Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

[Mueti]

Spoiler for story:

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

Cool story, glad Price was back, too bad for more killing of player characters though, even Ghost D:

You do realize this forum has spoiler tags, right?

That aside, the story was a convoluted mess.

[0utf0xZer0]

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but wouldn't pirated copies of COD4 only work on hacked servers for multiplayer? It's easier than with MW2 because there's at least a dedicated server program to hack, but it would hardly be a painless process.

Anyway, just for reference, the 383K number came from NPD's PC sales charts. Which list Crysis as selling 86K in it's first 18 days. EA says Crysis sold one million in it's first three months, so... yeah. I expect COD 4 on PC probably sold similar numbers to Crysis.

[killer3000ad]

Originally Posted by Keroko

400.000 was only a guestimate, as CoD4 sold 12.6 million copies on both of the consoles (the console sales have been released, it's only the PC version that I'm having trouble finding numbers for) this leaves only 400.000 for the PC to reach their 13 million number, which again is an official number. Now I agree that in light of the 383.000 sales 400.000 is a low number, however with 'over 13 million' as a limit even if we stretch that to the extremes we can, at most, assume they used 'over 13 million' to describe a number close to 13.9 million, and I find even that a stretch (any company boasting about their numbers would have said 'nearly 14 million' instead).

But, sticking by this for the sake of extremities, that would mean a total CoD4 PC sales of 1.3 million over two years.

How I came up with the assumption that 400.000 people might have pirated CoD4? Well, that was based on the former numbers, but the reasoning behind them stopping piracy is simply that the PC version is now a bigger pain in the rear to pirate and play online. In a cost versus effort thing, the more effort a casual pirate has to take to be able to play the game, the less likely he is to pirate the game. I am not familiar with the pirating world, but to me as a casual, so far pirating a copy would not allow me to play online.

Sources: 360 sales. PS3 sales.

According to those sources, CoD 4 PC managed to sell 0 copies -_- http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.p...608&region=All

[Keroko]

Yeah, that's why I said I'm having trouble finding PC numbers.

Originally Posted by DeX-kun

This is a bit of a stretch if you ask me. Yes, Modern Warfare 2 has sold more copies than it's predecessor on the PC but there's a difference, the first Modern Warfare was no where near as hyped as it's sequel. No one knew what to expect from the first MW considering the huge transition from the World War theme to the Modern Warfare theme. Now that the original game established itself, Modern Warfare 2 became an easy money-making machine. Even so, I can guarantee you that if IW had left dedicated servers in and everything else taken out, the PC version would have easily sold more copies.

More copies? Sure. But not nearly as much as the doomspeakers like to think. I've said it before back when this entire ordeal started, but the people who are truly upset about this to the point of not buying the game are a minority, not the majority they'd like to think themselves to be.

Originally Posted by DeX-kun

By taking away the ability to create mods and such, it opens the door for IW to sell map packs and anything else without the PC version interfering since we were able to mold the game how we wanted which created a more competitive experience, but now PC gamers have become limited by this decision. Sure, the casual PC gamer won't really have a problem with this but the people that used to play MW competitively are the ones that take the biggest hit.

This is true, though it depends on the definition of 'competitive player.'

Originally Posted by DeX-kun

I've seen a lot of PC gamers whining and moaning but they still have a point about how IW pulled the seat out from under the PC community, so-to-speak. More of the console gamers that aren't affected by this at all should try to understand the PC community a little better (this is not aimed at anyone specifically, just generally speaking about those that don't truly understand the affect this really has.) The PC community has become accustomed to a certain experience and it's really not fair to limit us this way, it's like telling everyone that you can't change any of your control settings because they want you to play the game the way they designed it (of course not everyone will complain but the reaction would be similar more or less.)

Unfortunately, that 'experience' PC gamers have gotten used also seems to include getting what they want without paying a cent for it. Which is what has forced more and more developers to move to different methods of securing their property. Why do you think so many developers are moving to consoles? Or why MMO's are so popular to develop these days? Because of WoW? WoW was only a part of the reason, another part is that MMO's are much harder to pirate, making them an excellent avenue for relatively safe profit.

DRM programs are easily circumvented, as Spore has shown, and are not a good way to secure your games. The move with the highest success rate so far is to restrict the gamers. Make them register accounts, play on certain servers, make new content available for those with accounts, regulate where and when the players have their fun.

The gaming industry gave us PC gamers full freedom. We have shown that we cannot be trusted with that freedom. What is happening here is nothing more than a cause and effect.

[NorthernFallout]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but wouldn't pirated copies of COD4 only work on hacked servers for multiplayer? It's easier than with MW2 because there's at least a dedicated server program to hack, but it would hardly be a painless process.

