You know you can still play with your friends right unless they go to the stimulus play lists, its not like your black listed form playing with them since you don't have the maps.
Halo actually had much more restrictions in Matcmaking when one of your party members didn't have a map pack. As for buying Stimulus, I'm waiting for the price to go down.
i still stand by the fact GOW2 had the best deal with map packs. 19 maps and a bit of campaign for 1600ms points plus achievements
I just want to state the Activision is the one setting prices and the one making the large amounts of money, not IW.
The biggest turn off for people on this map pack is the price for what you get, 2/5 maps being remakes. Crash and Overgrown have been played to death, but that doesn't mean that you can't play them ever again. Look at the Legendary map pack. Blackout and Avalanche were remakes/re-imaginations of old Halo maps, but Legendary was probably the best Halo map pack to date. Crash and Overgrown play nicely with MW2, the switch from CoD4 turned out just as one could expect. The only flaws with them you may encounter, are flaws with MW2 itself and not the maps. For people who love MW2, Search and Destroy, and actually good maps to play on for once, Stimulus is a good deal. Don't play MW2 anymore? Can't stand IW negligence of the stuff that actually need patches? Don't like the pricing? Are you happy with the maps on the disc? Those should be good indications of not buying this from the beginning.
Also, forgot to mention that Microsoft is offering free avatar content for those who bought the map pack until Sunday. Some may think that that's stupid, and that they wouldn't buy it regardless of the free offer, but at least they're trying to justify a price, and for those who bought the Stimulus pack, get something regardless if they wanted it or not.