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Supporters of dedicated servers for FPS games claim that the current system is necessary to allow for a full gaming experience. Needless to say, the recent news that dedicated servers aren’t being supported in the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 hasn’t exactly gone over well with a lot of the computer gaming community.

Last week, when Infinity Ward revealed it was dropping dedicated servers from the PC build of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in favor of a new matchmaking infrastructure called IWNET, it was like someone sucker-punched the PC gaming community. The reaction was both immediate and loud: forums erupted with angry posts, and a petition asking Infinity Ward to rethink its decision quickly surpassed 150,000 signatures.

So far, the developer seems to be ignoring the complaints of its PC audience. This isn’t whining, however. Digging below the surface reveals that those who are asking Infinity Ward not to do away with the dedicated servers entirely are not simply scared of change. Instead, they want the PC gaming experience to be as enjoyable as possible for the entire community, something they say isn’t possible without control of the servers.

Why this matters

So what’s the big deal about the loss of dedicated servers? Quite a lot, actually, especially for hardcore PC gamers involved in competitive FPS leagues. “To lose dedicated servers means we lose control of what rules we can use in clan matches (each league has its own rules, perks, weapons, etc). These rules, more than likely, are run by mods, such as PAM, Openwarfare, or Pro-Mod,” said Dave Wilks, the author of the petition and an administrator for Codleague. “No dedicated servers mean no mods… we wouldn’t be able to upload mods to IWNET.”

Of course, Infinity Ward has been quick to tout the advantages of using IWNET over dedicated servers. By utilizing “playlists” (pre-set game modes and types for public matches), players won’t have to search for a game on a list of available servers. The system will also “put you in the game that will give you the smoothest gameplay possible without you having to manually find a server with the best ping.”

The final advantage of this new system, according to the developer, is that it will use the Valve Anti-Cheat system in order to “control the quality of the game much more than ever before.” According to the claims, IWNET will eliminate the need to worry about “joining a server full of aim-bots, wallhacks, or cheaters. Or relying on the server admin of the server to constantly be monitoring, banning, and policing it.”

While it’s true that dedicated servers can’t really have someone monitoring the games on them 24/7, many of them utilize PunkBuster, an anti-cheat system for online multiplayer games. If you’re a dedicated player who sticks to one server, it’s also comforting to know those that care about the community around that server are working to keep the cheaters out; control rests in the hands of the players, not Activision.

Even if the IWNET system does work as Infinity Ward claims it will, it’s easy to understand gamers’ concern. “I don’t know if [dedicated servers will be better] in general day to day play,” admitted Wilks. “The only game I’ve played with matchmaking or similar is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, which also has a server browser so you can actually pick the server to go in.

“The thing with a matchmaking system [is that] you are reliant on the host not taking his bat home if he’s getting pummeled in a game, and also on the host’s internet connection being able to handle the amount of people in the server. With a [dedicated server], you usually have it located in a datacentre, with a decent connection, and so everyone connects to the server which means fairer play (no 0 pings).”

The PC gamer as whining loser

The concerns seem valid, despite what many people seemed to think when complaints started to surface last week. Even Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade jumped on the bandwagon, naysaying the complaints as little more than pointless sound and fury from a community that is no longer a key audience.

“To read such lamentations, you’d get the impression that PC gamers still think they are the focus of the industry, when that hasn’t been true for awhile,” he wrote in a recent post. “Indeed, hardcore gamers in general—and the dedicated PC enthusiast, which is a subset—haven’t been the object of their desire for some time.”

Wilks, of course, disagrees. “No, I don’t think [Holkins' opinion] is true,” he said. “PC gamers know that they are the minority (15 percent in Call of Duty 4). PC Gamers haven’t been primary audiences for a long time for most publishers or developers, although some still do develop only on PC.”

Wilks claims the community’s hope is that groups like Infinity Ward will keep dedicated servers running side-by-side with systems like IWNET. “All in all, IWNET adds a load of new features that the PC version of our games have never had before and allows us an infrastructure to continue to update and improve on the game post-launch,” he said. “At the end of the day, all we are asking for is support to run the game how we, the paying customers, want to run the game after all the support Infinity Ward was given by the PC gaming community.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like developers want to consider this option, based on Infinity Ward’s reaction to the petition. Despite assurances by Robert Bowling that the development team would see and respond to the petition, the ensuing silence on the matter has been deafening. Wilks hasn’t seen any official response from either Bowling or Infinity Ward since then, and Bowling himself never responded to Ars’ request for an interview.

