Modern Warfare 3 PC to feature LAN support

LAN support and dedicated servers? Now we’re getting somewhere! Only thing I ask for now is modding support.

Why not put it in the console versions too, then? Or maybe it is in there. Either way, seems putting stuff like this in PC games is less about people wanting the features, and more about publishers throwing the rabid fanboys a bone to keep them quiet for a bit.

BOYCOTT MODERN WARFARE 3!!!

wait…

what?

BOYCOTT BATTLEFIELD 3 FOR NOT HAVING LAN!!!

@2:

The consoles have had LAN support for years.

@2 If you think that PC gamers don’t want this feature, you have very, very little understanding of the PC gaming scene.

@5 Want and need are two different things.

As long as they launch a lan-version for the pro-gaming scene, they lose nothing.

I never said PC gamers dont want the feature, i said that its more about adding features to keep the vocal minority quiet than it is about giving features the majority honestly want and need.

MW2 to my understanding lacked lan & dedicated servers, but i dont think it had much of an impact on its sales.

But the LAN gaming community isn’t a “vocal minority”. It’s a huge segment of the PC gaming populace, and a big face for the scene itself.

“MW2 to my understanding lacked lan & dedicated servers, but i dont think it had much of an impact on its sales.”

That’s because most of the people buying the Call of Duty games aren’t serious, core gamers. They’re casual gamers who might pick up maybe one game a year. And a huge segment of the people buying Call of Duty are console gamers, not PC gamers.

@8 What a load of nonsense

Call of Duty is the biggest shooter on the PC since Counter-Strike. There’s nothing that even comes close.

Spinning tales to make yourself feel better about it, is apparently something that a lot of people need to do, but what a load of crap.

What about the pro gamers? I’d say they’re about as core as they come, if you believe in this elusive “core gamer”, and they’ve played all of them.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

And Modern Warfare 2, with all its *whaa* unfair killstreaks and stupid matchmaker */whaa* is STILL the most played CoD on PC.

Team Fortress 2 only broke 20.000 when it went F2P.

@9 While Counter-Strike + Source has stayed high and mighty ever since launch XD

@10 Obviously. But the same can be said for Modern Warfare 2.

Look at Blops. It’s got dedicated servers, it’s got added recoil on the weapons, and it’s got incredibly boring killstreaks and perks.

Basically all the things that the “PC community” were whining about… Treyarch conceded to almost every complaint, and their game has been left in the dirt (relatively speaking, because it’s still quite big) in favor of Modern Warfare 2.

Activision says that Blops has a 30% greater community across the platforms, which means that PS3 and 360 players must be playing it a lot more than Modern Warfare 2, effectively making PC gamers the odd man out.

People say one thing, but they actually mean another.

I’m not kidding myself that CoD is the new Counter-Strike, but that still doesn’t change the fact that it’s the most played shooter on the PC since.

@9 By core, I don’t mean “hardcore”. I simply mean people who play gaming as a consistent hobby, as opposed to people who just play a match or two of Call of Duty / Gears of War / Halo when they’re bored.

32,000 concurrent players is not that much, especially for a market as large as the PC. And just look at Counter-Strike, still leading the pack after all these years…

Now, ask a Counter-Strike fan their opinion of LAN support…

I never said it wasn’t popular. I said it was vastly more popular as a console shooter than a PC one.

@12 “Not that much” = “Vastly more than everybody else”.

If BC2′s (in my opinion the closest competitor) stats are to be believed, they’re at right around 13k concurrent users. Granted, BC2 is 1,5 years old, but that still makes MW2 closer to 2, and it has twice the concurrent user count.

You’re fantasizing about a group of people that you don’t know, don’t care to know, and never could know, even if you wanted to. You’re smart enough to realize that that speaks for itself. It’s hardly great science.

Most games sell more on consoles than they do on the PC though, that’s not really a standard for anything. Activision doubled their profits on the PC last fiscal year, and that’s not counting their MMO revenue. I have a hunch that a fair part of that was down to Call of Duty.

#12 I wonder why you didn’t include BF in that list. Do you know how many people play CS for an hour or two per month?

Yes, lets hear about these wild and fanciful ‘figures’ based on nothing other than your biased opinion, Michael.

@15 Go log onto Black Ops right now and tell me how many concurrent people are playing the game.

Then match up that figure to the ones in the link DSB provided.

(I love how I’m being criticised even a thread where I’m actually defending the decisions of the Modern Warfare 3 dev team… hahaha!)

“If BC2′s (in my opinion the closest competitor) stats are to be believed, they’re at right around 13k concurrent users. Granted, BC2 is 1,5 years old, but that still makes MW2 closer to 2, and it has twice the concurrent user count.”

Only twice as much? For some reason I had always thought/assumed it would have been more than that.

@16 You don’t honestly believe that yourself do you?

Attending a LAN-party gives you intimate knowledge into a userbase of more than 20 million people? Probably closer to 30?

Let’s be serious. I’m totally willing to accept the fact that you strongly dislike the game. There’s no reason why anyone would like the same one, but there’s every metaphysical reason why someone wouldn’t have intimate knowledge of a group of 20-30 million people.

@17 Yup. It’s pretty interesting actually. I’ve been looking at a lot of numbers ever since I realized that people have a stick up their ass for those games, and while Bad Company 2 actually dropped shortly after launch (roughly around the time I stopped playing myself, after unlocking everything) it’s actually gotten a lot bigger over the last year.

Close to doubling, actually. However I have no idea how they collect those stats. Same thing goes for Steam, but since they collect it the same way for all the titles, it should be a fair yardstick.

