I remember played Sacred on its version of "closed" servers and they were laggy and overpopulated at times.

If HL would allow free play on "open" multiplayer games and a smaller fee for "closed" I would go for it as long as the monthly price were say…. < 5 bucks a month. It takes a lot of resources to keep a closed server system running.

They had better have FREE open though since that doesn't require any hardware support from the devs. If not they are money grubbing sons a bitches who won't get a purchase from me.