needless to say, since it isn't from an admin or official source i would take this with a grain of salt. but it would be nice if that meant competitive servers could be setup without losing the ranked status. i guess we'll have to wait and see.Big news for all you people out there that have wanted to disable certain perks and mod things like helos. The 1.5 patch for COD4 has enabled persistant ranking to be available to mod folders. This means that players can now enjoy custom maps in the fs_game path, and still be able to rank up like they did for the so-called "ranked" servers.
You dont even need a mod to run custom maps now. Just create an fs_game folder, put in your config files, and boot up the server, and off you go. No mod necessary.
What does this imply for the future of mods?
Well, you can mod the hell out of the game, like disable UAV, Choppers, and Air Strikes, disable perks like Martydom and Last Stand and still rank up.
This means that modwarfare is no longer necessary to be used as a basis of a mod. The community wish for Create-a-Class to be available to modded servers, and for it to "save" your selections is now a reality.
This means you wont even have to have any mod.ff files. (so, if those files were causing you a headache, you might be relieved to hear this)
Looks like we the player are being listened to by the game creators!!
edit: the official update page does list the following as part of the update, which without too much research, i would guess does enable ranked status on modded servers:
Made mod scripts able to change stats
Allow developer_script for mulitiplayer modding