Of course I've had issues with that in TF2. I'm talking about dedicated servers and communities in general, and the effect those sorts of insular conditions have on casual gamers. What's with the "singling out" stuff? You constantly treat my posts as though they're attacks, rather than bits of a discussion.
Because, to me, your posts are phrased in an attacking manner. Which is the unfortunate side effect of having a discussion such as this online. In RL, I suspect we'd have a conversation like this over a drink, and have a laugh about it. Use more smilies

As to the whole communities issue, well it's obviously not a problem on p2p, which virtually precludes forming the kind of close communities that dedicated servers allow. Obviously, you can add people you happen to play with regularly to your friends list, but by it's very nature, p2p will prevent the forming of the kind of close communities DS allow for. Which is a pity really, since the social aspect of the gaming is quite an important one for me personally. I like to get to know the people I frag

Steam is also more of a platform than a simple application, and I don't want shit running on top of it. I also don't have a problem with Steam's (or TF2's, or CoD4's) server browser, to be honest.

But I don't use Skype (ew).
The reason I prefer Xfire over steam is that it's chat functionality, and friend functionality is still simpler than Steam. Also, having the two apps running simultaneously allows me to reach more people, as I have a huge number of contacts on my xfire, many of which don't use steam or can't find me on it.

As to the CoD4 server browser, right up until the 1.6 patch, it was thoroughly broken. Even after the 1.7 patch, server detection was still rather flaky, and I still lost my favourite server list more times than I care to think about. Which precipitated the move to a 3rd party app.

Skype is awesome Lets me keep in contact with my family in Aus, UK and USA for cheap cheap...

There you go being persecuted again. Seriously, man, it's getting old fast. Please drop it, or I'm going to start ignoring your posts. And I don't mean that in a bitchy way, I'm just getting really tired of it. This is a discussion, not a war.
Whoooaaaaa, slow down there betty!

I promise you I wasn't feeling persecuted when I typed that. Disadvantage of typing on the inet again... The intention of that paragraph was to give context to people who aren't familiar with who I am (and you, I guess), with regards to my argument. My argument would be a lot less valid if it came from the perspective of a 1337 player, no?

2. I spend about three to four months of the year in the UK. Have you ever looked at a European server browser? It's huge. It's intimidating. And it is hard to get a vanilla game, because a good lot of those servers are running mods. Back to your XFire thing then, and you'll have to agree that nobody should have to install a third party application just to browse games, right? It's a pain in the arse. Of course, it's idealistic to think this, but again, perhaps you're not considering the average player who doesn't even know XFire exists. And yes, I realise this includes people who have absolutely no idea what NAT is. See, it's a discussion, not a war.
Actually I have. Spent two weeks with family in the UK, along with three days at Dreamhack Winter 2008. I never had a problem finding a vanilla game, since the servers are almost always labelled properly. If I clicked on one that started downloading a mod, a quick disconnect saved me from the bother.

As to the whole "no one should have to install a 3rd party app" - well sure I agree with that. But that will only happen when the company producing the game makes a system that functions absolutely flawlessly and more simply than something like xfire. I understand what you're saying about the average joe not knowing anything about xfire. But I also understand what happens when a user gets pissed off with a rubbish system (such as the MW1 browser). They go looking for a better system. And the internet makes that a lot easier, especially since everyone knows what google is :P

Heh, then stop being cheap and invest in better firewall software. :P
Hey! I was using a hardware based firewall (IPcop) when I first got MW2. Then I closed that down (sigh) to try get MW2 to work better. Worked fine without the hardware firewall, so I installed Nod32 Enterprise software firewall on the machines on the network. Very solid piece of software, yet I still had issues getting MW2 to play nicely. Hence me now just leaving the ports closed and letting other people host :P

Or perhaps devs will come up with a better solution for p2p play. Who knows. Fact is, a lot of people aren't running with compromised security because they're using decent firewalls.

Also, and I know you're going to hate this but - consoles, anyone? While I agree that PC gaming isn't exactly dying, anyone would have to be delusional not to see that gaming is moving over to console in a huge way. These security risks simply aren't an issue over there - and, be reasonable here, let's agree that this makes development and support that much simpler. Why wouldn't devs want that?
If they want the p2p system to succeed, they're going to have to, because quite frankly this IWNet system is bullshit. Almost everyone I've asked about it, who has used it on PC, agrees that its not nice at all. Atleast in SA. Maybe it actually works overseas...

Had a console (360) and ditched it, simply because it wasn't flexible enough for the amount of money I sunk into it. If I'm spending thousands on a piece of gaming hardware, I want it to be able to do more than simply play a game, watch dvds and have a friends list. Oh yeah, and that controller annoyed the hell out of me for FPS games >.<

Just the one in three years. And it cost me less (well, nothing) to replace while I've recently spent nearly R2500 on PC upgrades. I don't even want to know what maintaining a decent PC has cost me over the last decade or so.

But that's not why you made the comment, was it? Console hate is so last week.
You're exceptionally fortunate then. I have friends who have been through 6 in three years. They look after them as best they can, but they still break. Oh, and hating on consoles? Nope. Hating on the 360's lack of reliability.

*edit*

Last reply for a while. Off to Moz tomorrow...