This blog is on behalf of my husband. Two years ago, for Valentine's Day I got my husband Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare however because a friend of his at work had it for the PC, I got the PC version so he could play with his friend from work. Soon he joined his friend's group of online players in a team called "Six Feet Under" for years they played games together online when they could use their server. Though until CoD4 they mostly played flight combat games like Crimson Skies. Since I got him Modern Warfare he's played that game more than anything else (though World of Warcraft is a close second). He tried to play a few times with random people online when his team members weren't around but he hated it. People cheat, use cheap tactics, curse, you know the drill.
And though he was excited about MW2 and I preordered it for him for Christmas, when he heard they were ditching the dedicated servers for a setup like that of the console versions, he was outraged. Why did they do this? Who knows. The previous system worked fine. My husband doesn't want to be forced into random battles with jerks he doesn't know.
Even worse the price jumped from $50-$60 and it's easy to see where that came from. I'm sure there was pressure from Sony and Microsoft. Think about it Call of Duty 4 was $60 on the 360 and PS3 but you could buy it for the PC for 10 DOLLARS LESS and it ran with the same graphical capabilities and actually had a better online setup and you don't have to pay $50 a year for it. It used to be PC games got ported to consoles but now console games are getting ported to PC with PC gamers losing out.
Online gaming is flawed, on all systems. Aside from WoW I don't play a lot of games online. I've said before, the reason I don't play SSBB online much is not the lag or the limited options. It's because I get tired of playing 15 matches in a row at Final Destination with no items. It's boring. I don't care where I stand on leaderboards. I have a life. I think we all hate it when no one on our friend list is online and we're forced to play random people the system throws at us. What do we find? Idiotic teenagers swearing and making homophobic racial slurs. I want to play a friendly game and have fun and it's hard to do that online.
For those who know my writing, I often post links to the blogs of one Sean Malestrom, who writes some incredibly insightful articles regarding gaming more from a business standpoint than a gamer standpoint. You might not agree with everything he says, but it's hard to deny when he makes a good point or at least makesyou think. Anyway I've written a couple emails to him and amazingly enough he responded to one and I was like a teenage girl getting a fan letter from Robert Patterson (aka Edward Cullen from Twilight). Anyway take a read.
http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/email-competitive-gaming/
My husband feels the same way about online gaming. He would like to play online more but doesn't like the way it's set up. With his Modern Warfare team he got to know the guys first, work as a team and then go take on other teams. It worked well and he had fun and now that's being taken away from him.
Another reader also asked him his thoughts on Modern Warfare 2 ditching it's dedicated PC servers.
Anyway as I said, this blog was for my husband. He's as mad as hell about this and for good reason.
Comments
Thankfully, I wasn't considering buying it anyways. It's not my type of game, and I have a grudge against things associated with CoD or Halo. It can't be avoided.
The course of action taken by the developers here is simply aggravating.
The reason so many 360 games are trying to chop out LAN and local multiplayer is so that people will have to pay the $50 a year fee to play with other people. Think about it. If someone doesn't like the idea of paying $50 a year for something everyone else gets for free they could go over to their friend's house and play online with them but when they remove things like local multiplayer and Lan support then that person has to buy the online service if he wants to play with his friend. My husband is also annoyed that more and more 360 games do cut out the local multiplayer. He wants to play games with me and so more often now, we're playing Wii games together because there's getting to be fewer and fewer 360 games we can play at home together.
---Quote:
-------->"The analogy is more like PC gamers want a divorce from the "Game Industry". And guess who is going to take the house with them?"
Classic stuff. Gamers have every right to be pissed. After all, we're the ones paying for all this.
Ever since Activision bought out Blizzard they have been so incredibly arrogant...I want to see that empire crumble to the ground and weep for hand outs. Soon.
Why not boycott?
@zgreenwell
Seriously? That's not true at all. Every FPSer I've played on-line with dedicated servers there have been people who know how to run it, and there's always been less lag than P2P. The two aren't comparable AT ALL. That's not to say matchmaking isn't a decent system, but it's no where near as useful for the community or in terms of playing without lag, as dedicated servers are. There's really no comparison.
Most people who are running a server know what they're doing. What I'm saying is that most people who play the game have no idea how to even setup a dedicated server. Matchmaking isn't perfect, but it is way easier. All you have to do is click play online and the game takes care of the rest for you.
Yeah, but what does it matter if the people playing have no idea how to, if there are people that do? The people playing with match making have no idea how to write a match making algorithm.
). ps: I "hate" online gaming because of: 1º cheaters, 2ºteenagers who love to curse
i've had that all the time with teens online. of course, those are the teens that don't have lives and are dedicated to crushing you and finding victory. playing friends is they way to go online. unless it's mario kart, then i don't give a hoot.
SR71halo
I love online gaming but my complaint is I think it gets too much attention now. It's fun and all, but some games focus too much on online gaming and not local or LAN. CoD4 for the 360, for instance, can only play with one person per 360 via system link and many other games are the same way. It seems as though Halo 3 is the only FPS that was kind enough to balance the two.