Praise the Gaben, for he is fat. His money endures forever.

1. Open Notepad.exe.
   
2. Paste this into it:
   
   mm_dedicated_force_servers 144.76.39.198:28000,144.76.39.198:28010,144.76.39.198:28020,144.76.39.198:28030,144.76.39.198:28040,78.46.106.151:27135,78.46.106.151:27150,109.70.148.12:27029,130.180.54.162:27030,130.180.54.162:27031,93.23.129.168:27012,93.23.129.168:27013,83.99.233.96:27500,217.79.191.52:30050,185.107.96.3:27015,86.4.137.99:27016,80.192.99.118:27016,91.121.146.56:27019,91.121.146.56:27020 echo "Favourite servers search enabled"
3. Save in Steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\cfg as e.g. lobby.cfg (has to be effin' config file = .cfg).
   
4. When you will happen to be a lobby leader, open up console and enter:
   
   exec lobby.cfg
   Doing this in proper way (like you can do something wrong at any time…) will result in „Favourite servers search enabled” sentence appearing in console.
   
5. Make usual setup, start the game.
   
6. Win forever gratitude of your friends.

Then look for ~ key (it's near 1 and under Esc) and press it. If not working, read this thread.

- Comma delimited list of ip:port of servers used to search for dedicated servers instead of searching for public servers

In other words, mm_dedicated_servers_force is a command that lets you force the game to look only for servers that are specified inside this command rather than looking for the one that is empty and is the closest to your location.

This command automatically resets each time L4D is closed, so you gotta remember about reentering it each time you start the game and are about to set up your own game. That's why it's better to have a .cfg file for use, cause pasting down to console such a long command can be a bit frustrating.

Also, some say this command isn't working in L4D2, but I can't really confirm that.

Hope this isn't some kind of advertisement.


Those marked with ✔ are inside command specified in 1st section. Why not just putting all of them? Simple: there is signs limit for one command, somewhere around 280. This forces you to sort out list of servers and specify, which you want to use more often than others.

If you need to have more servers than usual, you can use built-in server browser (openserverbrowser in console) and add servers to favorites, but it often can't properly ping many of servers, and as a result doesn't allow you to add them there even if they are fully working and you are able to join them. More complicated way is to just make a list of them somewhere outside of game (like I did here). Requires some preparation if somehow all of servers are full, but still can work if you need to find other server for the game.