Far as I know, yes. I'm sure someone will manage to get a hold of server code or whatever it is they can use, but the lack of servers make pirated MW2 copies almost useless for MP. Not to mention it goes through steam and with all the account information etc. That's how I understood it anyway.

[gonzo562]

Originally Posted by Keroko

As opposed to the guy never being banned and being able to hop from server to server causing misery as long as it damn well pleases him? I prefer the delay.

Anyway, the day one sales figures are starting to trickle in. According to Vgchartz preliminary numbers Modern Warfare 2 sold over 7 million copies at launch, numbers per consoles are as follow:

• around 55% (3.85 million) were for the 360.
  
• around 33% (2.31 million) sold on the PS3
  
• around 12% (840.000) sold on the PC.

The 360 version selling the most is not surprising, as this was mostly the same for the previous installment. That the PC version did not manage to reach over a million whereas both its console counterparts did comes as no surprise to me either. The previous Modern Warfare had sold over 13 million copies. 7.88 million of them on the 360, 4.72 million on the PC, leaving only a scant 400.000 of those 13 million copies for the PC. Admittedly there could be a 100K more or less, but there is a simple reality we can draw from this:

Modern Warfare 2 has blown the previous Modern Warfare away in terms of sales. The PC version selling more on the first day than it's predecessor did in two years.

The end of First Person Shooters on the PC? I don't think so. Though if the guys at Infinity Ward are reading these numbers as well, I do think the chances of dedicated server support returning are virtually non existent.

Frighteningly enough, unless about 400.000 people decided MW2 was a good start in the FPS, these numbers suggest that about half of the people playing CoD4 were doing so on pirated copies. The anti-piracy stance of companies certainly has gotten a bit more understandable to me.

first person shooters is going downhill if the fps games are gonna be pretty much the same across all 3 gaming platforms xbox360,ps3,pc. Plus no dedicated servers and no ability to mod or customize games will lead to pc fps shooters going down hill if more and more companies do this

[Mueti]

Originally Posted by gonzo562

first person shooters is going downhill if the fps games are gonna be pretty much the same across all 3 gaming platforms xbox360,ps3,pc. Plus no dedicated servers and no ability to mod or customize games will lead to pc fps shooters going down hill if more and more companies do this

If anything, at least Valve will never do this. Since they create the best multiplayer-shooters on PC anyway, I can't help but feel slightly optimistic about the future of FPSs.

[MonkeyDude]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Unfortunately, that 'experience' PC gamers have gotten used also seems to include getting what they want without paying a cent for it. Which is what has forced more and more developers to move to different methods of securing their property. Why do you think so many developers are moving to consoles? Or why MMO's are so popular to develop these days? Because of WoW? WoW was only a part of the reason, another part is that MMO's are much harder to pirate, making them an excellent avenue for relatively safe profit.

DRM programs are easily circumvented, as Spore has shown, and are not a good way to secure your games. The move with the highest success rate so far is to restrict the gamers. Make them register accounts, play on certain servers, make new content available for those with accounts, regulate where and when the players have their fun.

The gaming industry gave us PC gamers full freedom. We have shown that we cannot be trusted with that freedom. What is happening here is nothing more than a cause and effect.

Can you define "getting what you want without paying a single cent for it"? Correct me if I'm wrong but such a thing isn't exclusive to PC games. Just take a look at the hard/soft modding scene for consoles and you'll be fully aware as to the extent of console piracy. I believe developers have primarily moved on to consoles given the larger market base for it. All a console player has to do is pop in the game and he can experience it to the fullest, while a PC player has to worry whether his rig has the juice to run the game with all the eye candy console players take for granted. Developers can also treat console players like crap while they are fully aware that the PC community expect patches to fix bugs that will invariably be in the game regardless of which version it is. And MMO's have always been popular even before WoW, dunno what you're trying to say there. MMO's being hard to pirate? Ever heard of private servers? Only reason MMO's are "hard to pirate" is due to the lack of a playerbase in private servers. I mean its massive multiplayer for a reason right?

DRM only infuriates people who actually purchases their product. You think a pirate has to worry about securom, starforce, or whatever the hell they put in there to "protect" their game? DRM just encourages pirating while punishing those who actually purchase the game. But hey I'm not in marketing so what do I know about this. The move with the highest success range is not to implement any form of DRM on their games. Restricting the gamers will just increase pirating as well as discourage potential buyers. Those who will buy will and those who don't, well why give them even more reason not to?

You only register accounts...to secure your nick when playing a multiplayer game (hello BF2). I don't see why I have to be online so the game I BOUGHT can be verified every time I want to play it. Oh hey I can pirate it sans multiplayer and I won't have to deal with all this verification crap! Gee I wonder what I should do? Playing on certain servers? You do know that you can't do that in MW2 at all right? And why should I let 'x' company decide which server I play on? I don't know what delusional world you live in or you like to be controlled by the invisible hand but even MMO's let you decide where you want to play in. Oh you also call new content mods, which the community makes with tools usually provided by the devs (hello Source SDK). They can also come in the form of patches (let's use the latest BF2 1.5 patch as an example). Again I'm not sure what world you live in when you want 'x' company to "regulate where and when the players have their fun". I bought the game and I'll choose when, where, and how I want to have my fun.