The lack of dedicated servers also means Activision Blizzard controls what mods, if any, will be allowed. You can’t control what maps are running on the server, and fan-made maps offered for free may be a thing of the past, replaced by for-pay content, if this model catches on. This changes the relationship between the community and the publisher: you used to be able to buy a house and move in, but now you’ll have to ask permission to paint the walls of your rental. Which, by the way, is more expensive. To show you just how far Infinity Ward has come since the last Call of Duty in terms of embracing the PC platform, take a look at an interview shot for the first Modern Warfare. 

In just a few short years, we’ve gone from embracing the mod-making and PC gaming community, to treating them like children who can’t be trusted with nice things.

How will the PC gaming community react to the game if Infinity Ward goes ahead with its current plans and doesn’t support dedicated servers? “I can only speak for the guys I know about,” Wilks said. “A poll on our site suggests that 75 percent have canceled preorders. As for what the community will do, well, if [Infinity Ward] stays with just IWNET, then we won’t be supporting Modern Warfare 2. We will find other games to play.”

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Microsoft has officially launched the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and the Windows 7 Compatibility Center. If you haven’t installed Windows 7 yet, and are planning to, go ahead and make sure you’re compatible.

Days before Windows 7 is set to hit general availability, Microsoft has officially announced the release of two Windows 7 compatibility tools over at Microsoft.com/Windows/Compatibility: the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and the Windows 7 Compatibility Center. 

We’ve been watching the former ever since it hit beta in May 2009 and the latter since a placeholder page went up in June 2009. Now they’re both final, and they’re here to let you know whether you’re Windows 7 compatible or not. Microsoft is also offering compatibility help from experts via the Microsoft Answers Forums and the Windows Help & How-to team. Microsoft says both tools will be regularly updated with more products over time.

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is now available for download on the Microsoft Download Center (8.3MB). This tool is meant for those who are upgrading Windows on their current rig. It will examine your PC’s processor, memory, storage, graphics capabilities, and lets you know if you can run the 64-bit version. The tool tells you your upgrade options and informs you about any known compatibility issues with the most commonly installed software programs and devices connected to your PC. If an issue can be resolved, it suggests next steps for you to take before installing Windows 7. The tool checks against the following Windows 7 system requirements:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
• DirectX® 9 graphics processor with WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.0 or higher driver

Windows 7 Compatibility Center

The Windows 7 Compatibility Center helps the user easily check the compatibility of thousands of devices and software programs for 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7. Microsoft determines a product’s compatibility status for the Compatibility Center by looking at whether it has earned the “Compatible with Windows 7″ or “Certified for Windows Server 2008″ logo and whether the software publisher or device manufacturer states that they currently (or plan to) offer product support for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Most of the time, the user won’t need to do anything to ensure compatibility but in case they do, the website won’t just tell you what will or won’t work; it will also provide links to drivers and software updates to help fix the issue. If you don’t see a product listed on the site, Microsoft is letting users submit a suggestion.

Microsoft’s determination to get these tools out before the launch of Windows 7 is admirable and also a sharp contrast to the launch of Windows Vista. Both equivalent tools for Vista arrived long after the operating system hit general availability.

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The video of the week is Splinter Cell Conviction. Go to our blog to check out the video.

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Brutal Legend sounds great and is one of the funnier releases this year, but the gameplay doesn’t live up to the promise of the game’s concept and world. The game is worth a rental, but all told this a heartbreaking near-miss.

Here’s what people are going to remember about Brutal Legend: Jack Black as Eddie Riggs. This isn’t a star showing up and talking into a microphone for a bullet point on the back of the box and a nice paycheck on the way out of the studio, this is a performance with real heart. Black introduces the game in a quick video when you first place the disc in, and he’s been working publicity for the title like a champ—all these things add up to make his vocal work one of the high points of the game.

Of course, when you’re speaking the words of the now-legendary Tim Schafer, the mind behind the dialog in games like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and Psychonauts, it helps. This is a man who wrote a game that’s a love letter to heavy metal music; it’s no surprise he and Jack Black were such a tight fit when it came to making the game as fun to listen to and watch as it is.

The problem is that the game simply isn’t very fun to play.

