Why is dedicated servers important to us?
Source
Latency
Dedicated servers are usually always provided by big game hosting companies, with massive bandwidth DSL connections. They have direct access to the internet backbone providing upload speeds in excess of 100 MBits/s. Now lets scale that back to the average user, lowest tier access to the internet with low priority connection, upload speed generally around 0.5-1.0 MBits/s. I don't know about you but that is not at all good when compared to what game server hosts provide, a 99% reduction in bandwidth. I realise this won't result in a 100 times worse connection, but it will definitly increase ping, if you are in the same state or country you will likely get a ping of 100-250 milliseconds, different state or country? 250-1000 milliseconds seems about right. This would result in awful hit registration and lag. This alone would make competitive play extremely difficult and public play very unpleasant.
Host drop out
The host of the game leaves for whatever reason, and so bang goes the game. I know IW will likely put in some feature that makes another player in the game a host, but this will most likely be not very good and may not work all the time, and in the best scenario would result in a delay in play. This is unacceptable, it disrupts and destroys gameplay and would destroy competitive play. Unless you have a poor server, the game will always be on with no disruptions.
Performance
This links in with Latency and host drop out. Big server companies pay lots of money for specialist server and networking equipment, and their sole purpose is to provide a server for you. The server they give you has one purpose alone, to host games, not host games and play them at the same time and whatever else goes on in the average PC. This will affect gameplay, if the host cannot handle hosting the game either due to poor hardware and/or poor connection, the whole game will lag (don't believe me? go play a company of heroes game against a 1 bar performance person), also RTS experience has shown that you don't even need a dodgy host to lag the game, all you need is someone with a PC that has a poor spec and it ruins the game for everyone.
No community
How can there be a community if there is no central point to access a game. It has been revealed there will be no server browser, and as there are no servers there will be no IP addresses to give out. So how can you advertise a game/match to the general public to play? Like on a clan website or whatever. And once the host is gone, the game ends, so you can't invite people to the same match again or keep it running. Whereas with a dedicated server you can advertise the IP, and people can come and go as they please, and you can create a community of gamers around that server. You cannot have regulars to a match if it ends when everyone leaves.
Lack of control
You most definitly won't be able to customise a match like you can with a dedicated server, so you will lose a lot of control. You won't be able to ban people, kicking you may be able to but it won't be the same either way. You also won't be able to get the gameplay exactly how you like it as there will be no config files, no more server cvars, no more mods, no more maps, basically no third party stuff at all. Competitive gameplay can forget it, as there most likely won't be enough configuration options available, and competition mods like promod just won't be able to exist.
No Mods, maps, hence no modding community
You won't be able to use third party maps or mods as there are no dedicated servers to put them onto. No competitive mods, no competitive gaming. Can't install mods? Then there will be no point in making them anymore so a whole group of people just die out.
No scrims/competitive matches
As there is no server browser, or IP address to give out, how do you advertise your server in general to strangers who are not on your friends list? You can't, it will be very awkward to add somebody to your friends list so you can invite them to a server if they a stranger, this means getting scrims/matchs over IRC will become impossible: not everyone will want to advertise their ingame name or have people adding them as friends just to play a match, there are no server IPs so advertising for a match will require some creative thinking. Basically it will become such a big farse to get a scrim it will become impossible.
Destruction of server ecosystem
This is more of a business and financial point, which can make it even more important. No dedicated servers = No server hosting companies. There are lots of games still out there that use dedicated servers, but big releases bring in lots of money for these companies, so they will lose a lot of business and hence money, this will affect everybody, not just CoD players. If server companies go bust because of this every PC gamer will suffer, CoD fan or not. Also dedicated servers are the foundation of many gaming communities, without servers, they become pointless. Even more money will be lost because of this, as there is no central way of joining up in a match without a server IP for strangers/general public (remember matches are not 24/7 like game servers), these communities will just disappear.
VAC is bad - Cheating
I know punkbuster is extremely annoying, but it is simply better at catching cheaters than VAC. Just look at the Counter Strike games for an example, it is extremely easy to get away with cheating when using VAC. Cheating destroys the gaming experience for everyone and makes the game not worth playing.
Matchmaking
As there is no server browser, you can no longer choose which match to play on. The game chooses for you, whether you like the match it connects you to or not is tough, as you cannot browse directly for a game you like. Sure there will most likely be filters, but the experience is diminished, and it will be a farse waiting for the matchmaker to find, and then connect you to a game. Also mentioned in the fateful interview, is that you will be paired up with people of the same rank. Rank is not an indicator of skill, any n00b can rank up to level 55 without any skill at all. You won't be able to choose who you play with/against, and you won't be able to judge their skill on their rank.
No more big games
You won't be able to have big games without a dedicated server because of the Latency and performance issues mentioned above. The average person's connection just won't be able to handle it, even small games will suffer without the bandwidth of a dedicated server company.
No competitive gaming
Competitive gaming has been mentioned throughout this posting so for additional reasons you should have read this article better. As there is no competitive gaming there will be no more clans or gaming communities as we know it, simply because competitive gaming relies on dedicated servers in almost every aspect. Without a dedicated server you will not be able to customise the match as greatly as you would with a server, IW will most likely not create a competitive gaming mode (why would they? If they did they would'nt have removed dedicated servers in the first place), no server browser or server IPs would make it very hard for strangers to get into the match, there will be no spectating or CoDTV so there will be limited coverage of major gaming events, cheating would be massive anyway as VAC is a poor anti-cheat solution so why bother playing competitivly? As there can be no server mods for obvious reasons, gameplay cannot be changed in the way that promod can change it, for the better, another reduction of control.
Symptom of a larger problem
All in all, the removal of dedicated servers is the symptom of a much larger problem: lack of support for the PC platform. By removing dedicated servers IW is making the PC experience more like the console experience is nearly everyway. If I wanted a console experience I would have brought a console, not a gaming PC. There is no reason for the PC gaming platform to exist if there are no differences between the console version of the game and the PC version, sure you have the keyboard and mouse, but that is all you have that is unique and special about the PC now. MW2 is basically just a straight console port, with most of the effort going into the console version of the game (Proof: the map packs came out on console before PC, so more effort is going into console), this results in a lesser experience for PC users, and also more issues later on, like bugs (they still havn't fixed the bugs in CoD4), and as we are a forgotton platform we will not recieve a patch until much later than the consoles receive one. The lack of support for the PC is growing, and the actions by IW may affect every new PC game devoloped by Activision, and even the industry in general. This trend needs to be reversed fast, or the day's of playing games on the PC may be numbered.
