I thought I'd post this for people who are thinking of buying the game. There's a lot of pissed off pc players that are ranting about how terrible this game is. There's also nubes who've never played a COD game before that think it's awesome (it's selling fantastically well). I offer my opinion:

I've played every COD game on the PC, and I even played COD3 on the xbox360. I've played both COD4 on PC and the 360. I'm a decent MP player with 3.3 Kill:Death ratio in COD4 after about 300 hrs of play. I only play public/pub games.

I've got 10hrs into MW2 MP.

My impressions:
1. Lag is not an issue. You can change your config file so that you don't get put in games with a higher ping than whatever value you choose to select (info on how to do this is posted on this board). Occasionaly I do get a bad connection where the lag spikes up and down, but this happened only a few times, and it happens just as often in COD4. The host does not have a significant advantage. The host is just as likely to be at the bottom of the score board as at the top. Basically, if you aren't a pro, don't worry about it. 20ms maybe a lot to them, but it's nothing to the average gamer. BTW, your monitor likely has a 10-20ms delay anyway (google input lag for LCD's). Host migration, etc is also not that bad. It happens ocasionally, but not often enough to become irritating.

2. Being restricted to 18 players is somewhat of an issue for me. Ground war (I believe) is the only option that even allows up to 18 players. The rest max out at 12. So this restricts me to ground war which is randomly either Team DM or Domination. I guess that's okay. There's always plenty of people to shoot at, and plently of people shooting at you. But the other modes are restricted to 12 which seems a little empty.

3. Cheap deaths. Here's my opinion...yeah there's a lot of cheap deaths. But is it really worse than COD4? In COD4, there is constant granade spam, and the smg's are way overpowered. COD4 is about granades and smg's. Give any noob an smg and granades, and he can bunny hope around spraying and getting kills without ever once aiming. Give the same noob a sniper rifle, and he'd never get a kill. There's also cheap deaths in MW2, they're just a different type. Granade spam is gone, but its replaced with noob tubes that never run out (scavanger or change class), knifers using speed exploits, duel wielding shootguns/machine pistols that kill from amazing distances without aiming, and rediculously overpowered kill streaks. Right now, it feels like there's a lot more cheap deaths in MW2, but I had 300+ hrs of exp learning how to avoid cheap deaths in MW1. I'm sure more exp will help with MW2. But I will say...I almost feel grateful when I'm killed by a player that aimed at me and shot me fair and square. Because it seriously doesn't happen that often.

4. Cheaters/Hackers. I've yet to see a single player that I absolutely knew was cheating in MW2. I've seen one player that I suspected of cheating. I've seen a lot of cheaters in COD4, but I've played it a lot longer. In COD4, sometimes an admin was available to kick the cheater, but often there wasn't. Sometimes I'd leave and find another server, but usually, I just adapted my play to avoid the cheater.

IWNET VS. Dedicated Servers
I've touched on this some, but before I'm burned for heresy, there's one thing I really like about IWNET: I always get a low ping game. That's right, I said it. I live in CA, and if I want to play COD4 in a server with less than 100ms, there's like 12 servers to choose from. Of the 12, 6 are always empty. Of the remaining 6, 2 will be full, and another 2 are set to only play Crossfire and Crash...great maps, but how many times in a row do you really want to play the same map? What remains are a couple of servers that only play 4 or 5 of all the maps. So right now it's basically impossible for me to play some of my favorite maps under 100ms. That sucks, and it's a major reason why I bought MW2 in the first place.

Conclusion:
MW2 a good game. It's fun. It's not as good as COD4. Buy it if you've played COD4 into the ground and want something new, but be ready to adapt to a very different world. I think skill/strategy can still dominate this game, but it's going to be a different type of skill and strategy than what you may have mastered in COD4. My kill/death is 1.5 so far, and I don't knife, use nube toobs, or akimbo anything. That's not too bad I guess considering I don't know the maps yet.

I hope my opinion helps someone decide whether to buy the game or not.

Responses bold and red.

assailent said what I was going to say.

Sorry Op you are entitled to your opinions, even if they are wayyyyy off.

You guys just can't let anyone enjoy the game.

