Modern Warfare News, 18 October 2009

YouTube: Hitler finds out no dedicated servers for MW2...


Bombshell from Fourzerotwo: The PC version of MW2 will not have dedicated servers. Instead, it will be a peer-to-peer service on IWNet, a new Xbox-live style system run by IW in conjunction with Valve's Steam system. Peer to peer? WTF? I'm so glad I'm not getting the PC version because I'd be royally pissed. One of the major reasons to buy the PC version is to avoid the shitty shortcomings of the peer-to-peer system, to cherry-pick the server with the least lag and the preferred mods. It looks like all that is gone, and the PC players are lowest-common-denominatored like us console players. Click here for the Kotaku story, which contains a link to the Fourzerotwo audio interview with BASHandSlash.

Here's a direct link to the BASHandSlash article. Click here!

Evening wrap-up:


As the sigs on the petition surpass 40,000, still nothing on twitter from Fourzerotwo. I imagine his twitter account has melted down from all the outraged PC players...

Overclockers Club has an article up on this. Click here!

Big Download has a similar article. Click here!

More links:

The MW2 forum threads have started rolling in. (Update: The MW forum has a lot of thread deletion & merging going on as this heats up. Don't be surprised if any links here to threads there turn out to be deleted on the other end.) The petition thread I signed/posted in last night has been deleted, but for one popular discussion thread, click here!


The MW2 dedicated server petition website is here. It has gone from 925 (my sig at approximately 0100 hrs last night) to 9000 plus as of 0815 hours!

GameDaily has a story up on the PC issue. Click here!

Fragland has their version. Click here!

Worthplaying has theirs. Click here!

Reddit thread can be found here! 

Update, 0655 hrs: I listened to the whole exchange between Fourzerotwo and the BASHandSlash guests. One of them was PST*Joker, a dude who was part of a massive CoD4 PC mod which introduced tactical nuclear strikes as part of the kill streaks. All through the interview, everyone tried to put the best possible spin on everything. All of the gaming dudes were devastated, tho, you could hear it in their voices. No more dedicated servers, no more mods or total conversions, no SDK for the game. Despite all the assurances and good intentions, this move from IW can only come off as biting the hand that feeds it, at least from the PC end.

What will this mean for gamers? Well, the browser interface is gone. No more favorites, I assume. No more checking to see which is the nearest/fastest server for you. Clans which now own or rent their own servers for matches will now be dependent on private matches on someone's personal pipe. This will be major blowage for those of us who liked to use those spiffy, fast, phat clan servers on their off hours. I can only reiterate: Peer-to-peer? WTF?

Ultimately, we're assured, it means making multi-player on the PC more accessible for more players. The downside of this is, a lot of the flexibility and freedom of choice to which PC players are accustomed is being sacrificed for an IW-controlled experience. The IWNet system promises to make match-making which will be skill-ranked, supposedly making for better games. But, judging from the kicked-in-the-balls sound of BASHandSlash guys last night, the hardest of the hardcore, the PC mod community, are not too optimistic. The PC mod community, has been erased from MW2 in one fell swoop as IW turns PCs into consoles.

Update 2, 1120 hrs: The Dedicated Server Petition is at 14000+ sigs now. I'm amazed, looking at the nearly 300 pages of posts in the MW 2 forum thread that so few people have mentioned the $10 price hike on the PC version. The going rate for a PC game has been $49.99 for a looooonnnnnggg time. I wonder if the extra $10, reported on Destructoid on 15 October, was to finance the IWNet pranging every PC player is getting.

In other MW2 News:

IGN has the second part of an article reviewing the characters of MW2. Click here! The first part of the article was here.