Despite Mark Lamia of Treyarch claiming that Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer bugs are only limited to a small handful of players, the anger spewing across internet message boards and gamer forums tells a different story.

For those unfamiliar with the errors that have plagued the Black Ops multiplayer experience since its release last year, a quick perusal of any Black Ops-specific forum will be enough to see that gamers are frustrated, and rightfully so.

Problems, such as lag, inconsistent kills, cheating hackers, an unfair reporting system, and an unresponsive customer service department are constantly discussed on the forums and have led to the creation of an online petition with at least 18,000 signatures that calls for Treyarch to issue all users a refund, saying, “[Black Ops] is a Triple A title game that made over $360 million in sales on day 1 alone. Yet, they created a unfinished, sloppy and degenerate game for the Playstation 3 console when the Playstation 3 has games that out shine the Call of Duty franchise today.” Comments on many forums, YouTube videos, and video game blogs echo this complaint that Black Ops is, essentially, a “real let down” for committed players of first person shooter games.

Unfortunately, Treyarch hasn’t been all that helpful in keeping its upset customers happy. A recent server crisis wiped out a bunch of stats, credits, and other information on player accounts. When players tried to complain, they were told that they couldn’t get back their points or anything. This thread at the Black Ops Forum tells the story much better than Mark Lamia can.

That a company like Treyarch would allow such an error in its own servers to occur without compensating unhappy players for the trouble is appalling. What happened to the idea that “the customer is always right”?

Hopefully later patches will fix some of the glitches within the game itself; Teryarch is usually good about monitoring especially glitchy matches and attempting to recreate them on their own in order to patch the error; however, it will take a customer service miracle on their part to satisfy the crowds of frustrated gamers that are used to a high quality gaming experience in the Call of Duty series.

If anything, gamers can look forward to the next Call of Duty game if only because Treyarch will not be associated with the product. According to the Los Angeles Times, Activision has hired Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software to develop the game.

==== About the Author ====

Lauren Bailey is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. Questions and comments can be sent to: blauren99 @gmail.com.