(Author’s Note: Originally posted September 2010 on Old IGN blogs)
So once again it appears that Activision, in the form of Treyarch, says one thing but decides to do something else. Last year it was the fact that Moderns Warfare 2 would not support dedicated servers. This time Treyarch made it seem that they had the pc community in mind as they developed Black Ops. With all their talk of dedicated server support I must admit my hopes were high but I was also waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And drop it did.
In fact, it happened the exact same way as the announcement for Modern Warfare 2 did last year. That announcement, given a couple months before release, was to tell pc gamers that there would be no dedicated server support. So with only a couple of months left, until the release of Black Ops, Activision/Treyarch repeated the process. The fact that they did this exactly the same way, as when they announced that MW2 would not support dedicated servers, has really ticked me off.
This tactic of making such announcements, shortly before a game’s release, is so pathetic and completely aggravating. It is being done intentionally in the hopes, at least as far as I can deduce, that the majority of the pc gaming community won’t know about it until it is too late.
Yet, once again I will be boycotting Black Ops just like I did Modern Warfare 2 and it all revolves around dedicated server support.
Yes, Black Ops will support dedicated servers but the only way to have a server will be to buy a server from Gameservers.com. Now I don’t have any problem with people paying to have a server, and from what I hear the service is pretty good, but I have never paid for a server because I’ve always hosted my own. Not only that, but these servers will be limited in how many players can be in it.
18 players for a ranked server? Are you kidding me?
Then the unranked servers can go up to 24 players which is still a small server. Then, on top of that, if you want Teamspeak support you will have to pay an additional fee.
What the hell man?
But of course, while briefly scanning the comment section of IGN’s article which talked about this announcement, I had to shake my head at all the stupidity and ignorance.
If you don’t understand why pc gamers are so adamant about dedicated servers then you shouldn’t be commenting in the first place. It gets pretty irritating to see people berate pc gamers when they say they are not going to buy MW2, and now Black Ops, because we are getting screwed over.
So what are dedicated servers and why are we, the pc gamers, so up-in-arms about them?
Well a dedicated server is when a single person, group, and/or organization runs their own server in which they have total control over everything, and can run it as they see fit, without relying on the developer to provide servers. You can pay for a server, from a service like Gameservers.com, or run a dedicated server on your own pc (which is what I do).
Now imagine being able to create a server, for your favorite game, in which you can control everything. Don’t like normal gravity? Change it so that you are fighting in zero grav conditions. Have a player who is being obnoxious? Ban him/her from your server forever and never have to see him/her again. You only like one map? Have your server play that one map over and over till the end of time. Want to have a music playlist within the server? Go ahead and add that in! Tired of having small 9 vs 9 matches? Then up it to 15 vs 15 or 20 vs 20 or, if you want some great, chaotic fun, have a 32 vs 32 game. The possibilities are endless.
Dedicated servers, along with the modding community, are the lifeblood of pc gaming. Browsing through a list of servers, until you find the server that meets your personal criteria, is great because you have control and decide where you want to play. And, once you join a server, you might find yourself joining an established and welcoming community depending on the admin staff for that server. Then you keep going back to the same server over and over again which allows for some great friendships to form and the server community will grow.
I can’t tell you how many people I’ve become friends with just from hosting my own servers, or adminning a friend’s server, over the years. But once again, I haven’t had to pay a single dime to host/admin a server in my entire gaming career. So this is why I have a problem with the latest announcement from Activision/Treyarch.
If they want people to pay for a ranked server then that is fine. I don’t give a frank about ranks. In fact, I hate the ranking system in Modern Warfare (but that can be a post for a later date). But why do they also have to charge players for an unranked server? Why can’t we host our own unranked servers? Do you guys have to be that greedy? After all, there aren’t that many of us who host our own servers.
And, of course, how limited will the administrators be so far as what they can do on these unranked servers? Knowing Activision the admins will be limited in what they do. Thus these dedicated servers are just handicapped versions of a true dedicated server.
So where will the modding community be in all this? After all, Activision/ Treyarch promised modding tools. But how limited will modders be considering how limited the unranked servers will most likely be?
The outlook sure doesn’t appear to be good.
However, I will admit that this is a step in the right direction considering that MW2 completely cut out dedicated server support (and we’ve seen the effects of that decision). Not enough to get me to buy the game mind you. But it is a step in the right direction.
Yet a handicapped dedicated server is not a true dedicated server.
Here is hoping that, at the very least, Activision/Treyarch will allow it so that anyone, anywhere, can host an unranked server. Should they do that, then I will finally get the game because it looks pretty good.
But for now I’m boycotting it.
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