Just felt like putting myself up on the chopping block to discuss some of the things our community is doing to stick it to the man and to see if it will be enough to make them reconsider things in a future patch or something.
As emotional as many gamers seem to be over MW2, you would think that this was the last game ever to be made and that there are no other options available. Many see this new system as a stepping stone for future games and the gaming world as we know it may come to an end in regards to the freedoms we have always had with these games. For us to be forced to play on a console type setup, they also need to start selling gaming rigs for under $400 or get my keyboard/mouse working on my sons Xbox360. I've got almost $2,000 tied up in my PC that's a couple years old and almost considered inadequate by today's standards. For that same money, I could have bought a Wii, a PS3 , an Xbox360, plus a few games/accessories. For IW to try and make us play just like you would on a console wasn't the best idea if they thought we'd just bend over and take it. No matter what their reasoning is, I agree that it's unacceptable. There are several reasons we can use to dispute the new system they have developed and I'm sure they have an excuse for it all. What kind of stand can we make as a community to really make them change their minds? Below I post my opinions from one angle. There are many ways to look at all of this to justify or criticize the following topics.

One way is a mass Server Shutdown that many will participate in. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1638
While good in theory, this won't do much for the cause. How protesting on a completely separate game will make a difference just messes with my head. So I take the idea of a server strike and apply it towards other examples. Let's say I jump head first into the idea. Perhaps I should run a few dedicated servers off my home PC. I could do one for each CoD game that is currently out as I own them all. So at midnight, I shut them down for good. What real difference is that gonna make. Do we really think that one of the corporate guys will move his stacks of cash out of the way long enough to notice a 50 or so server drop on the master list? I think not. Even if we managed to get everyone in on this and we somehow got every CoD server shutdown, that might not be enough to persuade them as it would not affect their pockets. Remember, they have our money and if they really cared about us like they say, we wouldn't even be dealing with the current issues at hand.
Besides what I have already written on the topic, how is advertising going for this event? I've been on several community sites recently where the only MW2 current news was posted by me and I even visited a CoD community site last night that had no topics for MW2. As busy as a site like this is, we are just a very small part of the community and to coordinate an event like this is gonna take a lot more than posting at a few popular sites. You'd have to hit all the mainstream sites, then maybe go one by one through the clan yellow pages/topsite directories to actually reach out to enough people. Once you get the event plastered everywhere, you still will find many people like myself who don't think it will matter either way so why bother. Good luck to those who participate. Even though I don't think it will work, I do support you guys. I was around for the last big server strike aswell. Due to the results, I will not be participating in this one.

Moving on to this Petition. http://www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/ Good job guys! Over 150,000 signatures. Aren't we the blank and I think this is a good way to unify and and give them a big "up yours". While that number is impressive, lets be realistic. How much of that is based off one independent user per signature? While I've been watching it, it surely looks as if some guy has a bot running on it to slowly increase the numbers. Any faster and it would look like the US deficit counter. If you start browsing through the pages, you'll see a lot more of what I'm talking about. On the last page I checked, I saw one guy had signed it 5 times, then there are a ton of double and triple signatures. Not to mention the spam advertisements scattered throughout and I'm sure that people are signing it one day and repeating everyday so the names aren't so close together. The first mistake with this petition is there is no email verification before the signature gets added. Having that feature would slow down things and make it a bit more accurate. While this is a very good way to band together, we have several of our fellow gamers padding this thing and turning it into a big joke. IW can figure this out aswell just by looking at it. Without knowing how many people have actually signed this thing, I'll play it safe and go with 1/5 of the current total is the true number of signatures. So let's say 30,000 signatures. Still pretty damn good. I'll never come close to knowing 30,000 people. That represents almost 2 million in sales. How much has this IWNET blank already cost them. I don't know what it takes to run something like that or what size the staff is for it. If you compare that to their advertising campaign, I'm sure its just a drop in the bucket. Hell, they make 10 times that for a single mappack in WaW. 150,000 signatures only bring us to $9,000,000 in loss of sale. Even if most of us never buy the game, our numbers are really just too small to ever affect them financially. While the idea is necessary to voice our opinions, I feel we all shouldn't fully boycott the game. I'm sure that many of the people who signed the petition will still buy the game upon release. Many of the more known community members have to buy it so they can keep us all updated and to start looking inside of the game to handle the more technical inquires we have all been wondering about.

