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Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, The game for some held hope. There were whispers of “eSports” involvement, whispers of ESL being around to advise and it once again stirred up hope. The Call of Duty 4 community began to take notice and waiting with baited breath for more information.

We got the information, something everyone dreaded... Once again walking in the shoes of the previous titles harboring that same bitter disappointing feeling…

Can I rent a server?
No. We are providing a huge number of servers around the world at no extra charge – plenty for everyone to enjoy. And we will administer the servers.”


Will Black Ops have Matchmaking or Dedicated Servers?
Both! Call of Duty®: Black Ops II PC combines matchmaking with secure ranked dedicated servers. This means that you get into Public Matches or League Play via matchmaking lobbies. It is easy to party up and play with your friends. You can adjust your classes or scorestreaks between matches. It also means that every Public or League match is hosted on a dedicated server running in one of our high bandwidth datacenters around the globe.”

Well that small but hopeful previous glimmer we had has now been smeared by excrement with the additional pinch of a kick to the nuts…

Will there be mod tools?
No. As we continually improve and advance our in-house tools for our own content teams we are unable to provide consumer tools due to increased technical requirements, licensing restrictions, and technology dependencies.”
And there you have it, one swift way to soil any hope CoD:Bo2 had to be anything other than another lifeless FPS title.


I then started thinking, why don’t we adapt to what we are being presented with, are we now becoming the irrelevant part of FPS gaming, the archaic cavemen clinging onto long gone titles?

To try and further my thoughts and opinions to this I went to the Eurogamer Expo this weekend held within London at Earls Court, with Black Ops 2 being there on a plate for all the Xbox kids to lap up I had to see what all the fuss was about.

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There it is, it looked impressive, and there was a 2 hour queue to play just 20minuits of the game. There were staff everywhere, they had a shout caster on site for it…sitting on what is pictured above the “war room”.
The people adored this title, with the kill streaks sounding like another language to me I stood and spoke with afew of the “famous” youtube CoD:BO players…

http://www.youtube.com/user/xSinRG

They had hope, they were noticing the subtle yet pivotal changes within CoD:Bo2, the changes within the class system, the new shout caster overlay that provided just about every bit of information you would ever need.
It looked good too, the casting was great and exciting and the gameplay looked fun, The thing was it wasn’t S&D It was just abit of FFA and another point came to mind is search and destroy the right game mode for spectators, looking at the viewership towards Xbox CoD, the answer is no. They vary game types and it’s more exciting. The depth from S&D may be vastly superior but no one wants to watch the likes of Germaine sit and watch a pixel for 2mins. It’s not exciting, it’s not fun and its not impressive. Long gone are the days of d1ablo and duffer running rampage throughout a map. The game style of Search and Destroy is now long out dated.

Then I draw back to the bitter taste of the “No mod tools” left with me, but what if we don’t need it… I know it’s a long shot but the involvement of the right people within the eSports scene has to of done something right? What if the game was made with a competitive mode already integrated?


Who knows maybe I am putting faith in something that will never happen and we will all go back to our usual games but the question I pose to you, the reader… Should we be willing to adapt to these new FPS titles in whatever form we are fed them? Should we EVER have faith in these new titles to deliver anything truly with eSports in mind?




Bonus pic of the after hours from the Expo!
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