Modern Warfare 2 Dedicated Server Fiasco

Okay, first thing is first, I do feel inflated sense of self importance when I heard the news since I actually am in the minority of people who actually play CoD4MW on PC. Second, any news on Modern Warfare 2 trickles out in little streams from a swollen prostrate. Finally third, anyone who reports on it or even comments on it immediately comes with a bias slant with "I don't care, I'm play MW2 on console, this wouldn't have happen if you PC users weren't Pirating the game so much." So it's a mess, it's a mess coming out on all ends really to understand the situation.

In my situation.... I'll admit I haven't enjoyed my experience using CoD4MW with it's current Punk Buster protection service. There are well over 20,000 servers out there, and and maybe 40 of them are pirated without Punk Buster, now it's not to say it's all terrible, a fair share of them always have like one guy with auto aim sitting them just grinding up his Perks. And already it's a very antisocial community, practically no one uses head set voice chat, there doesn't really seem to be any clans or even people working together, you log in and your body is already occupying the same space as shrapnel from grenade frag, shotgun shells, M16 magazines, incoming enemy strikes, and dozens of knives so I do feel there's a lot to improve here.



Now back to the Punk Buster issue.... I OWN The game, I bought it fairly through Steam, still if you don't have it patched and initiated I'm booted out of any server 15 seconds into it. It's a nuisance, I was informed about Punk Buster maybe 4 months after I've bought the game, and even when I reformated my PC I had to start up all over again with my perks.

This is something that needs to be fixed, it's something that needs to be improved. So I see it through that end especially with the success of console games handling online play of CoD4. But to be honest, I don't like Peer to Peer match making. Just recently with Left 4 Dead, it's a roll of the dice, then having to ditch 3 or 4 of your close friends because their pings are just unplayable or they get booted for no explained reason and then it's a mess tracking the stats because of errors with the server. So it's a case of you take on extreme and another and react to it. And since Valve was so concerned with developing L4D2 that they didn't fix this problem till 8 months later.

With the recent announcement that basically this will all be set through Steam using Steam Cloud.... I don't know really how to react. And CoD4 didn't have as many updates as CoD5.

I don't know how to really take this all in. I mean CoD4MW really is the definitive shooter, and the modding scene is actually robust and quite creative. Now, it's not as epic as lets say Counter Strike or TF2. Like for example the Nazi Zombie mod was implemented a year before CoD5, so the modding scene in CoD4 isn't something to take lightly, now I'm not sure if this means that Infinity Ward is blocking all of these users. Again, they aren't letting anyone know ANYTHING about MW2. So we are left in the dark, and it's somewhat this blind optimism or just internet ranting expecting the worst.

It doesn't hurt having a pinch of cynicism, considering the street price of Modern Warfare 2 is 60 bucks..... even on Steam.