First they get rid of the ability to have dedicated servers.  Now they are limiting the number of people who can play to 18.  that’s right 9 vs. 9.  Compare that with any other major FPS game that hosts 32 and 64man servers – this is a crock of poo.

A max of 18 players has been the norm for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of previous entries Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: World At War, but it’s considerably less than previous iterations for the PC.

McCandlish explained that an 18-player cap was related to “the number of players we focused on when we were balancing map size, perks, classes, challenges, etc.”

Here Infinity Ward had a chance to fix the screwup of COD5 by releasing a graphically pleasing great followup to COD4 – which gamers prefer over COD5 STILL – and they manage to cock it up with screwy limits on the multiplayer experience.

Just FYI – FPS games suck on console controllers.  I’ll beat anyone on any FPS game if they have a console and I have a PC.

There are several petitions floating around, I urge PC gamers to go sign them.

Update: The plot thickens.

We thought the lack of dedicated servers was bad, but now we can add the lack of console commands, the inability to have a say in who hosts the game, a lengthy pause while the game migrates to a new host if the currently selected host quits, no leaning, no option to record matches, and no way to kick or block trouble players, hackers, or cheaters.

kaRMa: Please give me a direct answer. On the PC version. Are all games hosted by players, and is there a five-second delay when host migration is in effect?

Vince-IW: yes.Why is this a problem? Because Infinity Ward also revealed in the chat that the game will pick who hosts. You have no control over it. If the host leaves, there will be a five-second delay while the game picks the next best host. Players have no way of controlling who is hosting, and of course we know there will be no dedicated servers.

The host will of course have a ping advantage, which should be mitigated by the software “having a great tolerance for latency,” and a five-second pause if the host rage-quits before the game restarts will ruin any flow the game enjoyed until that point.

What’s more interesting is that they said ISPs will have to deal with you hosting games, even if there is language against running servers in their usage agreement. Infinity Ward’s response is that since this isn’t a “permanent” server, they have to deal with it. When someone else asked what would happen if their ISP throttled traffic that comes from running a server, they were told that “only players capable of hosting will host.”

They better hope that no ISPs get upset, because there is no way for any player to control who hosts. You can’t opt out of hosting. If the host quits, the game stops for five seconds while the next one is selected by the software. This is good for gamers… somehow.

Wow. Simply wow.

Update 11/9/09: Infinity Ward alludes to how they don’t give a crap about PC gamers.

“We have 14 million players on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” he said. “The hardcore gamers make up a smaller core of that, and PC gamers are the smallest group of that core”

Seriously, what is wrong with this company? Your rabid fan base comes from the “hard core gamers.”  What happened to creating loyal raving fans?

Related:

A few reasons NOT to buy Modern Warfare 2
More Modern Warfare 2 Hijinks
Modern Warfare 2 Shows how to Piss off Fans
Why I’m refusing to Purchase CODMW2
Modern Warefare 2 lacks manycommon PC FPS features
Could Modern Warfare 2 be any worse on PC?