Infinity Ward Crushed my Hopes and Dreams

I once spoke of Modern Warfare like it was nectar from the gods. I would pronounce to any ears that would listen "This game is good" and converted many over to Infinity Ward's cause. I frequently cried out about how much IW must love their customers, to develop such a rich and polished product. My voice was heard by many, and these people became my followers, trusting me to lead them to the promised land.

I sampled the riches of IW's earlier titles. I slandered Call of Duty 3 as an abomination, and cursed it for its shift from all I'd known and loved. I even went back and tried Medal of Honour: Allied Assault and even though in reflection I know it didn't have the same feeling that the Call of Duty series had, I pronounced to my minions that it was so, and they drank my words as if they were life itself. I intoned to them "Infinity Ward love it's community, and they would never betray us."

Ah, the folly of our youth. With much enthusiasm I thrust myself as deeply as I could into the depths of hell that is multiplayer, emerging weeks later with far more facial hair and heavier body odour than I had previously. I looked upon my strangely dark bags under my eyes in the mirror, and decided that they were war wounds sustained in the quest to become a proven disciple of Infinity Ward's. "Thou Shalt achieve 10th prestige" they had intoned in my dreams, and all was good.

But I had been deceived.

In my search to grab onto anything that was as good and memorable as the Counter-Strike of my youth had been, I had blindly plunged myself into the belly of the beast. Its foul language had ensorcelled me to commit great atrocities in its name, defending it on forums often to the point of being expunged from them. It's gospel had been spread by my lips far and wide, and conversion had and continued to happen in droves. Then the gods from on high issued a question to which I knew the answer the moment I noticed I was disconnected.

"Do you want to apply this update now?"

Excitement entered my system, perhaps a new map pack had been pushed in, or they had fixed some of the ways to get outside of maps, and I quickly looked online "We have fixed multiplayer issues" spake the most prestiged of the community, able to spread the direct word from the lords that were Infinity Ward. I had regularly found myself in games that would drop, awarding no XP, and thought that this could only be the single greatest game update since CS 1.5...

Walls came crumbling down.

It was utter shit.

For some reason, instead of 'fixing' multiplayer, they had made it worse. All of a sudden I found myself constantly, continually in nothing but American games, unable to score anything like my usual scores due to the delay. I started to rely on my disciples to enter purely Australian games and to have the game play as it should. All was well for a time, until an American entered the game, wielding his [USA] tag high for all to see. We smiled, as we knew all to well how easy prey a laggy American was in our server. And then he gained host, and we knew that the apocalypse had come.

We spake on IW's forums, proclaiming loudly our issues for any that would listen. Every American Ever (seriously, that's his username) came out to defend the update, stating that if they had no issues, no one else must be having any either. I told my disciples that everything would be fine, it was just a dodgy update and IW would fix it in no time. But my cries, and the cries of thousands of other non Americans/Canadians fell on deaf ears.

After months of this my love affair with Infinity Ward had ended. In my spite I picked up a copy of the newly released World at War and played it, yeah, screw you Infinity Ward, I'm buying another Activision title. Surprise crept across my face however as I realised just what a good job Treyarch had done with developing a title that delivered an excellent, American free, lag free, multiplayer experience. I only played a week of World at War, but after what had happened with MW1, it was a relief.