The game industry has stopped giving gamers "full freedom" when they started placing these copyright protection software that usually takes no more than a month to crack by a talented team of experts. The industry has shown their contempt for PC gamers as well as for their paying customers by burdening them unnecessarily with their protection software that can be classified more as spy/malware.

And let's face it. People bought this game for the multiplayer unless one can warrant paying $60 for a singleplayer campaign that's less than 10 hours tops. Singleplayer will always be target for pirates (especially now with Microsoft banning over 600k LIVE accounts). The PC multiplayer gaming scene has always had strong protection against pirates through a simple thing called cd-keys, guid's, and good old punkbuster (love it, hate it, it gets the job done...somewhat). Infinity Ward decided to make a direct console port os MW2 for the PC and those who game on the platform have every right to be angry. Why pay the same amount for a (crippled) PC version when it is the near identical copy of the console version, with the console version being a tad superior to it if we go by the review in Ars Technica?

Oh well not like I'm going to buy the game at all (maybe leech off a friend) since I'm not into the whole Modern Warfare scene, that and perks make no sense to me. Whatever happened to the good old days when the message "GODLIKE!" popped up when you get a 25 kill streak instead of an instagib nuke that annihilates everyone in the map? All this talk makes me want to fire up my Call of Duty 2...best CoD btw

[USB500]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

Spoiler:

Cool story, glad Price was back, too bad for more killing of player characters though, even Ghost D:

Originally Posted by Mueti

You do realize this forum has spoiler tags, right?

That aside, the story was a convoluted mess.

I just hope IW will fix the story in MW3, because seriously

Spoiler:

NO! WHY MUST THEY KILL TWO OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS? AND GHOST, OF ALL PEOPLE????

That said, I want to see jungle missions and and more Pripyat-esque stealth/sniper missions in MW3. I was more than delighted when

Spoiler:

Price mentioned Pripyat in Contingency. Though that mission seriously went WTF at the end

[Bonta Kun]

Theres a serious flaw in this game, while the host migration is a great idea when it works anytime it doesn't and I'm forced to restart, which I've found would be quicker to do so than wait for a new host in some cases.
And another thing to go along with quiting and restarting is I lost everything I had unlcoked during the game which sucked hugely considering we had played most of the match in some cases. I was back to square 1 with my MP5

Well still liking it, good blast.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Unfortunately, that 'experience' PC gamers have gotten used also seems to include getting what they want without paying a cent for it. Which is what has forced more and more developers to move to different methods of securing their property. Why do you think so many developers are moving to consoles? Or why MMO's are so popular to develop these days? Because of WoW? WoW was only a part of the reason, another part is that MMO's are much harder to pirate, making them an excellent avenue for relatively safe profit.

DRM programs are easily circumvented, as Spore has shown, and are not a good way to secure your games. The move with the highest success rate so far is to restrict the gamers. Make them register accounts, play on certain servers, make new content available for those with accounts, regulate where and when the players have their fun.

The gaming industry gave us PC gamers full freedom. We have shown that we cannot be trusted with that freedom. What is happening here is nothing more than a cause and effect.

I'm still not convinced that MW2's lack of dedicated servers and such is just an anti-piracy measure. Yeah, you could play COD4 on hacked servers without a legit copy of the game, but it seriously limited your options. There was a pretty good incentive to buy the game if you wanted multiplayer.

However, MW2's approach doesn't allow custom content. Infinity Ward has recently been talking about downloadable content for this game. Chances are it won't be free.

In fact, Infinity Ward's entire approach to the PC version of MW2 seems to be based at increasing profit per unit. They're selling at $60 instead of the traditional $50 for one. With 840K sold, that $8.4 million in extra profit right there - more than a third of the development cost for a high end PC FPS like Crysis.

[gonzo562]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

I'm still not convinced that MW2's lack of dedicated servers and such is just an anti-piracy measure. Yeah, you could play COD4 on hacked servers without a legit copy of the game, but it seriously limited your options. There was a pretty good incentive to buy the game if you wanted multiplayer.

However, MW2's approach doesn't allow custom content. Infinity Ward has recently been talking about downloadable content for this game. Chances are it won't be free.

In fact, Infinity Ward's entire approach to the PC version of MW2 seems to be based at increasing profit per unit. They're selling at $60 instead of the traditional $50 for one. With 840K sold, that $8.4 million in extra profit right there - more than a third of the development cost for a high end PC FPS like Crysis.

im not convinced either. I think their is a small amount of people who play on hacked servers without a legit copy of the game.

