http://www.fourzerotwo.com/?p=745

And

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2009/10/20/modern-warfare-2-dedicated-server-response.aspx

I'm actually pro-matchmaking. I've played games that have had matchmaking before and it is enjoyable to play with your casual friends online. Also if this improves the games anti-cheat capabilities at all I would be pleased. Both of those I see as wins for the PC community.

Now the things that piss me off.

1.) Why the heck did they wait until now to inform the PC community? To me the sensible thing would have been to reach out to the community ahead of time and explain everything. I think the response they would have received would have been much better.

2.) The excuse they give for not supporting Dedicated and Matchmaking together is a farce. They state they don't want to "bifurcate(separate)" the community. What you mean the community you have totally ignored up until now? I highly doubt that is the real reasoning behind the decision to not support both. I say that because in that article they state they are aiming to please the "vast majority". Well if the decision to support both dedicated and matchmaking separates the vast majority from the tiny modding and competitive community who really cares.

Secondly I think they want to get all PC gamers playing under their control so they can more easily charge us for things like map packs similar to how they handle Console gamers. If PC gamers can't make our own content (Maps and Mods) we'll be forced to buy theirs. So MONEY is definitely a driving force.

To be perfectly honest I'm not totally against the decisions they have made up to this point. I just can't stand the way they have handled the whole situation. If anything this fiasco is a prime example of how not to treat a community. I'd really like to slap someone at IW but all I can say is I hope they have learned from this situation. As annoyed as I am about the whole situation I'll still be buying the game. After all if I don't school Jock in MW2 who will?

It doesn't help when you wanna play with online friends.

What kind of connection am I gonna have with all my US/Eastern Euro players? I am gonna be connected with people bunny hopping around, nade spamming and stuff. It's going to be ridiculous.

You can't connect to the server with the best ping AND people of the same skill, because the best connection will be the same street/town, but I am betting that there aren't too many GREAT players in that same place, they are dotted all over the world.

This puny marginal PC market that represented just 10% of the financial gain now seems to be hardy enough to want to control completely.Hardy enough to invest substantial amounts in IWNET .It seems that IW sees such potential that they are willing to grow it and milk it while blaming the "Tuners" for making the game inaccessible to the great masses of gamers stymied by this community.

Such hogwash.

Agreed, if we didn't mean that much to them, why not just give us the dedi servers and let us go off on our own?

What they fail to realise I think, is that the average PC gamer isn't the same as an average console player. You don't get people going out buying a PC bundled with a game PC gamers think about the hardware they are going to need, think about configs and all that, where as the consolers are more casual, just wanna jump in and spam around for a few hours. PC gamers want to play in tourneys and they wanna BUILD a real server community with real rules.

The loss of modded content, which they dismiss so quickly, is very big. Who wants to play the same 12 maps for the next year? Raise your hand! Also, creating an on the fly private server for your clanmates to join doesn't fulfill the purpose of a dedicated server. Will it be set up with a profile so that you don't need to pick all your game options each time? Can you avoid running it on some clanmates HW and Internet connection? Will you be able to save all your kick/ban lists? I find it insulting that they think the uproar is coming from the dedicated server providers. Not hardly, just those of us that pay to run them, want to run them with whatever content we want, and want them up and available all the time. So what if the community is fractured. Morale of this story is that when you boil the product down to the lowest common denominator to please everyone, you end up pleasing nobody!

whats xfire's stance on this? i suspect they will be peed off big style bcos xfire to the pc community is like the holy grail, not to mention the server service providers loss of revenew as well.

its a massive, no. its a HUGE gamble IW/Activision are taking thinking they can force a paradgm shift in the online pc gaming market to suite 1 game only. scarey blank. too much hype from 1 manufacturer for the last 5 months if u ask me.