Also, here's a little widget for your website that has a countdown til release and number of signature on the petition:
http://3l3373.com/mw2-cod6-call-of-duty ... ease-date/

Don't get me wrong though, if we sat back and did nothing, we can only blame ourselves if nothing changes regarding MW2. I think it will take both of the topics above along with a steady stream of bitching to even have a chance at getting them to patch us the things we need to continue to grow as a community. I've always felt that bitching and complaining is our most valuable weapon against companies like these. Even for things not related to our community, if a product gets an overwhelming bad review, changes normally do happen to help resolve the issues. It's difficult to sell a product that no one is happy with. Overall, I don't expect to see a ton of people take sides with me on how I view things. I usually like to go against the grain and I fully understand that we have to use the few resources available to try and make a difference. I just don't think we need to get too carried away but at the same time voice our feelings so they can be heard by those who need to hear them. I hope between the Server Strike, Petition and the onslaught of hate mail, that IW will see their error and make the proper adjustments. Perhaps they should do an MMO CoD and use their IWNET for that. World of Warfare...hehe

Since we can't hurt their pockets by not buying the game or by shutting down servers they do not own, we should really just focus on hurting their pride. I've met a lot of gamers in my time that seem to thrive on keeping people upset. Maybe we should look to those guys for tips.

Why bother keeping them upset,it's not like they really give a toss,otherwise they'd just turn around and say oh we made a mistake,here's your dedicated server support.
They've been developing the game for 2 years,and by all accounts are very proud of it,although that's just the dev team opinion at preent.
Somewhere along the line they must have tried it on dedicated servers,and although they haven'r really released a reason as to why there aren't any dedicated servers,they must have made this decision for the best,although they knew it would probably not go down to well in the pc community.
I stilll think the single player will be good,and as a die hard cod fan,i don't think i could not buy the game.
The way we operate as clans and a community,is the main thing that will change,becoming more web based rather than server based, so the website will be the main focal point of the clan.
In retrospect this opens up opportunities for my clan,in the way that some players may boycott or go onto other multiplayer games,which broadens our horizons as a clan and gives us morer scope.So something positive may come out of this.
Also iw already said and i quote "patches could follow the release of the game according to feedback from the PC community."

I remain optimistic and will show my support to the community in every way possible,but will also remain loyal to the cod series.

Twp fingers - I can't completely disagree with your opinions but feel that you must be mising the point somewhere. Your attitude IS similar to that adopted by the majority of gamers - afterall, we play for fun and therefore don't worry too much when we don't get what we want.

The MW2 situation is unacceptable and is part of a growing trend towards PC games, which are simply rolled off the back of the console versions without proper development of thought for those of us who are PC gaming. The most important question about the lack of dedicated servers is, why did Infinity Ward wait until just one month before release until telling the community? They knew that the number of pre-orders would be great, afterall COD4 is an award winning game, however, what percentage of those who pre-ordered will actually cancel? Even with large numbers of cancellations, Infinity are currently sitting on a very large nest egg; however, is it not them that will miss out. Retailers will have already paid upfront for the copies they need to fulfill thier pre-orders and, although 4/5 of our members have cancelled their pre-order, Infinity do not take the hit.

The shutdown is a statement which will, in the long run affect their pride and show the level of feeling within the community. Afterall, if dedicated server support does not arrive for the PC very quickly post release, people will be thinking very carefully about COD 7,8,9 etc etc. Why bother ordering it, afterall, Infinity have misled us before, why should they be trusted when we don't really know what we are buying? Even without the shutdown, this feeling will exist.

The shutdown is simply a statement of future intent. There are numerous other games out there and we will go and play those for the day (or maybe more). Infinity's real loss will be the sales in the long run.

That's even if there will be a cod 7,8 and 9 for pc,if the majority boycott or cancel there pre-order then iw are going to look at this,and say well we didn't make enough money off the pc version,so we won't make a sequel for pc.
It is that simple!
So effectively are infinty ward killing the pc commuunity or are we,are hands are being forced but at the end of the day when alls said and done it's very much a 2 way thing.

The motive for iw is without doubt money,and giving everyone equality in the game,which in todays society is pretty much the norm.
Unfortunately they've tried finding a hapy medium,which to all effect hasn't gone down to well,they got it wrong.

