Can someone explain what the BIG DEAL was with the dedicated servers? I mean, I know the basics: They didn't put them in, a bunch of nerds got butthurt and boycotted the game, it turns out that most of them bought it anyway. I was just on multiplayer and it worked just fine.
To put it simply, if you have no dedicated servers than someone who is currently playing the game has to be hosting the game. If that person leaves, the game is either ended right there or has to be handed over to someone else to host, in this case it's usually the latter, resulting in different pings for everyone and possibly lag as the game is handed over to someone else.
Most PC games have dedicated servers, which basically means the server is being hosted on a machine that doesn't have to have someone playing the game on it (it can, but it doesn't have to). The machine is "dedicated" to hosting a game for other players to join and continues to host the game regardless of which players join or leave.
Because of this dedicated servers can be placed in more ideal locations and be given better connections. Also they're better for multiplayer games with mods and tweaks because the game in question will stay on that machine.
If you've been playing first person shooters on PC recently then chances are you've been playing most of your multiplayer games on dedicated servers and have run into some with mods at some point.
However, if you've been playing mostly on consoles or are a more casual PC gamer then it won't affect you nearly as much since you probably won't know what you were missing to begin with.
(the more cynical side of me would sum up the last few years of gaming as "we can take stuff away and get away with it because most of the players are new and won't know what they are missing".)
