I can’t understand why consoles are still stuck with the listen-style multiplayer game. It’s completely, utterly shit. In CoD4 on XBox360, you can’t pick which map you want to play, who you play against, time length on the map, or anything. Why move PC gaming in that direction, instead of console gaming in the other? Is it really that hard to get a console to connect to a dedicated server hosted on a PC somewhere?
Well, they claim that the IW.net garbage is actually a significant investment by them and that it took more effort and expense than just using dedicated servers. They may be lying, but I’m not so sure - dedicated servers are pretty easy to create… you already wrote all of the code necesary for a server, you just spin it off into its own program. Since MW and MW2 aren’t all that different internally I’d imagine the MW2 dedicated server wouldn’t take much effort - most of the code is already there.
They do have to put in some extra work - they need to make a matchmaking service that runs outside the bounds of Xbox Live or PSN, which probably aid in a matchmaking system.
It seems that console gamers on average are happier with an inferior product, either because they expect less or because they haven’t experienced better. This is just the way it is for them.
As far as consoles playing on dedicated servers - I doubt there’s any technical reason this isn’t feasible, but practically, how would this work? PC dedicated servers are paid for by enthusiasts because they want their own environment to administer, for reasons of custom content, custom rules/settings, running home base for a clan and/or competitive gaming, etc. All of the competitive gaming takes place on the PC, so all the clan-based servers naturally come here. And consoles have never allowed any real custom content in terms of maps, mods, or plug-ins, so another reason to want a custom server is gone.
Essentially anyone who’s invested enough in the game to run a server is going to be doing it on/for he PC platform anyway.
There are console games that use dedicated servers but not enough console players are aware of the benifits to demand them for all games. Hopefully if something like M.A.G. on the PS3, with 256 players per map, does very well then other developers will jump on the bandwagon and start offering similar games.
Eh. I was going to buy it. But, given that there are enough other games out there, it’s gone to my no-buy list. Maybe in February or March. But probably not. There is no reason for the price hike ($10 for consoles goes to MS or Sony), or the lack of mods/servers except to bring a superior product down to the same level as console.
Nah. I’ll pass.
That’s the thing about Call of Duty games, if you wait a while you’ll just get it with a video card anyway.
I am horribly disappointed that there is not going to be any Nazi Zombies this time around.
Infinity Ward would never copy from Treyarch, they have already said that they consider this game to be the fourth Call of Duty, completely ignoring 3 and 5.
Modern Warfare 2 DVDs are apparently broken.
Is Activision intentionally trying to get the PC version of this game to bomb for some reason?
This is getting ridiculous.
I think IW would like to be able to just make the game for consoles - higher prices for the game (up until this release), forced to pay for DLC, no user-mods.
In recent interviews they have seemed very dismissive of the PC gamer, and recently called people griping about the limitations of MW2 on the PC as a “loud, vocal minority”. They will make a bajillion dollars via the consoles, PC sales be damned.
IW are so anxious to help casual players that they want them to change the NAT settings on their routers. on the IW.net screen it shows your NAT type and gives a link to a page on their site that tells you to log into your router to change it.
IW.net screen and the webpage in question. I ahve also seen a screen that shows host migration failure because the new host had NAT problems.
ISPs worldwide can expect a lot of irate calls because the routers have been fucked up by people who can’t resist changing unfamiliar settings they don’t understand just because they are there.
Oh and Ping is shown using bars not numbers.
Maybe Achmed the Dead Terrorist ?? 
My, my, my. Casual players are now people that have to change their NAT, which is a lot of people now that Infinity Ward switched their matchmaking.
For what it’s worth, my NAT has never been open and I’ve had a good online experience on the consoles, so it’s not a death knell (apparently my router’s NAT can’t be open. Go fig.)
Well it just massively reduces the choice of who can serve. I play warcraft 3 still, and it has player hosting - in the event that the host leaves, it attempts to locate another player to host the game. It seems like 80-90% of people are not properly configured to be able to do it, so most of the time the game shuts down.
If this is true (and it’s plausible - I’m guessing most people hook an ICS router up but don’t know how/don’t bother to configure it), then MW2 will only have a small fraction of the player base that can serve the games. This means both that games are more likely to shut down if one person leaves, and it also gives the matchmaking service less flexibility in finding the best server in terms of bandwidth/ping to actually host the games. So it can only find the best out of the 10-20% that can host, rather than the best out of everyone, which will further degrade the quality of the service significantly.
Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars Galaxies CDs used to do that a lot on my machine. 9 times out of 10, the disc would refuse to read, and make helicopter noises in the drive. Turns out, it’s what happens when you put a truckload of paint on the CD’s flip side, and that paint is not evenly spread (for example, because the bottom half of the picture has lots more details, needed more coats of paint, or they tried a 3D effect). The uneven weight throws the disc around.
If I’m not mistaken, DVD players spin discs even faster than CD players, so the problem would be compounded, wouldn’t it ?
It really won’t be as bad as you’re making it out to be.
There are already example screen shots of exactly that error, Host Migration fails because of NAT settings.
How would you know? Have you ever played a modern FPS with a proper dedicated server system?
Some early reports say that the game is really 6v6 max, and that 9v9 only works for one game mode out of 10-15. So yeah, 32 vs 32 max (and anything between 2 and 64 depending on the server settings) down to 6v6 max.
Right, because the game will be completely unplayable and unenjoyable and nobody will play it and it’ll completely wither on the vine. That’s much more likely, isn’t it?
I’m saying you don’t understand what you’re missing. You’re saying it won’t “be that bad” and I’m sure it won’t be, for you, because you’ve never experienced anything better. You can’t appreciate the loss of something you never had.
As far as wither and die - it will probably have a small following. It is true that every single PC multiplayer shooter type game that has ever been released without dedicated servers has quickly died. A recent example is operation flashpoint 2 - it never had more than maybe 200 people playing online at any given time, compared to popular games with tens of thousands on. And it has probably since declined. And that’s for a game where the multiplayer allows pirates to play the game too - you can’t even get people to play the multiplayer for free.
Gears of war and frontlines: fuel of war are two big titles recently that I recall died pretty much instantly due to the lack of dedicated servers.
There has never been a successful competitive shooter on the PC that didn’t use this model. Every game that has tried this bullshit has died a quick death. MW2 may be popular enough that multiplayer isn’t completely dead, but I suspect that in 2 months you’ll find more players still playing COD4 than MW2.
I didn’t say it would be completely unplayable and unenjoyable. But it will be a significant, pointless downgrade with no upside.