DEEJAYKEG

Interesting thread, this! If the prices are to drop after Christmas, that'd offset the 2.5% increase in VAT (sales tax). I shall have to wait for the anniversary of this machine before any upgrade here, however...

The Python - it delivers headshots from a seated position after someone has felled you! Ain't Second Chance useful?!

Oh hell, there goes my ratio... Welcome to the clan, my friend! Now stop killing me and have a laugh! You're an idiot, now!

KillingTime Hi All What are they called in server list? Im on the west coast and can't locat any XI servers on Black Ops out here. And btw theirs no way to enter ip address on the browser either. XI Ranked Server 1 XI Ranked Server 2 XI Ranked Server 3 Let the server list load in the browser, click on "server" at the top of the list to arrange them all in alphabetical order, then scroll down towards the bottom where you should find them. I couldn't find 2 earlier but 1 and 3 were there. Oh and make sure you haven't got any filters active as that would affect what is displayed in the browser.

Happy birthday! Another one on the road to the half-century! Hope you get the chance to celebrate today. Enjoy!

Bazza, it may be worth waiting a while to see if the game can be mended so it runs properly...

Many congratulations to you both on your marriage! Great to see you in game, yesterday!

CHKN devs said they will add /connect cmd in next patch. and btw next patch is already it testing, so it should come fast. I'm pleased to read that as long as patch number 2 isn't as big a cock-up as the first was... Looking forward to being able to play more than two games in a row without the damned game crashing.

KillingTime Ok no problem changing your profile name its painless, now if I could only find XI servers on the browser I don't know what the name of the servers are and apparently there no way to enter an ip in this half baked browser either. Thanks for the help all. So my guess is you got to follow a freind in though Xfire? The best way is to let the server names load then click on the top of the list to sort them into alphabetical order. Scroll down towards the bottom of the list and you should see the XI servers. Right click on each and add to favourites. Then, next time, all you have to do is select your favourites and they'll be there for you. If they don't appear in the server list, check your filters to ensure that all servers, empty and full are being displayed. XI's tend to be either full or empty and rarely in between!

Hehe! A good one!

Relieved to read the good news about the little one whom I'd asked "The Boss upstairs" to help. All suffering is terrible but the worst is that the very young have to endure. I hope she will stabilise and get back to normal things that eight year-olds do very soon.

SgtHarryWeezer - No doubt about it - I'm an Idiot Four years ago I planted a willow tree in my back yard and it's done quite well, about 30 feet tall. When the pool guys put a new liner in our inground pool this spring they as much said, "Only an idiot would plant a willow tree 40 feet from a pool because the roots will grow right into it and destroy your pool." Being an Idiot, I had to agree, and decided I'd have the tree taken out this fall. So I called several services and the best price I got was $300. I told the wife that was ridiculous for a tree that wouldn't take but a hour or two to cut down, and that I'd borrow a chain saw and do it myself. She said, "Only an Idiot would try to cut down a tree at your age." Being an Idiot, I borrowed the saw and cut the damned tree down. While I was cutting off the last branch, it turned and smacked me upside the head, knocking me down. No damage done, so after I commented on that tree's ancestry, I started piling the branches in one corner of the yard I use for shrubs, leaves, etc. About an hour into this I decided to take a break and reached up to take off my glasses to wipe off the sweat, only to find my glasses weren't there. Apparently, the branch knocked them off and I didn't notice. I couldn't find them near the tree, so I figured they got caught up in one of the branches. Two hours later, after I had moved all the branches off one pile, and then put them back, I gave up. It was the proverbial needle in a haystack. So, to save $300, I cut down a tree, busted my ass, hurt my back (which I broke in a car accident and have a herniated disc) and ended up paying $420 for a new pair of glasses. I AM an Idiot. I sometimes doubt it. But this weekend confirmed - again - that I'm in the right clan. You have confirmed your credentials indeed! No one here will mock you because we all do f***in stupid things from time to time. Only the best have the balls to tell others about their mishaps.

