When a manager is intimidated by his/her direct reports, they often focus on trivial and insignificant issues. It allows them to boost their egos while exerting their dominance over you without actually making the wrong decision on things that are actually important. And, unless you work for the military, there is a very heavy line drawn between what a manager can and can't tell you to do if it isn't already in your employee handbook. A vegetarian boss couldn't make all his/her employees eat only vegetables at work, the same can be applied to music. Particularly in this case where you've got a tradition of acceptance and so long as it doesn't interfere with anyone's work. You could also throw a passive strike and have everyone call in sick during crunch/deadline time. But that would require a solidarity that most IT folks don't share (unfortunately, as an IT union would rule the world, literally, in about 24 hours).

... I'll save $60. I'll have more MMO time. I'll be able to examine other FPS options, hopefully from IW competitors. Bad news: The dedicated servers (2xDell 2950s) I was prepping to serve this game + mods + maps in our data center just got flushed. Infinity Ward (like SOE) gets a big ban stamp from the gaming community. And apparently they've disabled forum registration on their site just to keep the mad folks off of it. But maybe I'm a singular case. If I was the IW CEO, everybody between me and the person that came up with this idea would be fired. Business should have zero tolerance for stupidity, and apparently they've got it in spades.

Odd that after the hugely popular WoW, the company would choose to offer very nearly the same product. I'm sure there are some game differences, but to the casual gamer that picks up a WAR box for $50 and a WoW box for $20, they will look the same except for the price. Why would you intentional choose to travel in the footsteps of another company instead of offering a completely different universe?