Call of Duty: Black Ops was released on Tuesday, but much to the dismay of PC gamers, it was so bug ridden and badly affected by lag, that many were calling the game “broken.”
Despite the problems, there was a general sentiment among PC gamers that Treyarch would eventually fix the game, and fix it they have.
A sub-10 MB patch was released last night, and since the install, the vast majority of the problems seem to have been resolved. It is a bit early to get a broader consensus, but from my isolated experience I noticed more consistent frame rates, and an almost complete elimination of the lag that was spoiling everyone’s fun before the patch.
Gamers on various local servers expressed elation at the fact that for the first time last night, the game was actually truly playable. Silky smooth frame rates and solid, low latency was the order of the evening, and there were many full local servers even at 1AM as gamers crammed in to get their CODBOPS fix.
The server browser seems to have been fixed, and for the first time I was instantly able to see a long list of local servers. Theatre mode was also accessible, although this was previously a problem that affected select individuals only, so more feedback is needed to determine anything conclusively.
There were however still a number of players with 300ms+ latency. I questioned a few, and roughly half confirmed that they were using Telkom ADSL broadband accounts, while others were on other wireless solutions. This further confirms our early test results, which indicate that due to peering issues, Telkom ADSL accounts are not suitable for playing Black Ops.
Treyarch seems to have done an excellent job of fixing Black Ops, and it almost feels like a completely different game to that which I played earlier this week. One has to wonder why they didn’t save themselves and gamers the pain of enduring a messy release and perform adequate quality control and server testing before launch, but in the end, they had the problem resolved within three days, which is admirable.
There were still occasional reminders of the lag that was so prevalent at launch, and we would hope that the developer can fine tune the server configuration even further over the coming days.
Update
Treyarch has posted patch notes detailing exactly what has been fixed:
11/10
gameservers.com has bumped sv_maxrate to 25000 across all servers to reduce lag.
gameservers.com continues to improve official server distribution.
11/11
Friends fix for join in progress and Friends tab in server browser.
Performance improvement for dual and quad core.
Improved connectivity with Black Ops Rcon tool.
Discuss Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer in the forums
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