Players to Enact Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Blackout Day on April 20th to Protest

**Abdou23** · 03-30-2012

A movement is beginning to gain some small momentum in the Call of Duty community. That is MW3 Blackout (#MW3BlackOut and @MW3BlackOut on Twitter), a movement to darken the servers of Modern Warfare 3 by refusing to play the game on April 20th, 2012.
Some community members feel that it is the only way to get Activision and Infinity Ward to sit up and take notice of their grievances with what they perceive as an incomplete game and a non-caring developer and publisher.
Will it work? It’s hard to say, but if there is a large single day drop in online play, it could be enough for someone to notice. But it could take far more than that for action to be taken on the part of the companies.
Simply put, players bought into the Activision hype knowing full well that the game would probably have issues, as the previous titles have. Many of the previous Call of Duty titles have been met with similar frustration and yet, millions of gamers, almost zombie-like, shelled out their hard-earned cash for yet another iteration of the game, and it’s broken, and now they’re angry about it. To really show Activision that displeasure from the previous games, they should have not purchased in the first place.
However, there does seem to be a good deal of merit for the displeasure with Infinity Ward. In the official Modern Warfare 3 forums there is a question that was posted on December 2nd, 2011 that has yet to receive an answer:

When can we expect the patch for the lag compensation? I shouldn’t be penalized for having a fast Internet connection.

There’s another from even earlier that is still not answered completely, however, one of the Call of Duty Elite, the online service and DLC subscription did reply with:

Lag Compensation: This is something that is being adjusted by the developers in increments. It’s definitely something they are looking into and working on. However, these adjustments take time to make and implement.

Lag compensation attempts to slow down the game for those who have a faster connection speed and better data throughput so that they are on the same footing as those with a lower data connection. Many players complain that they pay for higher speed broadband specifically to be able to play Modern Warfare 3 better. It does seem that being able to pay more for a faster connection does create an uneven playing field in the game. However the Lag compensation system seems to not be an ideal solution because many seem to think that it is negatively impacting their game performance and enjoyment level. Effectively, the game is penalizing those with faster speed connections.
Perhaps what Infinity Ward should have done was made matchmaking more based on ping times and broadband speeds than anything else. They could do a quick speed test to determine the bandwidth available to the player each time they connect to the servers and then group players for auto-matchmaking that be using ranges of upload/download speeds and ping times to servers.

Here’s a video created by the organizers.

More Here

I stopped playing long time ago because of the lag.Anyway there is always boycotting the next Call of Duty title.to give a stronger appropriate message.

**Jeevesraf** · 03-30-2012

I must admit the lag compensation is frustrating, unless its everyone else having lag applied to them of course! You can normally tell when the games applying lag to you, from your first couple of deaths, then its just a case of banging out of that game. Which then creates another problem. Not an ideal solution, to a problem that I really dont remember from COD4.

**Dave-The-Rave** · 03-30-2012

Who cares?..and I wouldn't boycott the next COD game because it is Treyarch. If anything you should be boycotting IW's next one in 2013.

**Nitey** · 03-30-2012

Too bad the people that actually end up boycotting it will be about 5% of CoD players, lol

**Abdou23** · 03-30-2012

Originally Posted by Dave-The-Rave

Who cares?..and I wouldn't boycott the next COD game because it is Treyarch. If anything you should be boycotting IW's next one in 2013.

Actually a lot of complains come from Activision's policies,it's not just IW whor are ruining the game for a lot of people.

Originally Posted by Nitey

Too bad the people that actually end up boycotting it will be about 5% of CoD players, lol

So true,people will never learn.

**keefy** · 03-30-2012

Lag comp is in other game too. TF2 HL2DM, CS:S for example.

lag is more dependant on distance than download speed, the downlaod speed required for COD is at maximum 25KB/sec and te upload is alot less than that.

**-Kwesnoth-** · 03-30-2012

I'll get in on this.

But as already stated very little will participate. I'd say at most 15% of player will participate in the blackout.

**LfCpS3** · 03-30-2012

Protest?

Don't buy the damn game. They have your money, they are laughing.

**jake the ssnake** · 03-30-2012

Originally Posted by LfCpS3

Protest?

Don't buy the damn game. They have your money, they are laughing.

This, that and the 5% participation thing. Black ops had the same thing and very few people talked about it, so I'm not surprised to see it again.

**keefy** · 03-30-2012

Well PC BF3 server admins promised to take their server offline for a full 24 hours a month or so ago and a day later a huge list of patch notes was released along with other information about what was going on or maybe it was just coincidence?