@18 When I’ve been following this industry for 20+ years? I think I have a fair understanding of the market, yes.

“Let’s be serious. I’m totally willing to accept the fact that you strongly dislike the game.”

I dislike the franchise. I liked some of the past games, until the whole franchise basically stagnated completely.

You… do realise I’m defending the developer’s decision here, right?

@19 I’m not argueing your opinion, I’m argueing your knowledge of the userbase. The stats obviously don’t fit, and in my opinion, the common sense doesn’t either.

It doesn’t matter if you have 5 doctorates in anthropology, and you’ve been doing in-depth study for 10 years, you still will not have a complete picture of a group of 20-30 million people.

I’ve been playing videogames since I was 5 years old, and had to learn how to work a DOS so I could play Retaliator on my dads old IBM 386, but that STILL doesn’t make me capable of mindreading, or determining with any kind of precision what the makeup of a group of 20-30 million people is, or even might be.

Since most europeans don’t talk on mic, I have no way of knowing from playing the game either. I could start doing polls, but that would make me feel sort of silly. To me they’re people playing games online, not James, aged 13, or John, aged 65. I have no way of divining that sort of thing, so I don’t.

The notion that it’s all kids or all people who don’t care about games is completely baseless, and given that the average age of gamers is 35 according to some studies, also somewhat unlikely. Especially when you’re basing it on nothing but peoples entirely random experiences, and the fact that it sells a whole lot. Obviously Counter-Strike has sold more, so should we assume that they are even younger kids, who care even less about gaming, behaving even worse?

It’s just mindnumbingly stupid

@16:

Gotta go shopping…

Will try and do it when I get back if no-one else can while I’m away…

I love playing LAN games myself, but on a game like this or BF3 I don’t see the point, as I prefer playing big games in large-scale fps’. When you have 3 or 4 players in one game of COD or BF it’s not as fun.

Diablo 3 or other strategy style games with smaller multiplayer numbers should definitely have LAN support though.

about console , Just like MW2 we can level up and unlock emblem and titles ?

@20 you learned a DOS? Are you retarded? I learned DOS, too, at about 5 and its not an accomplishment. Oh wow. You learned “a DOS”, you must know everything there is to know about video games in 2011.

@24 Actually, I was making the exact opposite point. Getting to that would require reading beyond the comma where you apparently stopped, but I’ll be sure to add pictures next time, so you have a chance of getting it too!

Also, it didn’t say I learned a DOS. It said I learned how to work a DOS, implying that I learnt it just well enough to access and play games. Huge difference, but probably less so when you’re a huge moron.

There are currently 228,302 players online on 360 according to Black Ops.

@26

Ya it tends to hit about 700-800k at the weekends, if I remember correctly.

On a single console. Which’s insane.

Crazy shit. Could any of you check Modern Warfare 2? I wanna see where it is in comparison.

I had a feeling someone was gonna say that…

Give me 5 mins.

MW2 is 54,568.

Edit:

Actually, it says that there are 98,730 total players online, but 54,568 are in the playlists.

The others may be on the SP or Spec Ops…

I played 500+ hours on MW2 that game was awesome the MP was great, SP sucked.

BLOPS played prob 70hours, realised it was wank and stopped playing.

Adding or removing lan doesn’t bother me I don’t go to pro gaming events, I just like to play with my friends on Steam now and again.

CS/S will be the Lan gaming event for decades from now i’m sure.

Also anyone who slags TF2 off hasn’t played more tha 20hours on the game, because it is a seriously fun/addictive game.

“There are currently 228,302 players online on 360 according to Black Ops.”

That says it all, really.

And lots not forget that PC gamers are not all glued to Steam either. Especially if they’re enjoying their own set-up LAN sessions or private networks.

I haven’t played Lan games since college when I used to play UT, BF1942 LOL

#32, That hardly says anything at all. Quite the opposite, I’d say you’re trying too hard. Going back to your previous comments here, Gears figures are close to BF and Halo hardly peaks at 150k either. Lan gaming is vital to anyone who would like to enjoy a quality competitive match. Let’s not forget gaming cafes..

Besides I can see very distinctive flaws in your arguments, BF is no CS.

@34 Uuuuh… I’m applauding the addition of LAN support in this game, you realise?

And nowhere did I even mention Battlefield, so I’m not sure why you’re mentioning it either.

#35 I fully realize you’re doing that, ultimately though you’re making a jab at certain type of online games.

@36 And what games would those be, exactly?

MoC, seriously going by your comment number 12, you ‘re clearly trying to disregard those by suggesting that in this case Lan gaming is of no value to their player base.

I think it’s obvious that more people play FPS’s on console than on PC these days (or on Steam, at least).

That’s not the issue that I had.

I was just interested in how someone could justify this claim:
“That’s because most of the people buying the Call of Duty games aren’t serious, core gamers. They’re casual gamers who might pick up maybe one game a year.” (We’ll have to assume that these ‘one game a year casuals’ are also the “basement dwellers” who allegedly make up “most” of the CoD user base.)
without offering any proof.

Where is the data to support this claim?

The problem with the numbers from Black Ops and MW2 described above is that they aren’t consistent with the numbers mentioned by Activision.

Even if it doesn’t have the slightest bit to do with the PC argument, that’s still an interesting inconsistency.

The PS3 would have to have a serious crowd of MW2 players to balance that one out.

The percentage given by Activision was 30% more unique active users for Black Ops, than MW2. They’re obviously not coming from the PC, where Black Ops is behind, so the notion that MW2 only has 20-something percent of the current users of Black Ops on the 360 has me beat.