On Friday, Gameservers announced that it would be launching Call of Duty: Black Ops servers in SA. Shortly after their announcement, local ISP MWEB announced that they will be the exclusive “server hosts” for Black Ops in SA.
As it turns out, it is not as simple as the announcement lead us to believe. While all Black Ops servers will be hosted on MWEB’s hardware and network, any ISP, or individual for that matter, is free to rent a ranked or private server from Gameservers, which will be hosted via MWEB.
iGame has already announced that it will be renting 4 Black Ops servers. Each server will have 18 spots, although this may be increased depending on whether local hardware can handle the load.
iGame Black Ops servers
Full Metal Jacket – Hardcore
Platoon – Hardcore
L-Z – Vanilla
Gunship – Vanilla
iGame plans to have the servers up and running on launch day, but this will be dependent on whether GameServers releases the server installation files on time.
iGame will not be able to guarantee the quality of service, or uptime of the servers. This is because they have no access to the hardware that the servers are running on. iGame will be in charge of the administration and management of the servers.
The servers will be branded with iGame’s logos, and there will be no sign of the underlying MWEB affiliation.
It is an unusual setup, and one which is not void of criticism. Firstly, it could be argued that MWEB is missing out on a massive opportunity to make all Black Ops servers in SA exclusively hosted by themselves, with all the relevant branding. This would have guaranteed a massive amount of PR for the ISP. It would also clear up the confusion resulting from having other ISP hosted servers being hosted on the MWEB network.
It also puts the ISPs who rent from MWEB in a difficult position, as the quality of service will be dependent on MWEB’s network. Despite this, the “hosting” ISP’s will surely take the flack from users when MWEB experiences network problems.
iGame has confirmed that because the servers will be hosted on the MWEB network, users with ISP’s who peer with MWEB will have a better gameplay experience than those who don’t. At this point, Telkom, MTN and Vodacom do not peer with MWEB, and in theory, their customers should experience very high latencies on the MWEB servers.
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