Modern Warfare 2 PC will not have dedicated servers

[Alyeska]

Once it's past the first month or whatever, it is much less significant. If there are less pre-orders or the first week's sales are down, that's a statement itself.

Horray, I can make a statement without great sacrifice! Thats kinda pathetic.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, that's how I envisage it. However, I didn't think consoles actually ran local servers on the boxes, I though that was done on remote servers, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Official servers are used to facilitate matchmaking for games, but it’s very rare that they serve as hosts. On the 360 which with I am most familiar once a game is setup using Xbox Live for matchmaking the console actually gives you a message that it is finding the best host, which means it selects the participating console with the best internet connect to be the game server. If that person leaves then certain games just quit, others seem able to simply pause and look like they are broken for a minute until a new host is chosen. The only remotely decent thing about this is if you are already in a game then Xbox Live crashing wont affect you until its over. But if Live goes down online play is impossible even though it’s not hosting the games.

I don’t put it past Infinity Ward to try this on a PC game. Maybe they won’t, but now that they’ve made noise I’m going to assume they will fuck the game like this until they explain themselves. I don't see how they can make any worthwhile against challenge against pirates in the first place without a draconian change like this, so all the more reason to assume it.

[Alyeska]

I expect we will get some more communication from Infinity Ward in regards to this. I do think that this has become a bigger issue than IW had anticipated. I haven't seen such a negative fan response since people got angry with EA and Bioware over their DRM proposals. Will IW back down? Don't know. But we might see a compromise. Or a "dedicated server in a few months" patch. Of course there is a problem with such patches. It creates a fundamental problem. The original decision becomes null and void. And the reasons for the decision come into serious question. Why bother? And if to stop pirating, do you seriously think a pirate can't wait a few months for a patched version to pirate to play it online?

I gotta give Infinity Ward credit. This is an interesting scenario to watch play out.

[weemadando]

Depending on how much has come out since I last read any articles:

The original statement came from a PR/Marketing guy, who probably doesn't know what he was really saying.

*edit* IIRC he was talkign about matchmaking through IWNet or something. Anyone want to bet that this may be system like L4D where they authorise various servers around the place and then canlockout anyone not running as an official server?

[Ace Pace]

So lets see. IW has responded.

A developer has decided to respond.

Definitely made a big wave, and the response will not be ignored. I'll ensure everyone at IW sees the petitions and responses to it.

The same developer later elaborated on what will be coming to the PC version.

“Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is actually the biggest investment Infinity Ward has ever made into the PC version of our games. It’s also the most feature-rich PC version we’ve ever made. IWNET takes the benefits of dedicated servers and allows them to be utilised and accessed by every player, out of the box, while removing the barrier to entry for players unaware of how to maintain a server on their own,

That's the nutshell.

Matchmaking & Smoother Gameplay: When you want to player a multiplayer game on PC, in the past. You’d have to scroll through a Server Browser which listed every available server which was hosted by individual server admins. Each had their own private rules, mods, or ways of playing the game. Most players would also use the server browser to find just the best quality game (based on PING). With IWNET matchmaking, it takes all that into account for you. All you have to do is select the playlist (pre-set gametypes with custom rules) that fits the style of play you are in the mood for. When you do, it will automatically find you a game with the best performance, ping, and preferences based on your location and individual connection as well as matching you with players of your same SKILL. So you’re always guaranteed the best game performance for where you are and what connection you’re playing on as well as an equal game with other players of your same skill level, not rank, but skill level. It doesn’t mean you’ll just be thrown into a random game! It will put you in the game that will give you the smoothest gameplay possible without you having to manually find a server with the best ping.

Playlists and Private Matches: As I described above, Playlists are pre-set game modes and gametypes for public games. If you just want to jump into a public game of Search and Destroy or Hardcore Search and Destroy and you don’t care about fully customizing it, then you can utilize playlists to do that quickly for you. However, say you’re in a clan and you want to play a Clan match with another team, or you want to practice for an upcoming tournament that has specific rules in a private game. Then you can start a Private Match (which is essentially like running your own private server) where you have complete control over the rules, who can join, boot players you don’t want, and essentially control the entire game or tweak it to your liking. Once the rules are set, you can invite the other team in or just start it up with your clan to practice with the custom rules before the match. This now allows you to play custom games out of the box without the need to install mods, find a modded server with the rules you like, or worry about not being in control of the match.

