I played an hour or so without the fixer and had a decent time.
It's not as bad as everyone made it out to be.
The match-making system works fine, and the party and invite system are pretty cool when you want to play with friends.
If you think about it, MW1 had a broken server browser that never worked right. "13000 servers found, displaying a random batch of 33 of those servers for no reason."
It brought back the Quake days when my friends and I would connect to servers by passing around IP addresses instead of saying "I'm on so-and-so server; come join!"
Instead, the conversation would go as:
A: "I'm on so-and-so server; come play!"
B: "I don't see it. What's the name again?"
A: "so-and-so"
B: "No, it's not there. What's the IP?"
A: "Hang on, let me kill this person and get to a safe spot."
*delay*
A: "Ok"
*drop console, find IP*
A: "The IP is 123.12.23.45"
B: "What was that number again?"
A: "45"
B: "It didn't work."
A: "Oh, I see, it has a different port, use 12345"
B: "Ok, that worked, let's get it on!"
Now, with match-making:
*click invite*
*select friends*
*click Find game*
*wait for other slots to fill up*
*play*
Aside from that... yeah, I miss lean, but the more I play the more I get used to it. It's alright because no one else has lean, either, so there's no advantage/disadvantage. Other than that, MP does feel a bit choppy/stutterty/laggy at times. Just running forward or moving around often doesn't feel as smooth as it did in MW1, but it's not so bad that you can't play. It's probably something you'll get used to later, or have the problem go away with a different set of people.
I do like the awards, accolades, challenges, weapons, attachments, etc.
talk about fail comparison..
in MW1... server list comes up, you filter by ping, gamemode etc... etc... can save favourites and so fourth...
What is wrong with that?
Why couldn't they just add a "quick match" button for noobs...?
Instead of "match making" and dropping dedicated servers....
Also with steam integration... they could have made it possible to simply go "join game" on your steam friends list rather than introduce IW.net