I don't know if this has been mentioned in this long thread yet...

I reside in South Africa, we have a terrible internet connection to Europe and the USA. If we were to join an online game on one of your servers our pings would be over 500, but playing on our local servers our pings are between 15 and 100.

Removing dedicated servers from the game will effectively cut tens of thousands of players off: people from South Africa and our neighbouring countries.

(Obviously those connections are just as bad for consoles)

Most of the CoD players I know here already have cancelled their orders, we have petitions which aren't going to work, and we're just really frustrated and disappointed with Activision and IW.

Consoles are negatively affecting all new games, and this proves it without a doubt.

Your article is deeply deepy flawed. I'd don't quite have enough time to go through all of it but here are a few snippets.

Are all FPS games going to have to have a server browser from now until the end of time?

Server browsers come in many forms, some are good and some are terrible, like CoD4's server browser. But servers are places where people play, and I am saying that until the end of video games there will be these places people like to frequent.

What happens when genuinely better tech comes along?

When something genuinely better comes along I'm sure there will be tangible benefits and the developer that finds some way of empowering players and control quality more efficiently will be hailed with praise. IW has not shown their system to be the case- they have however shown their disregard for the issue by announcing the decision off-hand on a podcast of a fansite.

At first glance, this seemed to be - and on some level, continues to seem to be - a classic example of "They Changed It, Now It Sucks."

This is not an example of a "They Changed it, now it sucks." This is an example of a feature being removed from a video-game. It is the server-side equivalent to an FPS developer removing mouse and keyboard compatibility and forcing a gamepad on people.

this change has PC gamers going nuts

Quite simply this comment alone has me deeply disappointed by the Escapist. This is my favourite video-game community, however I may have to revisit my opinions.

Directly, this quote is insulting, and if the author had taken the time to read the wording of the petition, then he would see that it is not radical, it is not a boycott, it is "to review their[IW] decision" concerning dedicated servers.

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This article can go into the bin along with the Game Informer article, and take your rhetorical questions with you.

The best reason I can come up with for being a fan of dedicated servers No_Remainders, is that you could

BAN FUCKING GRIEFERS LIKE YOU!!!!!

Elite club? Sorry if we PC gamers know how to hit "Sort by Ping", I know, that must be SO DIFFICULT TO LEARN when you're already spending countless hours of your life away on video games anyway.

So what if the company wants to add a matchmaking system, why not just keep it in the Simple tab next to the Advanced tab where one can still enjoy setting up their own online experience.

PC gamers STILL don't get to play with console gamers so why dumb down the PC version as if we were all using the same double joystick controller?

Firstly, I am South African..

Over here we do not have as good a communications infrastructure and service as lets say.. America :P So OUR problem is connecting to international servers as it gives excessive lagg, but with dedicated servers running in your own country, the game plays smoothly.

As the developers have the full right, and go to the full extent to protect their intellectual property, they want us all to go through "their" security checks every time we logg on. This obviously means that the servers they provide will give us considerable lagg.

Lagg is no problem when playing an MMORPG, but surely with a FPS every tick on your ping counts..

Our dedicated servers are trusted and themselves regulated. If only there was trust left in the world, I could shoot, nade 'n knife my way through fellow South Africans on the eve of a new Modern Warfare.

Aww, what a shame. The 12 year olds can't scream like banshees for being headshotted in the face.