The introduction to the game, what you played in the demo, remains fun and funny, not to mention attractive. When the demo cuts off and the game proper begins, problems pop up immediately. The frame rate is inconsistent, with frequent stutters, drops, and pauses, and texture pop-in is something you’ll see often. What’s frustrating is that these issues are constant, and don’t seem to match up with anything that’s on your screen; even during slow scenes with nothing taxing going on, you’ll see these glitches and hiccups.

It seems like EA had marketing budget to spare, so why not spend the time and money to make sure the game ran smoothly? There is nothing special about the graphics of Brutal Legend that would explain these technical problems. The art direction is great, but the current-generation systems should hardly be taxed by what’s happening on screen.

The fundamentals aren’t there

The combat is a combination of using your ax for close battles and your guitar for ranged attacks, and the fighting never feels very precise or satisfying. In many instances you’ll be fighting alongside your own troops, and the enemy will be nothing but a slightly different-colored version of the same character model, so it’s hard to tell friend from foe. Sadly, in those cases it’s easiest just to go in swinging; your friends won’t react to being hit, and even if you slam into them with your car they simply become immovable objects.

The game features an interesting real-time strategy mechanic for large-scale battles. Your team constructs a stage, and you “harvest” fans by playing a guitar solo over geysers of what look to be souls from the underground. Once you’ve played the solo and set up your “merch booth” you can select your units and lead them into battle. It’s a good idea, but in practice the controls for moving your troops and organizing your strategy are imprecise. It’s often better to simply wade in with Eddie and take out as many enemies as you can before dying. When you are overtaken, the “fans” simply lift you up and you’re back in the action.

This RTS-lite idea also makes up the game’s single-player, and once again, it’s simply not a very satisfying mechanic. Instead of mediocre standard combat mixed with a mediocre real-time strategy game, a deeper focus on one or the other would have served the game much better. This feels more like an experiment that didn’t quite live up to its promise.

The rest of the game is filled with “go there and kill these guys” or “go there, kill this boss, and get this and bring it back to me” types of missions. The side missions that allow you to gain fire offerings to upgrade your car and weapons fall victim to repetition: there are only a few types of repeating missions, and they get old quickly. Driving around and exploring the land is fun—especially once you gain the ability to set up your own playlist of the over 100 metal songs, all expertly picked—but the graphics of the overworld can be seriously bland. Even with exploration and leveling up your equipment, the main story will be over a little too quickly.

It’s not all bad

The art direction is great, and the story itself is just about enough to keep you interested in the game until you see the credits. It helps that the rest of the voice talent is made up of some of heavy music’s biggest names. Here’s my question: how the hell did they get Ozzy to sound so clear and engaged? This is a man who mumbles his way through life, and his voice work is one of the many high points when it comes to the game’s list of characters and cameos. He sounds world-weary but also spry and rowdy. It’s either a magic trick, or some great post-processing work.

This is a game that’s going to sell very well, and our disappointment may have come from our high expectations. There is much to like here, but the things that matter, the gameplay and the action, simply don’t stand up. Metal fans are in for a treat: this is a game written by someone who understands and loves the music, but gamers may be left cold by the experience. A great concept, an intriguing world, wonderful writing, brilliant voice acting—but half-baked gameplay, graphics, and technology.

It could have been worse, but man, it could have been a whole hell of a lot better.

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World of Warcraft players have been able to merge their accounts with Battle.net for some time, but now Blizzard is making it mandatory. Players who don’t merge their accounts by November 11 will no longer be able to log into the game.

The process of merging WoW and Battle.net accounts is fairly simple, as detailed here. To sweeten the deal, Blizzard is offering a free in-game penguin pet, which will be made available sometime this week for a limited time.

The one gripe that has been popping up over at the official WoW forums is that Battle.net uses your email address as a user name, which some deem a security risk. However, a common way to get around this concern is by registering with a “dummy” email address to avoid any risk.

As for the reason for the deadline, Blizzard has of course been quiet. It’s likely this move has to do with the much-talked about new iteration of Battle.net that is expected to roll out alongside Starcraft II next year.

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Conventional wisdom says that laptops with data cards cause more of a traffic jam on cell networks than handhelds because of the relative increase in data consumption. However, a new study from mobile broadband technology provider Airvana says that smartphones generate the majority of “signaling activity”—messages to and from cell sites for polling purposes. This is an indicator of an “urgent need” for improved data processing among cell networks in the US.

