If you haven’t heard by now, there are some problems running about with the upcoming and probably most highly anticipated game of the season, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. With the game set to spur huge sales for developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision, the recent announcement that the PC version won’t support dedicated servers is sure to hurt. Although the campaign mode will be an extensive and integral part for this series, online play is where the action continues. As one of the most widely played online games, the lack of dedicated server capabilities is sure to hurt the Call of Duty gaming community as a whole.

However, with this said, there are two sides to the story. Simliar to our recent post about the Left 4 Dead boycott, gamers and fans of the Call of Duty franchise have all the right to be upset. The preceding Call of Duty supported dedicated servers and a matcmaking system, allowing gamers to host their own games and set up matches with their friends for practice and fun. With the loss of this feature, gamers are now reliant on Infinity Ward’s matchmaking system as a whole. On the other side of the story, Infinity Ward promises to deliver a proper and efficient matchmaking system, which will stride to link gamers on similar skill levels in the same battle arenas.

In addition, Infinity Ward also claims other valuable reasons for their decision on taking control of the online play system. They claim that by taking control and ‘baby-sitting’ us gamers, they can better link up matches and gamers for a better gameplay experience. They also claim to be able to cut down lag on games and provide a better experience for all. Many of us CounterStrike players know what they are talking about here. It isn’t uncommon to spend quite some time to find the ‘perfect’ server for what you want to play. Sometimes the server may be full, password protected, have high ping rates, and even be reserved for clan members. Infinity Ward hopes to limit all of this, and be able to efficiently pair up gamers on a variety of criteria. This new system promises to do all the work for you, and promises not to throw you into a random server. Cheat/Hack protection will also be much more validated with IWNet controlling the system.

In conclusion, we will truly have to just see how this plays out. There may be some more changes coming about before the final release of Modern Warfare 2, only about a month away – but we don’t want to sound too optimistic at this point. By relying on Infinity Ward’s proprietary server technology, IWNet, it is obvious that gamers will lose full control over their matchmaking campaigns and decisions for online play. Custom game maps and modded game modes are also in question at this point, as they probably won’t fly with IWNet’s policies and framework. One thing is for sure, this news has definetly disappointed PC gamers who were anticipating endless nights of some amazing FPS action on their PC’s, and may now switch to the Xbox or PS3 versions.

Maybe we are all wrong. Maybe Infinity Ward’s IWNet will be a success, and we will all be laughing at ourselves four weeks from now.