I signed the Petition to boycott, and pre-order cancelled today.
I would also like to add my two cents to this discussion.
I have read alot of console gamers commenting in this forum, telling us PC players to quit whining, and to that I say: "Stay out of it." Our problems does not and will not affect you. Stick to your pirated Xbox copies.
There are numerous reasons why many of us CHOOSE to play PC. Most of you console gamers are young (<18 year olds) who were in diapers when alot of us PC gamers we were playing Doom and Quake on PC. I personally choose to play PC because I am more comfortable with a keyboard and mouse than I am with a controller. All you young brats who grew up on PS are used to playing only console games because you couldnt afford the 2000 dollars it took to make up a gaming rig, so you couldnt understand the flight of the PC gamers. Again, just ignore the conversation. Your comments do not help us achieve what we want, and again, our comments have no correlation with with console gamers or your games.
IW is taking away the very core of PC gaming. Dedicated servers. Yes, IW is concerned with pirating and hackers, but I doubt this is the reason for the change. It certainly does come down to money. They do not want to lose money on DLC in PC, and they certainly want to limit pirating or at least curb it to a smaller percentage than COD4. Essentially, they are turning the PC into a dumbed down version of the game, and I hope that it eventually backfires.
The PC gaming community as a whole is a tight knit bunch who regularly gather and have LAN parties, play in CLAN games, and play competitively, which will all be significantly diminished if not abandoned by the lack of dedi servers. In addition, there are many of us who enjoy playing PC games because of the ability to play on servers with 50 or more players in it. Some of you Console gamers have never experienced this and have no idea what it is like, so its hard for you to know what that is like, and to have IW come out and say that the max players will be 18 for PC is rather ridiculous. They say the game was designed around this, so it clearly entrenches the idea that IW knew it was going this route from the beginning, yet decided to wait until 3 weeks prior to release to dump that news. If they were smart, they wouldnt have said anything at all. I work in the medical field and constantly gripe about morals of the insurance companies, who do things not unsimilar to what IW has done, which is essentially anything they can to save/make money. However, lets face it, companies that make these games do it for one reason.....To make money, and they are going to maximize this at all costs. I have no problems with them attempting it, I simply will not take part in it, and I pray to the lord above that it blows up in their face, even though I have a feeling it wont.
With all that being said, I know there are PC gamers who are just as whiny as console gamers. It is common nature to be protective of your preferences. I thought the mention of a ban because the cost of the game was 59 bucks was ludacris. We have been playing PC games for years and they have always been the same cost, and because the price is raised 10 bucks you are willing to boycott? That is the kind of thing that gives PC gamers a bad reputation, and lessen the value of any legitimate greivance we actually have against a game maker for their product. It costs more to make these games than it did 10 years ago, and why should any video game maker bear the brunt of the cost? I would also say that I have no issues with IW wanting to charge for DLC. I would have no issue paying 10 bucks for a few maps assuming it was not way out of control. 10 bucks every other year to get fresh content is not a bad value in my opinion. If the game is all they say it is, it would be well worth it, but in taking the very core of PC gaming away (losing dedi's), it all of a sudden loses it's luster, and all of a sudden becomes the game that could have been.
I am sure there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who will ultimately buy the game because the ease of getting it through Steam and the lack of cheats (assuming Valve's Anti cheat is effective)and will enjoy it, but I think there are hundreds of thousands who will not purchase the game, because of IW's decision to pull dedi's and limit mods, etc...., so in the end, I do not think that IW will notice a huge change in expected revenue from the PC end.
In conclusion, I am significantly dissapointed in the way this was handled, the way it was sprung on the PC gaming community at the last minute, when it was obviously decided LONG before it was announced, and dissapointed I have to wait 3-4 months for the new Battlefield to come out. Of course, IW has the ability to fix this situation, and should they choose to do so, I would be on board with purchasing the game down the road, but to use the "supposed" biggest game to be released in years as a guinea pig for some new P2P program they are using, it is simply bad timing.
I truly hope in the end, IW decides that adding dedi's will be the right move, but if not, adios MF2.
So for all you console gamers who can't understand why we are clammering so hard for this, you just will never understand until you partake in the PC world and have dedicated servers. It is likely we will always be banging heads against one another, neither of which budging from their comfort zone, and that is ok, that is what makes the gaming industry run. I own a PS3 and do own COD4 on PC and PS3, I played COD4 on PS3 for about a week before I got tired of the constant matchmaking, the 12 year old cussing with no ability to boot him from the game, and the constant ending of the game by the host. In the PC world, most gamers find a server where relationships are established and the same group of gamers consistenly come and play and are well moderated to keep riff raff out. In my opinion, it is far more pleasurable to play this way, and always will be.
DoCFuRy