Although gamers using UK ISP Virgin Media definitely aren’t alone in experiencing problems with lag playing Call of Duty Black Ops (We can testify to that ourselves!), the number of complaints by Virgin subscribers has led to many gamers complaining for months, and tech site The Register investigating.
Virgin told The Reg that they’re aware some customers are experiencing issues, and also posted to the main complaints thread on the Virgin Media forum, saying that they can’t find issues with their service, and their attempts to contact the Xbox Live team have met a ‘dead end’, so they’re also trying to contact developers Treyarch.
But it appears Virgin Media customers have also been experiencing problems with various other games, and particularly with Xbox Live. Multiple posters also claim that switching ISPS solved many of their issues, and if you’re an existing subscriber or want to see what other customers have posted, check out the thread.
It’s not the only problem Black Ops has had with lag – back in February, the release of First Strike seemed to cause major issues, and PS3 owners have felt strongly enough about their connectivity problems to report Activision to the Office of Fair Trading.
While we doubt that we’ll ever find out the full story behind any specific connection issues, particularly when they relate to ISPS throttling traffic, and the increased likelihood of this also becoming more prevalent as an anti-piracy measure, we can only hope that the amount of problems Black Ops has had in particular might mean Activision work to improve things for Modern Warfare 3 by either solving issues at their end, or working with the bigger ISPs in the most relevant locations.
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