No worries mate, COD4 could be the new CSS - see you on the battlefield in 5 years! Plus, that would give the modders a great opportunity to keep the community moving forward

Twofingers makes some good points, particularly that the actions that the pc community is considering fail to hit IW where it really hurts - in the pocketbook.

To be sure, the decision by IW to drop support for dedicated servers and mods was a coldly calculated, money-motivated, stab at the heart of pc gaming. There was nothing accidental about their decision, and the fallout internally will be evident in the next few months as those inside IW who bucked their decision are sent to the gulags of the corporate structure. You will know who backed the pc community in the argument by who gets demoted or fired. But we must be aware, in any action that we consider, that IW's mutton-heads who came up with this decision will back it to the hilt until they are forced to realize that it was a bad, bad, bad decision. Perhaps they have already decided among themselves to give the pc community the boot, and figured that by insulting them with this MW2 game to "gently" tell the pc world to go to hell. Whatever we have to decide to do to get their attention, be aware that their first reactions will be to justify their decision,and then to attack US as the bad guys. If we do not substantially impact their pocketbooks, or shame them publicly with their decision, it will be a hard go no matter what we do.

I am assuming that IW and Activision are publicly traded companies, and the list of stock owners is available somewhere. Would it be possible to appeal to these people, who probably have no idea of what is going on, and let them know that IW is likely to cause a nice downtick in the stock's value, and hence their own net worth? If anyone has a friend in a financial magazine, or a television/radio network that could see a value in covering this, it would be tons more effective than anything we could do directly. IW can ignore us till the chickens fall out of the roosts, but they cannot ignore their stockholders, and the stockholders won't ignore smelly stories coming out about IW. Especially if the smell is the smell of lost money. We can still cancel our purchases, and should -en masse- and be prepared to stick to our guns, unless IW not only concedes to our needs, but does a mea culpa for the world to see. We can continue to petition them, but I have seen little effect from petitions. Hitting their stockholders is possibly a more effective way of hurting their pocketbooks.

And it would not hurt to email each and every person working at IW regularly (several times per day), until we dent their hard heads. I am sure that someone associated with this website knows all the important email addresses. Whereas you could get in financial trouble by leaking code and other intellectual property, what the hell could be the problem with leaking a few email addreses, or other means to get to them? Lose our contacts at IW? Perish the thought. They have already told you to go to hell, so why hang onto the already parting thread? And don't start trying to justify by saying that IW-Net just "might" be half-assed decent when compared to nothing at all. Harass them. Aggravate them. Then harass them some more. Make them fish or cut bait (sh*t or get off the pot). If we dont get under their skins we wont get anything out of them. If we do make their lives miserable, we are much more likely to get what we want than if we simply whine to each other and wish it were different. IW has lost its respect for the PC gaming community. It is time to get some of that respect back. And respect starts with a little fear. You dont respect that which you dont fear. Make them loathe to open their email boxes, or answer their phones, or tweet their little twitter. Or look at their checkbooks. Make them not want to show up at work. Be courteous, be nice, but DONT let them off the hook. Despite the "tiny" amount of cash several million dollars is in this insane time, it is a tiny amount of cash that they meet their profit margin targets. If we can make them miss those targets, we hurt the boys involved in the decisions. If we embarrass them in the financial community, that hurts them worse, and if we harrass them to distraction, we break them down. If we break them down, we might get what we need. Otherwise, we can just count on either forgetting mw2, or becoming fan-boys for the xbox.

Twofingers and others have stated that by cancelling our preorders we would only hurt the retailers who had to preorder certain numbers of the games, and that IW would not suffer. Most assuredly wrong on that point, ladies. If the retailers suddenly find out that they are stuck with tons of unsold merchandise due to the actions of the creator of that merchandise, they will MOST CERTAINLY be demanding their money back. And getting it, because IW depends on the retailers to get their product to the end users, and they have no other alternative than to play ball with them. So keep on cancelling those pre-orders, and don't get weak-kneed and give in and buy the game. Let the vendors get stuck with a pile of unsold merchandise, and IW ends up eating most of that manure pie. Cancelling all of our orders will definitely hurt IW's pocketbook. In this case, cancel is a good word.