Right now, one can easily find many articles and videos describing just how “outraged” fans are about losing aspects of the game that’ve become staples over the years. Features like HC Mode, leaderboards, stats, challenges and medals to name a few. The most recent of these games, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (the second one), and developer Infinity Ward are currently taking heat from fans for its current lack of a number of legacy features. What’s more stunning is that despite this, they’re all making more money than ever. Considering where all three of these series were just over one hardware generation ago, that’s stunning. Halo, Battlefield and Call of Duty, arguably the biggest multiplayer franchises in gaming with tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of staff on-hand to produce them, cannot manage a functional, feature-complete launch anymore. We now live in a world where the three of the biggest online FPS series have all, in less than a year, released titles that were all either missing basic legacy features, utterly broken at launch or some combination of the two. This may just be an older gamer’s ailment, but doesn’t this modern era of multiplayer gaming…kind of stink? Seriously, what on earth has happened to online multiplayer? It’s gone from a revolutionary innovation to an essential feature brimming with potential, to what it is now: a grindy, often-broken inclusion focused more on selling skins than on providing players with a fun experience.

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