It is far better to have distributed services. The Big 4 don't bother with it because they arn't very advanced with anything at all. Don't forget 2 of the big networks don't even bother with Services at all which is just plain anacronistic, though I acknowledge that people go there because they like IRC in a more traditional sense and that is fine.
Look at the home of CR as a prime example. If there's ever a netsplit there's no longer a need to reidentify to your name when the split servers resynch, which alone reduces the load on Services by so much it's not worth the bother explaining further. Also less chance of channel takeovers, infact if the channel is run properly and passwords are hard to guess, chances are it's next to impossible. Responses from Services are also faster.
My network uses CR and I for one am looking forward to the upgrade to V2.X.
