UGAACCIDENTALS

So apparently the Modern Warfare 2 complaints regarding the announcement that it won’t include dedicated servers and people will be forced to use “IW Net” have got the attention of the developers. They responded and basically told everyone that this wasn’t done to combat piracy and it was because they wanted to make sure players had a more enjoyable experience. This excuse is laughable though and obviously transparent to most PC gamers. Lack of dedicated servers destroys community and choice and will not “improve the experience” for anyone at all. It’s really a shame that so many PC games are being dragged down by this console pandering trash. It also upsets me that “piracy” is such a major concern to developers. Most people who can afford to buy games already buy them. The pirates are children who can’t convince their parents to buy a game for them. They aren’t technically a “lost sale” like developers want to think. All they’re doing is upsetting everyone.

I guess InfinityWard isn’t hoping to sell any copies of their upcoming release, Modern Warfare 2, for the PC because they just completely destroyed the multiplaying gaming aspect of it. They announced that there will be no dedicated servers allowed, VAC and full steam integration will be used which means zero modifications allowed and no punk buster, you’ll be required to join games through a matchmaking service similar to what consoles use. This is really a horrible idea overall and has completely alienated the PC gaming market. It’s amazing to see a title like Call of Duty which got started on the PC just abandon the market that got it started in the first place.

I’m sure you all know how I feel about consoles in general but just in case you didn’t I’ll let you know. I think consoles are completely worthless in the state they’re in now. They are nothing but glorified PCs that don’t offer keyboard and mouse support all while tying you to a proprietary OS that allows the console company and game developers to have you at their mercy. I certainly won’t be buying Modern Warfare 2 and I hope others will show their displeasure by boycotting this title as well.

So I was just looking at a preorder of the game Dragon Age: Origins and was amazed that there are seemingly large parts of the game being sold off as preorder bonuses only. Like additional quests, playable characters, etc. This is completely out of control. Every game has been fishing for preorders so much lately that they’ve resorted to forcing you into it if you want to get huge components of the game that should be included with the release. I don’t mind additional items (of which there are 2 for DA:O, preorder and steam purchase bonuses) being given out with preorders but when they start limiting characters and actual game content it’s going too far.

This reminds me of a thread I read recently about GameStop and how much their employees pressure people into preordering games. You can go in and pick up a used game and you won’t escape without being begged to preorder 100 of the latest titles for any console or gaming device they can figure out that you have. It’s really starting to piss me off. The video games market is starting to mimic the movie and music markets with all the blood they’re trying to suck out of their customers in the form of cash. It’s less about making quality games now and more about how many little tricks and marketing gimics they can come up with to sale as many games possible before anyone has a chance to play it and give it a bad review. Sickening.

So I logged back into my Monopoly City Streets account to confirm what I suspected and I wasn’t disappointed. The leaderboard was dominated by people with hundreds of trillions of dollars. I’m absolutely amazed this is what Hasbro and Google had envisioned for this game. It seems ridiculous that they didn’t know this was going to happen. Basically when you start the game you have something like $1,000,000. You can then buy streets and start another account. This secondary account can purchase the street you just bought for twice as much as you just paid for it. Thus your second account is drained but your primary account has just flipped its property instantly for much more than its worth.

The very day this came out I tried this once to confirm it was possible because I thought maybe they would have included some safeguards to prevent this like many MMORPGs have done in the past. Once I realized it was possible I knew that anyone who wanted to win would just be programming a bot to perform this process over and over again and sure enough within 24 hours (before money was distributed even, since its only every 24 hours that you get money from rent, etc) people had billions of dollars which is impossible without cheating with multiple accounts. What a huge waste of time and energy that game is.

The L4D2 boycott leaders were flown to Valve to supposedly see that L4D2 is worthy of being a full sequel and not just additional content. They said they agreed the game was nice and well polished but they weren’t giving in. I applaud their decision. The original L4D was supposed to get many more updates than it actually received. Releasing them in a sequel even if it does include things that weren’t possible in L4D doesn’t make up for the half finished title they released.

One of my major complaints now is that when I try to play L4D there are only a handful of lobbies available. Like literally only 3-4 games to choose from. You can’t even play all of the maps anymore because not enough people are playing/creating lobbies.

More and more titles are releasing full new games instead of DLC for their existing games that have the exact same functionality. The worst offender of this is Rock Band and Guitar Hero as you could probably have guessed. They add more songs, some background videos, and suddenly you’re expected to pay another $60 for this? These should be getting released as $20-$30 content packs for the original titles.

It’s really a shame to see gaming companies doing this but it’s even more sad that gamers are willing to put up with it and buy small upgrades as if they’re entirely new games. This ties into why I hate consoles in general though. If these games were on PC there would simply be modding communities churning this stuff out for free. By keeping it on consoles they’re allowed to get away with this robbery and the people tied to consoles eat it up because there are less titles for them since console developers are split between choosing which of 3 consoles to develop for.