Xbox360 and ps3 probably more marketable then pc games. Since consumers dont have to worry about if their pc can run the game or how the game will look on their pc or run smoothly

i think most players who pirate the game only play the single player

[MakubeX2]

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/wew...tedMW2/members

Heh. So much for dedication.

[gummybear]

I am deeply disappointed today ~_~
I bought a copy of MW2 PC version and turns out the booklet that has the activation code was cut in half and missing one of the half with part of the code ~_~
they better exchange it for me tomorrow or I will break someone's face

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by gonzo562

im not convinced either. I think their is a small amount of people who play on hacked servers without a legit copy of the game.

Xbox360 and ps3 probably more marketable then pc games. Since consumers dont have to worry about if their pc can run the game or how the game will look on their pc or run smoothly

i think most players who pirate the game only play the single player

I'd be curious if knowing whether games with short single player campaigns suffer more from piracy on PC than games with longer campaigns. On console you can rent short games without paying $50. PC games, not so much.

It's hard to quantify the size of the PC gaming crowd compared to consoles. I remember one article citing the Steam Hardware Survey as saying that 4.48 million people were using 64 bit OSes and this was basically 19.something percent of the total... I basically worked out that about 23 million people use Steam, of which 42.71% use Direct X 10 capable GPUs. So you have 9-10 million Direct X 10 capable PCs on Steam compared to 31 million Xbox 360s, plus another 13 million or so on Direct X 8 and 9 GPUed machines on Steam. Not sure how many machines aren't included in the Steam survey, steam is pretty common nowadays but it's not ubiquitous.

[MidnightViper88]

Well, playing through the first handful of levels in the campaign mode, I can't help but remember wayyy back in the beginning of the thread about a minor exchange I brought forth...

Originally Posted by MidnightViper88

Civilians!

I want civilians in my next war game...And I'm not talking about the dozen or less random "civilians" that pop out of nowhere than disappear into oblivion in any of the Rainbow Six: Vegas games...

Something never seemed right running through an entire Middle Eastern city without a single innocent dead or alive to be found...

Originally Posted by Claies

Unfortunately, even I think it would be inappropriate to have civilians to shoot. A line has to be drawn somewhere on what to allow players to do.

Besides, it gives the wrong message. Players on their comfy couches carry none of the empathy that soldiers on the ground would and would only find civilians annoying...and they'll probably shoot them just for the hell of it.

A law of video games, I guess: Every battle is pitched.

And now I can call this an example of modern Shakespearean dramatic irony...

I still need to give online multiplayer the shakedown; I'll do that tomorrow night, since that's what got me hyped about this game...

[0utf0xZer0]

I've noticed the lack of civilians in the COD series too... I guess they just decided that making you actually decide what was an actual target would slow the game down too much.

As much as I dislike how the PC release of this was handled, the co-op mode of this does interest me quite a bit, since COD4 was one of the few games from the last few years my brother actually got into. $60 per player is way too steep for the features I'm interested in though. Maybe after some price drops.

[MakubeX2]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

I've noticed the lack of civilians in the COD series too... I guess they just decided that making you actually decide what was an actual target would slow the game down too much.

Not at all. One of the Co-Op mission has actual Civvies running around scared and the game has put a limit on how many of them you can kill before throwing a Mission Fail at you.

As much as I dislike how the PC release of this was handled, the co-op mode of this does interest me quite a bit, since COD4 was one of the few games from the last few years my brother actually got into. $60 per player is way too steep for the features I'm interested in though. Maybe after some price drops.

So is it safe to say the big hoo-ha over the dedicated server issue was just a tantrum thrown over some spilled milk ? And that people will just move on ? Because the PC version is still moving like hotcakes and out selling the console version by 2:1 from where I'm at.

And looking by my previous post, you should see that people are always hypocritical by nature.

[Alchemist007]

Originally Posted by Mueti

Spoiler for story:

You do realize this forum has spoiler tags, right?

That aside, the story was a convoluted mess.

Sorry, figured by page 21 people would only be coming who've beaten the game. I personally definitely don't come once the game has been released until I've beaten it myself. You end up learning this lesson over time; there's more people even worse than me out there just so you know
Better to wise up now than get spoiled even more in the future (for anything).

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by MakubeX2

So is it safe to say the big hoo-ha over the dedicated server issue was just a tantrum thrown over some spilled milk ? And that people will just move on ? Because the PC version is still moving like hotcakes and out selling the console version by 2:1 from where I'm at.

And looking by my previous post, you should see that people are always hypocritical by nature.

I don't know. I'd love to say I'm boycotting until the price drops... but considering I'm pretty much only interested in the game for single player/co-op it's not like I'm willing to pay $60 anyway so its a moot point.