Well, for Black Ops we still have no mod tools, no map making tools, have to start paying for DLC and now on top of it all, they announce Call of Duty Elite subscription service as the future of the franchise. We will now get to pay to subscribe to things we used to get for free. Yes it’s not out yet, but the mere mention of having to pay for anything additional through some kind of subscription based service just leaves a bad taste. Particularly when we are now getting less than we used to have and being asked to fork over our hard earned dollars just to try and keep it. It’s beginning to feel much like the cell phone industry that wants to charge a premium for 4G and then another one for tethering/hotspot and then begins fee structure service based on bandwidth usage, fees for going over, etc. It all reeks of corporate greed.
As a PC multiyplayer gamer it seems the era of having the gaming community create mods and maps, putting thousands of hours of their time and sweat into building such things that actually sustain the franchise they love, is coming to an end. In a way it makes me feel like an old man. “Back in my day we used to get mod tools right away and be able to configure our dedicated servers any way we wanted. We could adjust weapon damage, server speed, add black out screens when you died, change timer settings, player skins, etc. AND… we got to do all this uphill through the snow, both ways!!”
However, if instead we actually get value added via the subscription service where by server owners have the option to log in and edit any of a hundred different options on their server through a simple GUI. Where players have the option to log in and edit their individual players with personalized details they can take with them from server to server. You know, all the things the community has been slaving on themselves over the years, then you might actually have something there that the community would gladly subscribe to. Otherwise, it’s just demonstrates profit over the customer experience and becomes nothing more than an epic fail!