Party System and Friendslist: Modern Warfare 2 on PC also makes it much easier if you want to party up with your friends, or again, with your clan for a match. You can utilize the friendslist to see when your friends are online, and invite them to your Party. A Party allows you to move from game to game as a group. It’s great for clan matches, because you can party of with your clan and move from public game to public game together. Or if you’re doing a scrim, party up and invite the other clan (who is in a party) and they’ll all join at once. Set up a private match together and play. It makes setting up scrims or games with friends easier and hassle free.

Cheat / Hack Free Games: The biggest benefit of using IWnet by far is the fact that you don’t have to worry about joining a server full of aim-bots, wallhacks, or cheaters. Or relying on the server admin of the server to constantly be monitoring, banning, and policing it. Modern Warfare 2 on PC allows us to control the quality of the game much more than ever before as well as utilizing the VAC (Valve-Anti-Cheat) system to keep games clean of hackers and cheaters.

This doesn't fully answer the question of dedicated servers hosted by the company, but atleast some promising signs for PC MP.

[Artemas]

As far as cheating goes, i've only ever encountered a couple of cheaters in all my dozens (?) of hours of playing COD4. That excuse is really pretty flimsy. And I don't think that ever finding a non-mod, or official server has ever been a problem for me. Personally, about one half of the servers I regularly play on are mod servers, and the mods most often just include things that IW didn't do properly to begin with, or allow a more free customization, ie allowing you to change your custom kits in-match, or unlocking all of the perks and weapons.

In short, the reasons that they are giving in the above seem designed around fixing a problem that wasn't there.

[Covenant]

I was confused by this, then frustrated, then I realized they're just stopping outside dedicated servers and then was confused again. A real question is if they might consider letting people rent the IW servers so that they can run them as if they were dedicated, but do so on IW's terms. It's not like you can't set up a game. Just that it becomes a lot more aggravating to do so. But not being a clanner myself, I really couldn't give a shit, outside of the fact that public servers are often a cesspool.

Piracy is a big deal. It's not like people would recoup all that money if piracy was banned by Q's fiat, what we did back in the 80's was rent games, and if there was no rental system, then you just didn't play it. I played an awful lot of the same two games because of this. But there's no doubt that while piracy has does not mean they'd buy it anyway, that piracy DOES decrease someone's motivation to actually pay for the item.

I think a company like Infinity Ward has less to complain about than smaller companies who lose a more significant amount of their cash from piracy (since they rarely have big ad campaigns to encourage first-month purchase, and word of mouth travels slower than pirates make it available for free, or so I would presume) but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to try alternatives to protect their product.

One of the risks with dedicated servers, lan mode, etc, is that it lets you more easily play a pirated game. That's why people like to try avoiding lan play and make you all connect to an online server--it's easier to control. Honestly, there's got to be a better system than this, and I think bringing back Demos and focusing less on expensive art and voice work and more on gameplay (which is comparatively cheap to create) would be a business model that helps offset costs while increasing the chance of purchase... but until then, suck it up, I suppose. It'd be nice if you could buy a game for less, but I'd rather see them cut costs than cut prices, overall. I'd love to get a game company job rather than the TV one I have, and I think it'll probably be better in the future, as more companies foster more competition and hopefully there's a backswing away from megaultrablockbuster titles 24/7 and more of the relatively smaller, cheaper, and more 'fun' titles you could reliably sell (in module format even) for 35-45 bucks.

[Quetzalcoatl]

As a pretty listless player of all of IA's COD series, I was initially not very moved by this news. Then for some delicious schadenfreude, I skimmed IA's MW2 forums last night to sample the furious bile of thousands of gamers.

Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, the news and controversy have yet to break on MW 2's wiki entry (I wonder why...) If you check the edit history, you see a number of reverts despite an increasingly large number of news sources picking up the story. Given the sheer unadulterated RAGE that has now percolated in the collective gall bladders of the PC gaming community, I expect this to change pretty soon.

[Oscar Wilde]

Their system sounds exactly like what consoles do...

[Medic]

Pfft, I'll be in SW Asia for basically all of 2010. I was gonna scramble to build a computer or get a new laptop for MW2... not now. I signed the petition and have no problem not buying it until or unless dedicated server support is added. 18-player max games on XBL suck out loud if you grew up on the massive PC CoD servers of old.

