News Treyarch to charge for Black Ops dedicated servers

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/09/13/treyarch-to-charge-for-black-ops-dedicated/1

 

Good news really. At least it can be played team wise now.

 

Good news were when they announced the game has dedicated servers. This, however, is bad news. I don't really like the idea of playing on the servers on the other hemisphere and getting bad ping because of it.

 

So basically, people can run dedicated servers but only if they pay a third-party appointed by Treyarch a fee for the privilege. And that is an improvement how?

The only thing this improves is Treyarch's bottom-line by allowing them to make money from the hosting firm.

 

Not having a choice in who hosts the dedicated servers cannot be a good thing...

 

Okay basically this is the exact same thing as before, i.e. people rent servers from server hosting companies, except it's exclusive to one company now.

Which WOULD be fine and dandy but said company only has servers in the USA and a handfull of EU countries.

 

And what are the odds that a custom server (e.g. mods or maps) will cost more?

 

Tbh I don't see it as a huge deal - the vast majority of dedi's for other games are hosted by a 3rd party instead of someone's home purely because most home connections wouldn't be able to handle it (though FTTC might, you lucky *******s down the road who don't even know you're getting it ). The only issue is price - most servers are cheaper now and I doubt the next CoD game will be any more taxing to host than the last 3. Also, if they don't provide servers worldwide it would be a massive slice of failcake.

Let me be the first to say it: it was probably Activision who got them to do this.

But anyway, who cares? It's not as if anyone with any sense wants to play CoD anymore.

 

I don't have a problem with 3rd party hosting, in fact, like you said, it is better than trying to do it at home.

Where I have the problem is the stifling of competion in the game hosting arena, why can't people (e.g. clans) have a choice when it comes to who hosts their game servers? Like DragunovHUN inferred, this will limit the local hosting choice in a number of countries.

 

I see good and bad points to this. Good side is that you won't get people hosting it on home PC's making the servers unplayable.

Downside is that theres no competition price-wise, and possible problems with maps/modding (never used that company before so impossible to say)

but providing the facility for easily adding maps/mods is there, then tbh its not all that bad.

 

Assuming you get to have those at all. Did Treyarch say anything about mod support?

 

Unranked 18 man server costs more than a ranked 18 man server? :S

 

at least we have dedicated servers, no more lagging all the way around maps, no more "migrating hosts".

wish it's not single company exclusive though, from the title, i thought it's just going to be like BFBC2's "official hosts"

 

For those asking: We use Gameservers to host our TF2 server and they're alright. You get full FTP access(so mods are okay to use and config files are simple to tweak), free website hosting, and a simple enough interface to manage it all. The pricing isn't too bad compared to others, though I will say 66p/slot is slightly higher than most others. (the Ranked black-ops servers are cheaper though)
I will agree with others that it being locked to a single supplier is a bit iffy, but as I've said in my experience they're pretty good on prices and their customer service has been great.
All in all this is miles better than the situation with MW2 n IWnet, so there's not really too much to complain about compared to the situation we could be in.

 

Whereabouts are you located though? I assume not too far from where they have coverage.

 

I meant 66p is higher than most other games. Most others on Gameservers coming in at 53p/slot, though MoH is down to pre-order at 66p/slot too.

 

There was a report that they would allow modding: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/08/24/cod-black-ops-to-allow-modding/1...but no details of just what would be allowed.

Why do I get the feeling that any contract/T&C's with the chosen hosting company will be written by Treyarch?

What about patches/updates? What about clans who do not run the latest patch versions due to compatibilty with their mods (if allowed)?

The T&C's will be an interesting read.

 

I'm UK based, our server is in NYC though. If you're asking on ping I get 100-110ms, which is about on par with most servers I've used in the US. Most of our group are American hence the location of the server. I'm mostly the guy who deals with the 'business' side of things.
GS do have UK servers, dunno for black-ops, but we are the second biggest COD buyer so I doubt they'd skip on having servers for the UK.

 

Yeah they have UK servers, and i suppose their EU coverage is.. okay. German COD4 servers have been good to me with about 60 ping, but somehow i still miss the option for local ones. Also, Africa gets shafted.

 

WRONG! Check the website! I've done it myself and they have servers spread throughout U.S and EU.