This past Saturday BASHandSlash released their webcast where Infinity Ward’s Community Manager fourzerotwo shared and discussed the following controversial information about Modern Warfare 2:
- It will not support dedicated game servers (hosted by companies) or server lists – this is unprecedented in gaming history.
- It might not support user-created content or mods.
- Unclear, but talked about: Matches have to run on Private “listen” servers hosted on a player’s computer – so the number of players and your ping will totally depend on the player’s computer and connection.
On the positive side:
- All the changes are made to make the game “more accessible” and cheaper to play.
- The game installs through Steam.
- No more Punkbuster, in comes Valve Anti-Cheat.
- Match-making and servers will be handled by IW.net, “which is completely seperate from the steam system”. This can revolutionalize PC Gaming. If it works.
- “Anything is possible with IW.net in the future.”
- Infinity Ward usually seems to know what it is doing.
Below is the one thing PC Gamers hold close to the heart, more specifically the competitive gaming community:
- Multiplayer games CANNOT be hosted on a players’ computer: Most PC gamers cannot support more than 6 players without performance loss. Aditionally, the player hosting will have NO LAG compared to the other players, offering an advantage similar to using hacks or performance enhancement drugs in real life.
Another important note for IWD and game developers which might seem obvious:
- PC Gamers don’t know Console Gaming. PC Gamers ARE NOT Console Gamers. The same interface and methods that worked for console gaming might not work among PC Gamers, where the community extends beyond the game through voice chat servers, websites and forums!
To be honest, after listening to the interview, it does not seem like fourzerotwo was very clear/knowledgeable about the specifics of how IW.net or the PC side of things work – are the public servers hosted on one players’ computer, or are they hosted by IW.net guaranteeing a good ping and support for more than 6 players? Fourzerotwo briefly confirmed when asked that public games are indeed hosted by IW.net, and at about 45 mins in the edited version of the cast, fourzerotwo said that private games “are ran by us instead of a server”, meaning that match servers could be run by IW.net.
We can still hang onto hope! There is a petition for dedicated server support if dedicated servers are close to heart.
I’ll leave you with a video that reminds me that the PC Gaming Community is an integral part of this series:
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