To whom it may concern,

Hi from the PC community and we wanna let you know we only want what is best for our beloved CoD Franchise. First off, I'll explain why having the only means of "Ranked" gameplay over IWNet is bad for MW3 on this platform. I'll start with the cons because this is on all our minds.

Cons- Absolutely no admins. Hackers have no immediate punishment for their actions and players are defenseless against them. The matchmaking can work at the game's busiest times, but it is mediocre at best. Often times players will be thrown into the same match they just left because of a hacker, griefer, or bad connection. I have no control on how long games are last and are stuck playing games better adapted for the slower style of play necessary for consoles. The connection will be mediocre at best. (Although gameservers.com isn't much of an upgrade ) I will be thrown into modded lobbies that will alter my classes, rank, may break my game, and even get me banned from play online.

Pros-  I don't have to take a day playing the game finding a server or two that I like and actually add them to favorites. I can party up with my friends and use teamwork to beat up on random players who may be at a connection disadvantage and have no communication to stroke my ego. I can party up with friends and just have fun. I can do whatever I want to do, be abusive, be racist, and be annoying with out any retribution from any other player. I can play the game anyway I want without being truely bothered by anything. I can check leadersboards in which player 1 has 1000000000000000000000000 in less than 20 minutes played. I can keep track of my games yet another way with a watered-down version of CoD Elite.

Dedicated Servers might not be a perfect system in themselves either though. Therefore I will list the pro's and con's of both as well.

Cons- The integrity of this enviroment is much harder to control due to players having access to the server's files (why not have Elite but still have levels?) Admins can abuse their rights to set up servers with rules or map rotations that some players might not like. Admins can also abuse their powers to kick innocent players. There's no player hosting so the one player who was the host might not have as much fun now.

Pros- Complete customization and satisfaction of the Multiplayer Experience. Many players will finally leave CoD4 to play on MW3 as it will definately go down in history as the best FPS in 4 years with truely CoD4-like servers. The competitive community will pick this up and run with it. This will bring more players to the game when the teams brag about how they won their ladder/tourney/league on older games. People will run clanservers. Players will buy the game to play with their clan. No lag is out of the control of the players. Hackers/abusers can an will be taken care of.

This is the Hardline. No IWNet isn't completely useless. I'm glad people who want to take part in things like partys and matchmaking can. But when all you have is IWNet, you get the situation that I just described above. MW3 is gonna release in ~2 weeks. It won't support ranked dedicated servers on launch. IW already has the frame work. They've just disabled the interface. Sure they'll probably never release Elite ranked servers. But at least ranked as far as we can enjoy all the same features on IWNet. Please support dedicated servers in this compacity at least. If you don't want to play on dedicated servers because you think the integrity of the game is going to be affected then stay on IWNet. We'll keep off  the Elite radar as to not mess with your leaderboards or global stats. We just want to be able to enjoy the game like anyone else. but just in the capacity that would actually make this game a success because lets be frank, If MW3 released unrestricted servers where we can still have a level up progression off the Elite radar, This game would be a best seller on PC. That is the only thing thats holding it back.

I know that IW/Activision wanna stick to IWNet because they want to promote Elite. In fact IMO thats the whole reason why MW2 had P2P servers, not because they wanted to sell us DLC. They had bigger plans, they wanted to sell Elite. It is my belief that Elite didn't just come out of nowhere. They've had it in the works for several years. Before MW2 even. Black Ops was integrated with elite from day one on the consoles. Every game log is sent to the Elite servers, they did a great job hiding it as "playercard stats" but  it was just part two of their experiment. And Elite will be great on console. They'll eat it up.

But this is my advice to IW and Activision. Please give up Elite for PC, sure you can still include the stat tracking on IWNet. but don't force it on everyone. Unlock Dedicated servers, give us our CoD4/WaW controls. If you do that you will more than make up for a few lost Elite Premium Subscriptions. You guys will get a huge of sales once people hear how close it is to CoD4. MW3 will smash BF3 in sales on PC if you fully unlock dedicated servers. There hasn't been many great FPS's on PC for a few years. BF3 and RO2 were close but their followings can't take over CoD. They are totally different games and styles. Unlocking the game to its full potential can only help sales on PC and sales overall. The framework is there. Just a couple weeks to perfect the GUI and you can release patch 1.337 and save this franchise on PC.

Elite will be great on consoles. It caters exactly to their needs. But, Sorry, Activision. You were too late on PC. We've already had all those features on PC for a long while now. We've been tracking our own stats with services like UltraStats, XLRStats, B3, Gametracker, and BTM. We've been recording our games with /record since day 1. We've had chats and social networks within Xfire, Steam, even our own sites and forums for years. We've had our own competitve leagues and tournements for years. And we give out real prizes to PC gamers. We've learned ourselves how to improve by practice, by coaching by clanmates and friends, and by even watching youtube. The compete, connect, improve model has existed on the PC market for years and you're getting into it too late. You'll take Elite far on Xbox and Playstation 3. You showed up too late for PC though. Trying to force this now upon your playerbase is only going to hurt you sales now and for the future.

Please, realize who your market is. Don't get rid of Elite PC and don't get rid of IWNet entirely. But don't force it upon us who don't need it. Sell us what we came to CoD for. I'm going to wrap this up with an analogy that I think sums this up pretty well. Activision is a bike shop and we as PC gamers are looking to buy a bike. Sell us a bike, we didn't come to the bike shop looking for a brand new pickup truck with all the bells and whistles. Sure everyonce in awhile there will be someone who will buy the pickup from you but the majority of the people who go to a bike shop want to buy a bike, they already have a car to drive. If you're a bike shop and you're trying to sell a truck you're not gonna be very successful. If you're a dev studio and you're trying to sell us benefits that we're already getting from different source, you're not gonna be very succesful.

Now I'm not a business expert, but I am a salesman by occupation. But please take my argument into consideration. Activision can look at the success they will have with CoD and Elite and be proud of themselves. They earned it. But please don't try pushing something into a market that it doesn't belong in. Look at all your profits that you made on the main console release and take pride in making a game for the PC community that everyone will like. One that has IWNet, One that has Dedicated Servers. One that has lobbies, parties, and a version of Elite that works for who you're selling it too. But make a game also that has all the features for us who Elite doesn't cater too, rank up, modtools, custom maps, config and server tweaks. You will restore the respect from all the fans who've felt betrayed. You'll place CoD back on top of the PC gaming scene. And you just might be surprised to find that you'll walk home with a little bigger Christmas Bonus this year.

Signed,

A hopeful and supportive PC community

I hope at least some of you could bear with me with this one. If everone could try to get our message conveyed to IW we can hopefully see this change implemented. If I offended any of you with the opening statement I'm sorry, I was trying to set the context. Hopefully IW will see this. I'll see if I can get someone's attention in IW to read this. Thanks guys. please offer feed back before i send this to IW/Activision too. (OBV the first paragraph will be left out in the version sent to IW)

If you're still reading all the way down here then thanks guys. look forward to seeing you on the battlefield.

Message was edited by: [EW]TheO'ReilyFactor