I disagree.
MW2 works fine for me and I get great (low) ping almost constantly. MW2 is much better than MW although dedicated servers would have been good.
The game costs less than $50 now on amazon. Plus whoever claims that $15 for DLC is expensive obviously lives at home with their parents. You stuggle to get a couple of coffees for that in most capital cities these days. I have played MW2 for around 250 hours since it was released. I paid full price of $120 + 2 x DLC = $150. That is 60c per hour and falling. Give me a break. That is cheap.
In summary:
Servers are fine for me.
60c per hour and falling is cheaper than frogger on at a milk bar in the 80's.
The game graphically ownes MW
You are telling me you have NEVER been with a crap host?
You are telling me you would pay the much MUCH higher price so all games companies charge that, then it goes higher, and higher again?
I payed £25 for MW1 with FREE DLC. I have 715 hours play time on it, so that is 3.5p an hour. Compare that to the £45 that I payed for MW2 without any DLC and 110 hours play time, that is 41p per hour, and I can't be arsed to play it any more, so that will drop negligably. If I put the £22 DLC on top of that, it is 61p per hour. Still a hell of alot cheaper than a movie, but for a game, that is ridiculous price, it is cheaper to go play WoW.
on CoD4, my ping never goes below 50 because dedi servers always work. The only time it isn't like that, is if myself or another one of the clan admin is performing maintenance/changing settings, and that is 10 minutes at most, so not even 1 round, then if we really want, we can restart the round
For the graphics, they are slightly better, I agree with that, but that would never make me want to buy the game if I knew what I thought of it now. I wouldn't think it is worth getting over MW1 JUST for the graphics, because they aren't that greatly superior.
Also, and this doesn't take away from gameplay at all, I was just looking into it a few days ago and found it quite interesting and entertaining. Modern Warfare 2 is meant to be a "realistic" war game, however, if you look at the vehicles in it, several are either retired, or coming to the end of their service life.
Look at the Pave Low for instance, that retired in September 2008. Modern Warfare 2 is set in 2016, yet 8 years after retirement, the MH-53 is still going strong

and the Army itself, apart from a very few middle Eastern/Asian Armies, don't use AH-1 Cobras any more, but they are also in the game, unless when they mention the cobras, they are on about the SuperCobras, which USMC still use