Regarding packet loss...okay, I didnt know that. But I always use lagometer, and yes I see it on dedicated servers. I should add that out of the few servers I can play COD4 on at 100ms or less, ocasionally some have packet loss issues so bad I have to find another server. I have edited my config only as recommended by the config posts on this webpage. And again, using the "10 lag bars" I have no problem getting a game under 100ms on IWNET. I can't promiss other users will have this experience, I can only state what has been my experience.

Regarding the cheaters...did you take those videos yourself? I can also post 100's of videos of people cheating on COD4. I'm only stating my experience as been that cheaters are not so common as to ruin the game on MW2 or MW1 for that matter.

Regarding servers in COD4...you live in the midwest, the center of everything. I would be amazed if you didn't get great ping to almost every city in the US. I live near LA. I get great ping to LA but that's about it. If there's somebody else from the LA area that also gets 100's of great servers with great ping, I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong.

I'm obviously not trying to sell MW2 to anyone. I'm just trying to give people a viewpoint that is not coming from someone who is enraged at a $60 price tag, loss of dedicated servers, and the fact that the game is an obvious console port. I'm also not cutting down COD4. It's my favorite game of all time despite it's few issues.

Yeah, I recorded that video myself. I didn't have to search Google or anything.
That's not "videos" plural. That's one continuous clip from one round. Three cheaters, in one round, no editing. This was the third round in a night with at least one botter, which was why I had FRAPS running in the first place.
And I've never been in a server with an obvious cheater long enough in MW or WaW to bother recording one. They've always been kicked by PB instantly or kicked by an admin before causing too much damage.

I don't know how you can only see a few servers running from your location. I play with people from Washington and Oregon. If I get 80ms pings from over here, you should easily get under 100ms from there.

Well the cheaters were out in force last sunday. I played for about 1.5 hrs, and had to quit 5 games because of cheaters. I guess I was getting lucky before.

The cheap deaths are really starting to get annoying
- Nube tubes
- Throwing knifes + shield
- Run exploint knifers
- cheaters
- Akimbo 1887, akimbo anything is irritating b/c they're are just spraying
- chopper gunners

Does anybody aim and shoot in this game?

I was finally the host last night. It happened twice. First time I was 23 kills 2 deaths. Second time I was 37 kills and 3 deaths. I didn't know I was hosting until the game ended and I saw the score/lag bars. I don't think you have to be the host to do well, but if you are the host and the enemy has bad ping

I tried to play COD4 again. I filtered for PB on, friendly fire off, no empty servers, no modded servers. I got 8 servers with a ping less than 100. 2 were crash and crossfire all the time. 2 were full. 1 was named knifing only or something. I ended up playing in one that only had 6 players.

Honestly, if MW2 just got rid of all the cheap blank, I'd be cool with IWNET.

Well after 15 - 20 hours, I'm playing mostly COD4 again now.

I always snipe, and there'a few things about MW2 that make sniping frustrating (in addition to all the cheap nube tube deaths, etc)
- No lean. It's minor, but the main advantage of my sniper rifle is that I kill in one hit. If I'm up against anything else, they have to shoot me at least twice. So If I can peak out and shoot, and return to cover before you hit me twice...I've got advantage. Without lean this is a lot harder to do.

- Antiag. Even without lean in COD4, I can peak out, shoot and return to cover. In MW2, there's antilag system...not sure how it works exactly, but it's very common to peak out, shoot, return to cover, wait a second, and then die while you're in cover. Somehow the guy still gets to shoot you because his screen is lagging 1/2 a second behind. This never happens in COD4. Happens constantly in MW2. Also, in COD4 I know to take cover after I get hit. Since there's lag/antilag in MW2, you find that you just die suddenly a lot. When you watch the killcam, you see that it took him a second to tag you three times even though from your experience you just died suddenly without ever noticing that you got tagged at all.

Honestly playing MW2 is like playing COD4 while you're drunk. The world is further away and a 1/2 second out of sync. The first thing I noticed when I went back to COD4 was how everything was in perfect sync. I noticed every tag, and it was amazing easly to take cover and survive after the first tag.

Again MW2 isn't a horrible game. It's a good game. I'd give it a solid B. It just can't hold a candle to COD4 which is one of the greatest games of all time, and MW2 definitely doesn't deserve to share the same name.