Black Saturday?

A day of infamy?

It's hard, very hard, for me to write objectively right now, but here is a summary of what we heard on BASH 123. If you missed it...we will have it on demand in a few minutes.

The raw version of BASH 123 can be found here. This is a long cast; however, I've edited down the salient bits with Rob Bowling here:

The Director's cut: BASH 123

Fourzerotwo was on our BASH webcast this morning and he had a few surprises for the PC community.

Here are the snippets:

• We're doing a lot on the backend to make the game accessible for everyone.
• There is no delay for the PC version of MW2
• There's prestige mode
• Jason West at the MP event, said that he was dead on, on the matchmaking servers. We've been building a system on the backend called IW.NET.
• You are completely reliant on IW.NET. There are no server lists. There are no dedicated servers.
• You have private matches where you can customize the game
• You cannot put MW2 on a dedicated server.
• This is the first time we've ever done something like this and the team has huge plans for what IW.NET develops into.
• Customizing your game...you have quite a few options in a private match
• You're getting same game (as in Console), plus matchmaking and private match.
• Server admin point-of view, NO DEDICATED SERVERS

I've summarized some of my own thoughts from the cast here:

 General

• IW partnering through Steam is what you will see in the future. Matchmaking is not through Steam, but IW.NET is run in conjunction with Steam.
• GSP's will no longer be renting out servers.
• No PunkBuster. VAC will be used as an anti cheat.
• Retail distribution: Pre-orders will get a disk. Or you could order from Steam.
• DLC may now need to be paid for - not confirmed.
• Piracy was only a small reason for going to IW.NET - not the whole reason.

 Clans:

• No more clan servers. Private matches, replace clan servers.
• Listen servers will connect to each other.
• IW.NET/Steam will replace the community server admin 

Competitive Gaming

• Competitive gaming has changed as we know it.
• It might be possible in the future for IW engineers to load a "competitive" setting on IW.NET, but it is far from a guarantee. It might also never happen.

Modding

• Modding the game is now very much in question. Fourzerotwo had no info on modding. However, it appears that there will be no community mods or maps for MW2.
• Modding in SpecOps? Unknown.

Today our game has changed for ever.

I'll leave this post with Josh Peckler's comments from planetmedalofhonor.com:

The server community is what's made us. It's what defined us.

IW.NET is getting the PC community to turn into consoles. You're trying to re-write our history.