One of the big complaints customers have had about Call of duty since Modern Warfare 3 came out last year is that the dedicated servers have gone away. If you don’t understand what this means, this is how it works. Previous COD games, before Modern Warfare 3, supported “listen servers.” These servers were located all over the world and allowed players to host games which offered minimal lag time to all participants. Without centralized servers, this isn’t possible since some players will always have more lag than others, which gives players without lag an unfair advantage.

Other games still use “listen servers.” Battlefield 3 and Counter-Strike Global Offensive are good examples. When Modern Warfare 3 came out, however, Activision decided to save money by switching to peer-to-peer networking, with games hosted on players’ own connections. This does mean that the hosts of the games have less lag than people who are connecting from other computers, especially those located far away. Naturally this is not the most popular solution since it disrupts game play and makes it difficult for players to correctly gauge their true skill level.

A lot of gamers wonder whether it’s something which is likely to change, but given that Activision saves money this way and nothing has been said about it, it seems pretty unlikely. This is about the time for important news on the multiplayer mode to emerge, however, so keep your eyes peeled for news. The longer we don’t hear anything about a server change, the more likely it is we’re stuck with the peer-to-peer networks. What do you think about dedicated servers vs. the peer-to-peer option? Share your thoughts or rants at our forums.