another respected game developer drops dedicated servers?

BlitzKrieg

http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/2009/11/dedicated-servers-and-rage-news-you-probably-dont-want-to-hear.html

id Software might want to brace for some rage over “Rage”.Rage

John Carmack, co-founder and technical wizard of the developer, says the company doesn’t plan to support dedicated servers for the multiplayer component of “Rage,” id’s upcoming new action game.

“It’s not cast in stone yet, but at this point no, we don’t think we will have dedicated servers,” he says.

Infinity Ward made the same decision for “Modern Warfare 2” and has been facing a massive backlash among its fans. The inevitable online petition has gathered over 183,000 signatures and even the developer has acknowledged the backlash.

“Modern Warfare 2” will use a matchmaking setup powered by IWNET for online play. It’s too early to say what Rage will use, but Carmack indicated he believed the servers are something of a remnant of the early days of PC gaming.

That said, he realizes the affinity many PC gamers have for them – and is glad “Rage” won’t be leading the charge away from them.

“The great thing is we won’t have to be a pioneer on that,” he says. “We’ll see how it works out for everyone else.”

Rage, meanwhile, appears to be on track for a 2010 release. But you might want to find a comfortable chair as you wait for the next “Doom” game.

“It’s looking realistic,” says Carmack. “We are on a crunch right now to do presentations for console first party manufacturers, so things are cooking along well for ‘Rage’. ‘Doom 4’ is obviously a bit further out.”

hmm has the fears of thousands of pc gamers started to manifest themselves?

Kiith

John Carmack wrote:

That said, he realizes the affinity many PC gamers have for them – and is glad “Rage” won’t be leading the charge away from them.

So it's something he's wanted to get rid of for a while, but didnt want to be hated by the community as the person who did it first? Great attidute :rolleyes:

I just dont understand why they would remove the dedicated servers in the first place. It can't be that hard to implement them. Is it going to be a case of the only games that support dedicated servers are the games that are aimed at the competitive/eSports communities?

bizmark

ID hasn't been relevant or respected since final doom ;/

besides they can all go shoot them selfs in the foot and let smaller companys come in and produce proper muiltyplayer game's as the demand for dedicated servers wont go away just because activision and john cormack say so in fact its funny how EA has jumped on this bandwagon specifically going on about battlefields dedicated server's as a selling point who would of thought they would be the champion of the pc player

gizmo

There's already a thread about this here.

Can't say I agree with them not being relevant since Final Doom tbh. iD Tech 4 still looked bloody great, even if was initially limited to closed environments plus graphical features aside, it also had a larger significance with it signaling the end of the use of software rendering in commercial engines.

Anyway, as was said in the other thread, Rage isn't being designed as a big online game so there's no need for people to get their panties in a twist over the lack of dedicated servers.

tuxy

bizmark wrote: »

ID hasn't been relevant or respected since final doom ;/

Yeah, the whole quake series was a major flop. No one played quake and it was never included in major tournaments.

Naikon

Carmack is still alot more relevant than the likes of Gabe Newell tbh.
The man is a coding genius. He is driven more by market forces these
days, but I would still take his word over most other game devs.

Of course I am bias, since he has always been pretty good to the
open source community by releasing old engines under the gpl.

He has still contributed much to gaming if you take OSS out of
the mix. If he decides to take dedicated servers away from Quake 5
then yes, I would be worried. Rage isn't just another pc port to consoles.

Naikon

bizmark wrote: »

ID hasn't been relevant or respected since final doom ;/

The Quake series is practically the hallmark of id's efforts.
Quake 3: Arena is one of those games that will still be played
20 years from now.

Minimalistic design focussing on pure gameplay mechanics will
always trump any old shiny crap such as Crysis for longetivity.

Good thing the Quake engines are under the GPL, because
updates to the main codebases can bring lasting appeal.

Stercus Accidit

Congratulations to all the people who signed the boycott MW2 petition, and then went out and bought the game anyway. A game which is nigh on identical to the previous one.

Well done, your apathy and gullibility for marketing has skyrocketed that game to phenomenal success, and any developer who doesn't drop dedicated servers now with this in mind is a fool.

Gummy Panda

Rage is a co-op game if i remember right, so dedicated servers aren't essential.

I heard Blizzard have said they are monitoring how MW2 works out, to inspire battle.net for SC2. How does wc3 work now? Does it use p2p or create an instance on the server for a match?

Jazzy

battle.net is... funny. i cant host a game but friends of mine can. no idea how it works

Overheal

battle.net is old as sin. Id be unimpressed if they hadnt upgraded the service in 10 years :pac:

So theyre removing dedi support but not lowering the price of their game which in the past i now presume included continue support/cost prop for said dedicated servers?

Hercule

Rage is a co-op game if i remember right, so dedicated servers aren't essential.

this ^

CO-OP games dont need dedicated servers - Rage is primarily a single player game anyway.

Nonetheless this is an ill-timed announcement but is otherwise a total non-issue

norrie rugger

tuxy wrote: »

Yeah, the whole quake series was a major flop. No one played quake and it was never included in major tournaments.

and it helped spawn Boards.ie, no?

TheDoc

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

Congratulations to all the people who signed the boycott MW2 petition, and then went out and bought the game anyway. A game which is nigh on identical to the previous one.

Well done, your apathy and gullibility for marketing has skyrocketed that game to phenomenal success, and any developer who doesn't drop dedicated servers now with this in mind is a fool.

I bought it cause i just didnt care about dedicated servers, its a 360 game for me, so dedicated servers are not really important

I can understand pc gamers frustration, but i dont think it should be blanketed on all of us who bought the game, its not us being gullable.

I bought it knowing well about the non dedicated servers, and couldnt care less.

TheDoc

Jazzy wrote: »

battle.net is... funny. i cant host a game but friends of mine can. no idea how it works

You are running into problems related to your firewall or internet setup. You might be running a wireless setup?

I'll talk to you on vent bout it if you like, being on battlenet for years, I fixed mine but it was a pain, and in some circumstances there is no work around. Usually the issue is

Firewall
Wirless network setup.

Your solution is to port forward, which you can find on portfowarding.com(i think thats the site)