Cavey Well I have to join the same clan. Last weekend, our little family went out to buy my 7 month old boy his Christmas presents at Toys R Us (big UK toy store franchise). After spending 3 hours in there!!!! (note I hate shopping) we did manage to choose some toys (OK fair enough I was playing on the scalextric for 1 of those hours!!!). Just as we were leaving I saw they were selling Call of Duty - Black Ops for £34.89... I was tempted to buy it, but with a "PC World" just round the corner, I thought I would be able to get it cheaper. So off we trot to get COD - BO, but it turns out that they have sold out!!! (Remember I hate shopping!!!) Grrrrr.. So while pissed off and still in there I did some impulse buying, and bought the Iphone 4 TomTom Car Kit for £99... We then went around all the other shops (8 in total) to look for BO, but they were all sold out. Eventually we went back to Toy R Us and bought the game. Exhausted we decided to get a McDonalds costing £14, and went home. Excited but exhausted I put the Call of Duty disc in, but nothing happened. Maybe my autorun isn't working!!! So I used the command line to run it. Still nothing.... I tried it in my wife's laptop, nothing again. I then looked closely at the underside of the DVD to find that it's blanks and nothing has ever been written to it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So in the end I spent 4.5 hours shopping, spending ages choosing presents for my son, who in years to come will never remember them (or will chew them to death in the meantime), bought an Iphone TomTom car kit, I will rarely use.... have an expensive COD - BO coffee coster, and eventually bought BO from Steam which cost £39.99 and took 4 hours to download. Even better, I phoned up Toys R Us who are only willing to swap out the COD - BO with a tried and tested DVD, rather than giving me my money back. Cavey... What an Idiot. Don't take any shit from Toys R Us. You have a legal right to a full refund for these defective goods. Just make it plain that you are rejecting them as not fit for purpose and refer any argumentative moron to the Sale of Goods Act...

No, GBoost hasn't solved the crash-in-third-game problem for me. I do wonder if this is a memory leak kind of problem. It's so regular that it makes me think that the game is using up the system resources until the machine locks up. I am more and more convinced that they'd have to patch the game to stop this happening.

Thanks, Sun Tzu. Will give it a try.

Thanks for this. There were a few suggestions that I tried out - update of graphics driver etc. but the crashes continue and are usually on the third game played with the "helpful" report: "Fatal Error"! I am certainly not alone and the list of bugs on the Steam forum was 194 pages long when I looked... The game's pretty much unplayable. As I have said elsewhere, Activision's suggestion to lower ones defences is ridiculous.

Crazy, man!

baldiemeat Done it now and in my view the sooner the better.. But how come we have the bloody 12 sec spawn delay cant we sort that out either ??? Some of the other servers have got rid of it I'm confused because not all servers have this spawn delay, suggesting that a degree of customisation is possible already. Personally, I am with you on this. I'd prefer a killcam that enables us to quit the replay by pressing F with an immediate respawn. Also on my wishlist is spawn protection to cope with the spawn campers already frequenting the FFA server and killing games off. I can understand that people wish to rank up ASAP but they should not do so to the detriment of other players' enjoyment of the game. The game is being ruined by this behaviour and the placing of Claymores at the exit to a spawn point (sometimes the only one). Spawn - death - spawn - death gets old very quickly.

FOR REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them." (For The Fallen, by Laurence Binyon, 1914) "When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today" (The "Kohima Poem" by John Maxwell Edmonds, as it appears on The Kohima 2nd DivisionMemorial.) In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. (In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae, 1919)

Jalepeno i DID HEAR ONE GUY ON OUR SERVERS COMPLAINING THAT HE LOST SOME RANK, BUT NOT BACK TO ONE Yes, this happened to me also - went back down a rank and also lost a purchased machine gun in a custom class. That says to me that the central server wasn't working properly and synching the account when I made Captain and the purchase. If you lose connection, having been promoted in game, the new rank is not saved and you lose all points and bonuses achieved in that round. Had that happen too but it just means you have to win the bonus again.

Shamu BTW, this is the message I get even after a reinstall: On the reinstall I used my same Steam account ID. Maybe I should create another ID????? I am close to returning the damn game. I got this message, last night, having been kicked from the game, when trying to re-connect. You should be fine using the original Steam ID and that'd retain the progress you'd made so far. The damned crashes are as big a pain as the connection problems. I have very little running in the background but I am darned sure I am not going to take a firewall down and expose my PC to port scanners et al. Haven't Activision heard of PC security??! I run AVG Internet Security and that has a gaming mode that ought to cater for the demands of the game whilst keeping the shields up.

As Santa would say: HO HO HO!

Happy Birthday, Cheese. Hope you're having a fun day!

Well, Shamu, I think it is very wise not to be an early adopter of technology. Just look at the iPhone 4 and its antenna debacle as an example. The difference with the software is that the publishers are not going to press new game discs, complete with the patches (and if we look back to Treyarch's last effort - WaW - we know how many we could potentially expect in the coming weeks and months as various problems are uncovered and addressed). So, no matter when one gets the game, one is still going to have to patch it by downloading them. Unfortunately, it seems this is yet another occasion when the purchaser acts as a reluctant tester. Perhaps it is naive of us to expect that a software product will perform adequately on release, these days?? I've persevered with trying to find and then connect to the XI servers particularly, with limited success but, even with my enthusiasm for the game, I recognise I am wasting my time and shall get on with the single player mode.

I've only found you in the game once, Chile, and you got kicked as I entered the gameplay... LOL! The tomahawk is a pain - it should be a boomerang so we don't have to go looking for it when we miss the target! I am getting to like the Strela very much - it puts an end to those silly helicopter strafing runs!