Infinity Ward: Epic Fail?
 

So, Infinity Ward, developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, have decided to remove independent servers from their game.

What.

The.

Hell.

Source of the revelation..

So, in short, being a PC gamer, I'm not going to be paying money for this. If you feel the same, please follow the link below.

The official petition thread.

I hate this thread title so damn much.
 

Can someone explain to me better why this is a big deal. To me, if I want to play online, I just do it, so whatever different ways of doing it there are don't bother me. If this means they're going to charge to play it online, then that sucks, but other than that, I'm not too informed.

It (theoretically) could mean that people can't make custom server setups to rebalance the game after it comes out (TF2 does this actively I think as an example.)

However there is nothing to suggest that ability will be removed and people get super worked up over nonsense and bullshit like this.

Also E-Petitions that ask people to "please reconsider" are pointless. Go make a petition on real paper that says something of merit, not "this is a petition for you to think about what you're doing."

"Okay, we thought about it. Still doin' it!"

For one, it means you can't your own server in which to create shenanigans, which I see a lot of in (for example) TF2. It's pretty fun. I see some servers which will randomly give players things like infinite ammo or decreased gravity by random chance. I got my gravity lowered once and I jumped around a map as the pyro, soaring over people's heads, proclaiming myself to be a dragon :D

People enjoy custom servers in which they can mess around. So yeah, none of that for this game. *shrug*


Also I think you won't be able to create mods for the game, which I assume is a little upsetting to the HL2 crowd. A few people are saying the game's features have been dumbed down to match the console versions and make it more accessible.

Edit: Oh, and I've seen some people say that any official servers wouldn't be able to handle the demand as well, complaining about how various games have had server crashes on launch days, and having player-run servers would solve this.

I don't know the validity of the claim, just saying that I see it tossed around.

It doesn't sound like half as big of deal as it's being made out to be. Maybe I just don't "get it" because I play on consoles.

That hurts the understanding. Here are a few of my issues:

- In addition to removing the ability of players to host their own servers, they're not releasing modtools. This means a number of things:

1. No mods.
2. The competitive community just got shafted.
3. No custom maps.

- PUGing, to borrow a MMORPG term, has also taken a hit. I have about 6 high-quality CoD4 servers that I like to hang out on. Good admins, server rules I agree with, good map/gamestyle rotations, and just generally people I get along with. The ability to just drop into my favourite servers is now gone, as the servers don't exist anymore.

- Who's going to administrate these servers? You need more than a program to moderate these kind of things, especially when you get griefers coming in by storm. A votekick system works sometimes, if you can get enough people. A moderator can do it whenever they want.

- What happens when the servers go down? There are 14000+ dedicated servers for CoD4, and they'll remain accessible after IW has discontinued support for the game.

Some of the things that are now standard with the game were originally seen in mods (Cooking grenades is the big one). All in all it's pretty much a slap in the face for PC gamers; there are some explicit changes that make things resemble console gaming when there's no real need for it. PCs have a lot more options in this regard, and IW is now taking them away.

So, in short, forgive me for my nerd rage, but this is a fairly big issue on my radar. I don't have a lot of time to be playing games right now, but when I do, I want to play them in places that I know I'll have a good time, and not have to search around for 20 mins to find a server that feels good.

The big deal is that this extends the life of a game. The game company can't pull the plug on player servers, but when they are through supporting the game then the players are SOL when it comes to playing the game with other people over the internet.

Example: Counterstrike: People still play this game because there are still people who rent server space for it.

Counter-Example: Heavy Gear or any of the Westwood Studios RTSes: The company closed down their servers and now you cannot play the games online.

I think thats what most of the stink is about, that and you can't have private clan only servers where the clan gets priority and you are guaranteed a certain amount of performance from the server, but that stems from the customization aspect I think.

Best example of this is EA Sport games. They start shutting down servers of older games forcing users to buy the latest ones.

Other then that I don't really care. Although the modtools removal is annoying cause there are some really cool mods that players make. It really wont prevent me from getting and playing the game.

"It means you can't pirate the game and play on unofficial servers."

That is exactly what IW is thinking.

That doesn't necessarily mean their opinion is accurate if compared to what Eltargrim Drunkinski is saying.

When in reality it's going to end up meaning "You have to pirate the game to play on unofficial servers."

So, in the very end is just a shot in their own foot for no good reason at all.

PC Games are harder and harder to market these days... the one thing PC gaming has over Console gaming is that when you give Support to players for modding and server creating you might actually sell a bit better and toss a little less cash away, also, comes out looking pretty good.

I'm still waiting for the day these companies will realize that every attempt they make to fight piracy/modding/whatever actually makes it worse.

Yeah, I never said IW was smart. Noncon's got this one right; all the steps taken to prevent piracy is just another moment where the hackers and when-the-hell-are-we-going-to-start-calling-them-splicers look at the companies and go, "Aww, that's adorable," and then break the fuck out of it.

EDIT: I signed the petition and everything but I'm not sure which is funnier - the petition or IW's attempt to stop piracy.

Honestly, I want to be willing to give them my monies. They make good games, I loved (And bought) CoD2 and CoD4, and I still enjoy CoD5 (If only for zombie killing matches with my friends). But I bought those games for the multiplayer, and if I'm not going to get a multiplayer experience that I enjoy, I'm not going to pay for it. I can't afford to at this point. I want IW to give me a game that I can justify paying for, because if they can, I will. As it stands however, I've changed my mind on the purchase.

Apparently, so have a lot of people. The game dropped 70 places in the Amazon pre-order ranking, and Newegg is offering a $6.00 discount on the PC version.

I wish I had pre-ordered it so I could cancel it.

Did you tell IW about this? Sometimes, telling the company about their change causes them to change course.

Yeah I'm pretty ardentely against pirating and have never pirated games so far but when things like this come around, where the pirated game gives me more options and is a superior product than the bought one, I always consider it.
Really this kind of stuff just drives more people to pirate when they would otherwise buy.