I'll give them that cheating was in fact something of a problem not to be brushed off like some people in this thread. The cheapest hack was one which simply spammed the console with messages or data or something I don't quite understand which meant server mods literally couldn't control their server, like a DDOS I suppose. Also, hacks really either pervaded or were crushed in waves. About most of 2009 it seemed until about... 2 months ago (?) the pay-for-hacks [literally where the smart money was] pretty much were never kicked automatically by PB, although the aforementioned PB update in my observation made a night-and-day difference, and it seems 2-3 hacks get kicked an hour, during peak hours of play, much to my glee.

But that ignores the fact that more often than not, hacks were reported by the constituent players through kill-cam, and the server kept on spinning. Yeah, kill-cam is "cheap" and let's you know where campers / snipers were, but it is also the best anti-hack facilitator for server mods. I've spotted dozens and gotten the same kicked. Really anyone that KNOWS a game has an intuitive BS detector and on non-kill-cam enabled servers, I invariably sniff out the hack because of the sheer impossibility of some of my deaths and so I simply change sides and observe that player. OH LOOK THAT'S NOT A NO RECOIL HACK, NO SIREE. Clan servers had the ultimate penalty, too: permabans.

IW -= $60, accounting for me. *I'll gladly pay for a PC product, not the piece of gold-wrapped shit they call a PC game.

edit: *and DID for CoD1, 2, 4... if anyone wanted at least one example of a paying, longtime PC customer of the franchise who's happy to sit on the sideline, I'm that. There's still a handful of really good UO servers too, I might spend more time there

[Mr Bean]

Lets look at this another way. Seriously now.

What did the following
1. The MW2 Developers gain from the move to ITW servers
2. The MW2 Players gain from the move to ITW Servers

What did the following
3. The MW2 Developers lose from the move to ITW servers
4. The MW2 Players lose from the move to ITW Servers


I can't find anything decent for 2 and 4 has been covered so lets break it down.

[Oscar Wilde]

But that ignores the fact that more often than not, hacks were reported by the constituent players through kill-cam, and the server kept on spinning. Yeah, kill-cam is "cheap" and let's you know where campers / snipers were, but it is also the best anti-hack facilitator for server mods. I've spotted dozens and gotten the same kicked. Really anyone that KNOWS a game has an intuitive BS detector and on non-kill-cam enabled servers, I invariably sniff out the hack because of the sheer impossibility of some of my deaths and so I simply change sides and observe that player. OH LOOK THAT'S NOT A NO RECOIL HACK, NO SIREE. Clan servers had the ultimate penalty, too: permabans.

Who mentioned hacking now?

To me this whole debacle is just hilarious, PC gamers are raging when the new system could work just as well, or maybe even better. But no, they changed it, now it sucks.

Also

Refusing to release any special edition versions of the game.

So you're complaining because you can't pay 20 extra dollars for an artbook or 90 extra dollars for an artbook and night vision goggles (admittedly this is a bit less petty that the artbook)?

[Ford Prefect]

Refusing to release any special edition versions of the game.

Eh? There was a special edition available down here (it came with NIGHT VISION GOGGLES) and it sold like absolute hotcakes.

[weemadando]

It's up on Steam for us Aussies.

The steam edition (as in, just the game), for the bargain basement price of USD 89.99 - I'll take TWO thanks. Or just wait and buy a physical copy from JB for 80 AUD when it comes out. MAYBE.

[Oscar Wilde]

Refusing to release any special edition versions of the game.

Eh? There was a special edition available down here (it came with NIGHT VISION GOGGLES) and it sold like absolute hotcakes.

I think he means for the PC, but I could be mistaken.

And that brings me to this point

Artificially high price.

Are you talking about the standard game being 60 dollars on PC? Because that is another common complaint I have seen in regards to this.
I would love to see those people live in Australia.

[Alyeska]

So you're complaining because you can't pay 20 extra dollars for an artbook or 90 extra dollars for an artbook and night vision goggles (admittedly this is a bit less petty that the artbook)?

Yes, I am. There is certainly a market for it on the PC and they have refused to sell it.

