One local gamer's had enough with Activision and Treyarch's promise of 'dedicated servers' for Call of Duty, and started a petition to get things changed.
To say the release of Modern Warfare 2 on PC was a rocky and controversial one is a touch of an understatement. It felt like we were writing articles on the lack of dedicated servers, or Infinity Ward's lack of empathy for PC gaming every week. With Black Ops, the next CoD release in the franchise, in developer Treyarch's hands, and combined with promises of a return to PC greatness, we had thought everything was going to be fine.
That, it turns out, may not be the case.
Jeremy Ray, standing in over at Kotaku at the moment, uncovered the possibility that the promises of an open dedicated server setup were a little flimsy. As it turns out, Black Ops multiplayer games will be run through a single licensed server provider - GameServers.com. And guess what - they only have a single, slow, server host in Australia.
In answer to this, local gamer Jack Webster has started up the Fix Black Ops petition. "We hope that this petition can get Treyarch and Activision to 'wake up' from the euphoria of Modern Warfare 2," said Webster. "There is a major risk that the launch of Black Ops will be plagued with major issues due to an obvious overselling of infrastructure - especially in countries such as Australia, where there is only a single datacentre which will be expected to host between 300-400 servers."
Not to mention the fact that a licensed server structure still precludes a lot of the access to server files and modding that the community wanted from Modern Warfare 2.
But at least leaning around corners is coming back - assuming that's not based on some licensed leaning partnership based out of Guam. We're waiting on further comment from Jack Webster and Activision Australia, so watch this space.
UPDATE: You can read our interview with Jack Webster here!
Issue: 137 | June, 2012