This. +1

Let's make a petition asking people to stop making petitions! We need to speak in a language that they'll understand.

You are making the same mistake a lot of people do. You are assuming mods are popular for the game.
Seriously, don't think of Half-Life or UT (the good ones) without mods. Think of Call of Duty without mods. Would anyone notice?
The Half-Life series and the Unreal Tournament series have been heavily supported by mods. So it makes sense that they get modding tools almost immediately. Most other games aren't. And Call of Duty is particularly modless (off the top of my head, I can name the various "pro mods" and that sniper mod). So why should Activision keep going out of their way to cater to the very small community of modders?
There is a lot of opportunity for "creativity" (because, you can never have enough Star Wars mods :p), but if nobody is exercising it, does anyone care?

I think you're missing my point. What I'm saying is it's not about the mods themselves or modding as a phenomena, but the general attitude towards the game. The suffering of modding is just a symptom of a greater disease.

Then please elaborate on your point. What is this "greater disease"? And how does removing modding from a series that has never really had a lot of modding exacerbate the condition?

As much as I hated both games, half life 1 and 2 were undeniably major games in no small part due to modding. Whether or not it was an intentional move on the part of valve to foster a community through the relative ease of modding, it's certainly the result they got and both games had fairly large boosts to sales thanks to the counterstrike mod and HL2 had it again with Portal.
This seems directly opposed to the model that COD & MOH have used of "thanks for the money, here's the game, see you when we release the sequel"

You know perfectly well what he means. Stop escalating.

Well, it sort of makes sense ,at least for CoD.
CoD has always been about insane amounts of polish, heavily scripted set pieces, and very pleasing visuals. All three of which tend to kill modding.
Heavy amounts of polish means that anything other than a masterpiece is largely going to get panned. Not a huge issue, but it does act as a huge deterrent to Little Billy and the like. People become a lot less tolerant of clunky animation, poor sounds, etc.
Heavily scripted set pieces involve a lot of scripting (duh :p) which adds an additional level of difficulty to the already difficult task of designing level geometry. HL had some scripting, but it was usually just "When Gordon or Adrian or Barney walk past this door, have an explosion on the wall" as opposed to the monstrocities that were even the simple car ride in the first CoD.
Pleasing visuals are a problem that most games have these days. Little Billy's first model is going to look like ass next to a ninety million poly nose. We pretend we don't care about graphics, but the contrast between those two gets pretty high.
Those three combine to really alienate the amateur modder. So we mostly just have people who want to make portfolios so they can get jobs.
It is also worth noting that STALKER is probably so heavily moded because it lacks all but the visuals :p
So I think we can all agree that, for the most part, single player modding is out the window :p. There are some GREAT works (Minerva), but not many.
As for multiplayer modding: The problem there is a general lack of creativity. Everyone just makes either a Battlefield or Counterstrike clone. And, quite frankly, that makes sense. People want those. And if you are trying to make a portfolio to get a job, it helps to show that you can make popular stuff. But when the core game already has those gametypes...
As for the more creative stuff like Air Buccaneers and Battlegrounds (or whatever the American Revolutionary War mod for HL1/2 was called): Those cater to small niches. Niches who tend to take pride in running around discussions of games to brag about how they don't BUY said games since they get a rise out of feeling like they are unique and special.

You know me so well. Except that I really don't know what he means. If you understand his point, please summarize it. From reading what he is saying, I am not actually sure what he means, and I would prefer not to be accused of putting words in somebody's mouth. Evidently, people seem to think I am a font of absolute facts. So I have to be careful, lest my fanclub come and scream at me for misinterpreting somebody's words. :p
So please stop trolling. if you would like to join the discussion, just join. Nobody will hold it against you. But if your only desire is to go around and pick fights, please don't. Thanks.

Firstly, the causal chain goes like this: condition -> symptom. Removing modding in and by it self will in no way instigate the "greater disease", by which I mean the attitude that games can be nothing more than a service that you lend from a company for a brief experience of instant gratification, all the while giving them both money and personal details (take for example how everything online wants you to "connect to facebook" so they can use your person as an ad space.) What I'm talking about is the extreme materialism and greed that has infected, but is by no means limited to, gaming. My original complaint was how MW2 was just another example of this, and in this example the "no dedicated servers" is a central point I think, and it makes modding among other things suffer.
I think you are focusing way to much on the modding part of what I said, it's not like I'm going "OMGWTFBBQ think of all the awesome mods it could have had!!!!111" :)

This is precisely what I'm talking about.

Fact is. All the good Multiplayer FPS games we need have already been made.
I have pretty much stopped buying them because there hasen't been any innovation for years.
If they actually suceed in making FPS games pay by month, just make a community based on the plethora of old games that can still be scaled up and modded for new hardware for years to come.
Still I agree with your feelings, having grown up with the great games of idsoft and tons of hours of modding myself.

Yes, but the dedicated server have always been available to anyone, "my computer's a server now!" and server hosting companies for them to install. I read one time that some companies, dont know 100% but it maybe was Activision, said the reason for removing dedicated servers was to kill the business of these server hosting companies taking their dedicater servers, putting them on their own computers and charging people for them. But that's a stupid reason, since like it's been mentioned hosting servers is very expensive, and these server rental companies extend the lifespan of the game by supporting it with servers. These greedy publishers just want that piece of the pie.

Okay, but again...if the fees being charged here aren't really any different than what a group or clan would be charged by any other server provider...so what? The only real issue here is a lack of mod ability, and the CoD series has never exactly been known for its mods.

I believe the lack of mod ability is from mostly two reasons. First, why have good map makers make these amazing SP and MP mappacks when we can charge for them instead? They pay for them on consoles, they'll pay for them on the PC. And next, it's because I'd say FPS games aren't expected to have editors and mod capabilities nowadays. This isn't 1997.

I am not sure if I would go anywhere near that far. But if your argument is that capitalists are too damned greedy, you might want to go take a look at how economics "work" :p
I am just still not sure why you even feel that the modding aspect is worth mentioning in the first place. It wasn't ever a huge part of CoD, so removing it will, if anything, allow resources to be focused on the parts people DO care about (like making sure that every server is usable).
What Alias said, I actually fully agree with.CoD takes a very different approach to things. And that is something we should be thankful for. It is "creativity" and the like.
And honestly, I think the CoDs are perfect examples of how episodic games SHOULD be done. Every year or so, we get a new one. The multiplayer evolves slightly, but is still familiar. And, much like a good TV show, we get another SP campaign. It still follows the same basic formula (nobody wants to see Jack O'Neal spend a day touching himself in front of a computer, we want him to go shoot at aliens), but it provides another fun adventure. If there aren't mods, so be it. We have other games for that.

1. I am not a socialist (even though I live in Sweden)
2. Forget about the modding thing already
3. If you're actually just trying to troll me, then good job on that :p