Modern Warfare 2’s Changes: Tempest in a Teapot or Legitimate Cause for Complaint?

In an interview with the gamer-run podcast BASHandSlash, Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling stated that the PC version of the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 would be seeing a big number of changes to its multiplayer component in terms of connectivity and customization.

Certain hardcore gaming communities took the newly announced changes as being essentially the “death” of multiplayer gameplay, among other hyperbolic terms.

Robert Bowling stated that Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer would be fully integrated into Valve’s Steam platform, with a new service called IWNet to handle the game’s player profiles, matchmaking and server systems to host multiplayer games. The service would also be getting rid of the problematic PunkBuster anti-cheat system in favor of VAC (Valve Anti Cheat).

Most significant is the announcement that dedicated servers will no longer be supported; an announcement which caused furor in the hardcore gaming community that saw this change as a 180 degree turn on how multiplayer gaming is usually handled in FPS games on the PC.

Despite the removal of dedicated server support, players will be able to launch private and password protected servers hosted by Infinity Ward as well as ad-hoc player servers, similar to the local servers in Left 4 Dead. Players will be able to customize server variables and Infinity Ward plans to support the game post-release by catering to popular player requests and offering free updates to the system.

Sites like CSNation jumped to the conclusion that “competitive gaming is dead”. On the contrary, the new matchmaking system would surely reinvigorate the competitive community by allowing newcomers to climb up in the ranks without having to socialize with the “elite”, or rather elitist cadre of gamers that make up much of the competitive community at the present.

Though the changes seem to affect the hardcore community the most, the average gamer will most likely benefit from these changes, as these changes allow players to simply join games on the go without being forced to deal with the hassle of finding ‘pure’, unmodified servers – an issue that constantly plagues games like Modern Warfare, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. Likewise, the changes are a boon to players who do not wish to deal with juvenile server administrators or other such issues that come with having dedicated servers.

Though the complaints may seem almost overwhelmingly loud at this point, it is certain that no more than a handful of players are affected by these changes in a negative way. Though the vocal minority may yet be as vocal as it is, a quick history lesson reveals Blizzard too went through the same criticism when they decided to create changes in World of Warcraft that catered heavily to the “casual” playerbase that comprises the vast majority of players in the aforementioned game. As with World of Warcraft, nobody can be said to be “destroying multiplayer” apart from the hardcore players themselves, for these changes are surely favorable for everyone else.

I believe Robert Bowling said it best when he said, “The driving force is we want to improve the quality for the average user on the PC, and IWNet does that.”