players would be more receptive to either this or the price point if it were one or the other, and not both. The ability to create extra content, host servers, and to an extent do what you like with the game is one of the things that stands out about PC gaming, but I guess it all stands in the way of the bottom line, and the mighty Activision doesn't like that. Sorry, but I want my custom games. I want my servers with two players with sniper rifles against eight players with knives. I want knife-only matches. I want gravity-defying battles. Unless MW2 has enough customisation functionality to do everything that a server host could do through the console, this is a blow. Hell, I also like being able to go through lists and find low-ping games with a number of players that I want, a max player limit I want, and so on. Have matchmaking ranked and on official servers, sure, but I like my options. I also dislike ranks in games, but that's another story entirely. Has anyone got a link to where they've said this has official servers, by the way? Because from what I can tell it looks more like it's just removing the dedicated server option, and then essentially making one player locally host when it hooks people up through matchmaking. And if there are official servers and I've missed it - considering that sixteen billion people are going to buy this on launch, I have my suspicions that it's going to be far from lag-free on day one.