[Alyeska]

Are you talking about the standard game being 60 dollars on PC? Because that is another common complaint I have seen in regards to this.
I would love to see those people live in Australia.

Yes, you guys are getting shafted. Even still, the US release has jacked the price for artificial reasons just to boost money for Activision. I won't pay for it at that price.

[Vympel]

In Australia, Unless you like collector's edition feelies, you are a moron if you buy any new release game from anywhere other than JB HiFi. It is the only retailer I know that sells games for a half-way decent price, and it's still more expensive than it should be.

A new release PS3 game is often $119.95 from EB or Game. That is far, far, far in excess of the difference in exchange rate. At JB HiFi, it's $89.95.

It's the same with PC games, though for some reason they top out at $99.99 (usually) as oppoed to $119.

[Stark]

Except you can just price-match, as EB always does? I find you just have to mention JB and they don't bother checking because dozens of others have already done it (like $20 off on Borderlands at launch, etc).

I've noticed PC games are starting to creep up too; it's pretty funny you can import two games for the price of one here, given exchange rates.

[Vympel]

Except you can just price-match, as EB always does?

I'd rather just not give them my business. If more people simply don't shop there, they might modify their pricing so no one needs to mention JB.

[Stark]

True; but I enjoy it due to the whole return-policy thing. Most people I know (who don't use that policy) just buy everything from JB because it's cheaper and the staff are less annoying.

[Lonestar]

Yes, you guys are getting shafted. Even still, the US release has jacked the price for artificial reasons just to boost money for Activision. I won't pay for it at that price.

Computer games have been sitting at the $50 mark for a decade...and you're upset that someone had the audacity to finally match the PC price with what they are selling on the Console?

I guess my next questions are:

(1)Do you think that development costs significantly less for a PC than it does for a console?
(2)Do you think PC development costs have remained static for the past decade or so when games were at $50?
(3)Would you pay for the Free DLC(maps) that some developers(such as IW) give for PC users, that console gamers have to pay for, if they kept the price at $50?

[JointStrikeFighter]

True; but I enjoy it due to the whole return-policy thing. Most people I know (who don't use that policy) just buy everything from JB because it's cheaper and the staff are less annoying.

Indeed I will preferentially direct my business towards EB in return for my exploitation of their return policy.

[Alyeska]

Computer games have been sitting at the $50 mark for a decade...and you're upset that someone had the audacity to finally match the PC price with what they are selling on the Console?

Console prices are higher because of the console tax. You have to pay approximately $10 to publish a title to that console.

(1)Do you think that development costs significantly less for a PC than it does for a console?

Individually? It would certainly be possible. But on a cross platform title, that development cost disappears. The core technology remains relatively consistent. Cross development of the same game and engine drives the total cost down. Of all games, cross platform releases should have the lowest costs.

(2)Do you think PC development costs have remained static for the past decade or so when games were at $50?

Completely irrelevant. PC games do not have a console tax. PC games that are due to cross platform development have even lower development costs. Your average new title release is typically $40-$50. Yes, new title releases can and do still release at $40. I still pick up the occasional new PC title for $40. PC releases should always sell for $10 less than the console release of that same game. I bought Flashpoint 2 for $40. When Saints Row 2 released on PC, it released for $40.

(3)Would you pay for the Free DLC(maps) that some developers(such as IW) give for PC users, that console gamers have to pay for, if they kept the price at $50?

Would I pay money for a handful of MP maps? Never. I simply don't care for the maps enough to pay for them, at all. On this issue, making them DLC is a bit of an issue. It goes against the PC standard by a long degree. EA somewhat attempted this with their BF2 booster packs. But then again they actually provided some significant content. And even then those booster packs ended up being a failure. PC players by and large will not buy multiplayer content. You release the MP maps as DLC and it will divide the community. Suddenly people can't play together. Most will not buy them. And with an even smaller fan base, it decreases replayability.

Now, if Activision considered serious extra content for DLC, thats a different story. COOP missions, large map packs, new guns and perks. Start adding combination's of those together, and now your talking about something.

[Edward Yee]

If that person leaves then certain games just quit, others seem able to simply pause and look like they are broken for a minute until a new host is chosen.

The latter was billed as "host migration" by MW2 back before the PC version brouhaha, albeit with claims of a 5-second pause once a host is found, presumably so players can "get back into the zone" mentally before the game resumes.