On Saturday, Robert Bowling, Community Manager confirmed that there will be no dedicated servers for MW2

Written by jockyitch @SlashandBash.com

Saturday, 17 October 2009

Rob Bowling, community manager (Gamer / Geek / Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward...as he says on his Twitter page) at Infinity Ward was kind enough to join our panel on BASH today. He let us in on the news that IW was taking Modern Warfare in a new direction. The online game on PC has changed. Dedicated servers are out. IW.net is in. This is a game changer and many of you may not be too happy. I for one will be willing to listen and try it out. It’s all I can do. For the folks in our community that mod and map, the future does not look as bright as the past

Black Saturday?

A day of infamy?

It's hard, very hard, for me to write objectively right now, but here is a summary of what we heard on BASH 123. If you missed it...we will have it on demand in a few minutes.

The raw version of BASH 123 can be found here. This is a long cast; however, I've edited down the salient bits with Rob Bowling here:

The Director's cut: BASH 123

Fourzerotwo was on our BASH webcast this morning and he had a few surprises for the PC community.

Here are the snippets:

• We're doing a lot on the backend to make the game accessible for everyone.
• There is no delay for the PC version of MW2
• There's prestige mode
• Jason West at the MP event, said that he was dead on, on the matchmaking servers. We've been building a system on the backend called IW.NET.
• You are completely reliant on IW.NET. There are no server lists. There are no dedicated servers.
• You have private matches where you can customize the game
• You cannot put MW2 on a dedicated server.
• This is the first time we've ever done something like this and the team has huge plans for what IW.NET develops into.
• Customizing your game...you have quite a few options in a private match
• You're getting same game (as in Console), plus matchmaking and private match.
• Server admin point-of view, NO DEDICATED SERVERS

I've summarized some of my own thoughts from the cast here:

 General

• IW partnering through Steam is what you will see in the future. Matchmaking is not through Steam, but IW.NET is run in conjunction with Steam.
• GSP's will no longer be renting out servers.
• No PunkBuster. VAC will be used as an anti cheat.
• Retail distribution: Pre-orders will get a disk. Or you could order from Steam.
• DLC may now need to be paid for - not confirmed.
• Piracy was only a small reason for going to IW.NET - not the whole reason.

 Clans:

• No more clan servers. Private matches, replace clan servers.
• Listen servers will connect to each other.
• IW.NET/Steam will replace the community server admin 

Competitive Gaming

• Competitive gaming has changed as we know it.
• It might be possible in the future for IW engineers to load a "competitive" setting on IW.NET, but it is far from a guarantee. It might also never happen.

Modding

• Modding the game is now very much in question. Fourzerotwo had no info on modding. However, it appears that there will be no community mods or maps for MW2.
• Modding in SpecOps? Unknown.

Today our game has changed for ever.

I'll leave this post with Josh Peckler's comments from planetmedalofhonor.com:

The server community is what's made us. It's what defined us.

IW.NET is getting the PC community to turn into consoles. You're trying to re-write our history.

Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 @ 15:55:34 CDT by MGC_CombatMedic