Fanboys have been wringing their hands over the recent trend of video games to evolve away from dedicated servers. With the high profile release of Modern Warfare 2 there have been calls for boycott. Then id software announced that its next game probably won’t have them either. Just today I picked up a copy of PC Gamer in which a writer whines that dedicated servers are, well, warm and friendly and multiplayer gaming without them thrusts the poor fella on the mercy of us lowly unwashed. Cry more, snob.

I kid. But it gets to the crux of why I won’t miss dedicated servers. I stopped playing Quake Zero after an incident I experienced when I joined a public server (owned by id software). A clan of players, I remember they all had a Texas handle, warned me to leave. Of course, that’s ridiculous. It was a public server that the game told me was the best match for my skills. I was clearly in the minority, so they ganged up and voted me off the server. With that they effectively turned a public beach in their private little sandbox.

Because somebody usually pays for them, server owners feel they have privileges not granted to the general public. Battlefield 2 demonstrated this well. Even though DICE took steps to make sure everyone had the same experience, it is not unusual to find server admins who modify server settings to aid stat padding or even enforcing non-sense rules like “don’t capture a flag, we need EU army hours” with kickbans.

No dedicated servers means nobody owns the server. There is no server admin who feels entitled to tweak and cheat the scoring system. There are no teenage control freaks getting jollies from kicking players. There is no elitist attitude about being deemed worthy of playing with the good ol’ boys. Good riddance dedicated servers! Without them multiplayer gaming is fairer and less frustrating.

photo credit: 1Happysnapper