According to Airvana, smartphones generate as much as eight times the network load as laptops on the same network because of how smartphones work. Since they’re always on and performing multiple functions at once (acting as a mini-computer, your phone, a mapping device, and whatever else you can think of), they’re constantly sending small signals to nearby cell sites—more so than regular cell phones, and much more than laptops using data cards.

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If you’re a Sidekick user who has been waiting out the past week’s data outage in hopes of a happy ending, you’re not going to like the joint press release that Microsoft and T-Mobile put out on the matter this past Saturday. The release contains a line that no service provider ever wants to see in print with their name attached to it: “Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device—such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos—that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.” Ouch.

Any of your data that’s on Microsoft’s servers is just gone, and the only possible backup of it is whatever’s cached in your device’s local memory—so do not allow your device to lose power, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger warn in the press release’s headline, or you’ll never see your data again.

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Apple and Google severed their last official ties Monday morning, as Arthur Levinson has resigned from Google’s Board of Directors. The former Genentech CEO had been sitting on the company’s board since 2004 and Apple’s board since 2000, but recent legal questions have forced some space between the two companies. With Levinson’s departure from Google’s board, Apple and Google must now move forward with their future plans—sans shared board members, and possibly, shared collaboration.

Google and Apple have historically had a friendly relationship, having started out in very different industries but with the same overall goal in mind (to create technology that makes people’s lives easier and generally avoid coming off as evil). Over the years, however, they have slowly become both partners and competitors. Google continues to partner with Apple in creating and maintaining Google Maps for the iPhone, for example, but the advent of Android has pitted the two companies against each other in the mobile space. That’s in addition to the availability of Safari and Chrome as competing Web browsers, too, and the upcoming Chrome OS.

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A new sleeper virus that could allow hackers to steal financial and personal information has now spread to more than eight million computers in what industry analysts say is one of the most serious infections they have ever seen.

Experts say a single infected laptop could expose an entire network to the worm.

The Downadup or Conficker worm exploits a bug in Microsoft Windows to infect mainly corporate networks, where — although it has yet to cause any harm — it potentially exposes infected PCs to hijack.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at anti-virus firm F-Secure, says while the purpose of the worm is unclear, its unique “phone home” design, linking back to its point of origin, means it can receive further orders to wreak havoc.

He said his company had reverse-engineered its program, which they suspected of originating in Ukraine, and is using the call-back mechanism to monitor an exponential infection rate, despite Microsoft‘s issuing of a patch to fix the bug.

“On Tuesday there were 2.5 million, on Wednesday 3.5 million and today [Friday], eight million,” he told CNN. “It’s getting worse, not better.”

Hypponen explained to CNN the dangers that Downadup poses, who is most at risk and what can be done to stop its spread.

How serious is it?

It is the most serious large scale worm outbreak we have seen in recent years because of how widespread it is, but it is not very serious in terms of what it does. So far it doesn’t try to steal personal information or credit card details.

Who is affected?

We have large infections in Europe, the United States and in Asia. It is a Windows worm and almost all the cases are corporate networks. There are very few reports of independent home computers affected.

What does it do?

It is a complicated worm most likely engineered by a group of people who have spent time making it very complicated to analyze and remove. The real reason why they have created it is hard to say right now, but we do know how it replicates.

How does it spread?

The worm does not spread over email or the Web. However if an infected laptop is connected to your corporate network, it will immediately scan the network looking for machines to infect. These will be machines that have not installed a patch from Microsoft known as MS08-067. The worm will also scan company networks trying to guess your password, trying hundreds and hundreds of common words. If it gets in, even if you are not at your machine, it will infect and begin spreading to other servers. A third method of spreading is via USB data sticks.

How can I prevent it infecting my machine?

The best way is to get the patch and install it company-wide. The second way is password security. Use long, difficult passwords — particularly for administrators who cannot afford to be locked out of the machines they will have to fix.

What can I do if it has already infected?

Machines can be disinfected. The problem is for companies with thousands of infected machines, which can become re-infected from just one computer even as they are being cleared.

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On sunday 10-11-09 we will be offering free computer diagnostics via remote assistance. This offer is good for only this sunday. If you are having any computer related issues this would be a great time to have it looked at for free. We are based in Traverse City, Michigan and we offer a wide range of computer repair services.

If you would like a free diagnostic please visit our website below go to the contacts page. You can call or email us with your information. If you have an instant messaging client (Aim, Yahoo, MSN, or Google Talk) you may add us to your messenger and speak to a remote assistance technician.

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