Call of Duty 4 and 5 - Tactical Servers: What Are Tactical Servers in CoD

In the Call of Duty game series, there are many different match types available for you to play. At any given time, there are countless servers hosting these different type matches, and these servers often have their own rules. Most of the server rules are basic stuff like ‘no cheating’ while some are a little more strict and tell people to turn off the ‘martyrdom’ or ‘last stand’ perk. However, there are a few servers out there that take this strictness to an extreme, and they call themselves tactical servers.

I’ve spent enough time in a couple of different tactical servers to see what they are really about, and in my opinion it is egotistical players who like to boss others around. The ‘regulars’ of the servers are constantly, and by constantly I mean every 10-20 seconds, reminding someone of the rules. Either that or somebody tattles on the other. The biggest complainers are, of course, the regular users of the server. There are many gaming ‘clans’ that get their own servers and one of them has a pretty easily found one that I played in a few times.

Of the tactical servers I have been on, they had the following common rules:

No running or jumping. Everbody is supposed to stay in crouch mode the whole time. The only time you are allowed to run is if you are under fire. The problem is that once you come under fire, you’re pretty much dead. The jumping rule is to prevent bunny hopping, which is when you jump up and down while being fired upon, but I’ve personally witnessed several people do this, then later claim they hit a wrong key.

No blind nades. I got into an argument one night over this one. I killed one of the regulars with a nade, and he promptly reminded me of this rule. Throwing a blind nade is when you just toss a grenade into a building or over a wall and hope to catch somebody with it – you’re blindly throwing it. In my case, I saw a guy step out and shoot, then hide in a stairwell, so I threw the grenade in the stairwell and he accused me of blind nading. I explained that I just saw him there and we went back and forth before I gave up. The problem is that I’ve seen the same argument happen numerous times with other players.

Sights must be up when firing. In other words, no shooting from the hip. Sometimes when you come around a corner, the split second it takes for you to put your sights up is all it takes for the enemy to gun you down. Walking around with them up also blocks a lot of your field of view. If the server has a Kill Cam turned on, the person you shot will often tattle if you fired from the hip.

Here’s the thing – you can play the game any way you want. If you want to play this game in a way that it wasn’t really designed for, that is fine. The problem I have with the bullying tactics used on these tactical servers is that all of the ones I found were public servers. That means anybody can join them. I think that if these guys want to run a gaming server with their own rules, then they ought to make it private so people don’t stumble in there and get chewed out for running or shooting without their sights up, or whatever other kind of silly rule that they like to impose on other players.

By all means, find a tactical server and give it a shot – you might actually like the gameplay. However, if you wind up being bossed around by other players who don’t follow their own rules, you might as well leave. Personally, I will be avoiding the tactical servers, as well as the occasional hypocrisy therein, altogether.