Host Your Own CoD: Black Ops Dedicated Servers... if You Pay - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 14 September 2010 / 20,806 Views
When Treyarch ships Call of Duty: Black Ops on November 9, the world will rejoice. Well, most of it.
PCs have always been the place to play shooters. No amount of thumbstick sensitivity adjustment will ever compare to the refined control of a mouse and keyboard, and that's coming from a hardcore console gamer. It's just the way it is. However, when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 released last year without dedicated server support on PCs, gamers practically rioted. The 360 became the console of choice for playing the latest and greatest FPS, and the PS3 put in a strong showing itself (best-selling PS3 game of all time, ya know). It felt almost... blasphemous.
When Treyarch announced that Black Ops would feature dedicated servers, people danced. I'm sure you've seen the YouTube video of the Russian guy in the club (fake, but still hilarious). If you want to host your own dedicated server, however... it'll cost you.
Activision and Treyarch announced that dedicated servers will rent exclusively through GameServers.com. According to the server pre-order page, it'll cost you $14.95/month for a ranked server with up to 18 players, or $0.99/person per month for an unranked server of up to 24 people.
Treyarch Community Manager Josh Olin assures gamers, however, "Nobody will have to rent a dedicated server through GameServers in order to play the game. But for anybody who wants to run their own server, it will be run from GameServers.com."
This will enable server renters a much greater degree of control over their games. Olin continued, "If you rent a server, you will still have the ability to Kick, Ban, and Configure it the way you see fit. Of course Ranked servers will have some set configurations that can't be messed with, but you will still have the power to administrate your servers as a customer of GameServers."
Does this matter to PC gamers? You can still play for free, as long as you're not the one in charge... but that seems like a lot of money to pay just to be in control of a few settings. We'll see how this affects sales of the PC version of Black Ops when the game drops on November 9.
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So they'll have millions of players...with only a few who will pay for a server. Sounds like a clogged toilet to me.
..... what the hell is this...
does this company even have servers in afganistan? you know cause i'm sure a couple of GIs with laptops wouldn't mind playing on their own dedicated server without a 600 ping from a US based hosting company....
This is BS and a way for Activision to "defuse" the problem without giving any ground.
They better have a darn good selection of official dedicated servers...
As long as the play is otherwise free. I saw some articles that made it seem like paying to play was mandatory.
This coming from someone who doesn't even have a PC to run a recent CoD game. I just understand how others would feel.
