Server stability in a competitive FPS is of the highest priority for a developer; if their infrastructure is unable to offer smooth gameplay with zero desync, then players jump ship. Call of Duty finds itself in a minefield of player-reported packet loss, lag, and desynchronization issues, and now is the time for some answers.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 lag and packet loss
During the last Season in Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone more and more players stand to draw attention to the unstable servers and lag in CoD lobbies. Whether you’re dropping into Resurgence or the big map in Warzone, or you’re loading up Search and Destroy, there’s a chance you’ll be hit with terrible lag or packet explosion.
Reddit user Confident-Village769 jumped on the Modern Warfare 3 subreddit to complain about his late experiences with the game. They provide not one, not two, and not three, but four examples of their struggles. The obvious question to ask here is whether Confident-Village769 has a weak enough internet to cause these problems. They claim 1500MB internet though, so probably won’t be the problem.
If this problem only had one person showing their lag, then maybe it could be explained by looking at the service provider or construction in their area—many factors affect your internet speed and connection. However, Confident-Village is not the only one experiencing these problems.
Over on CODWarzone’s sister subreddit, user Luerro dropped a thread to discuss a fix for extreme packet loss reaching 24%. Unfortunately, no one could offer much in the way of a solution to the problem—everyone pointed the finger at Activision’s terrible servers.
Players in the thread are all outraged by their consistent issues with poor latency, packet loss and lag. The consensus is that these are problems of Activision’s servers and generally there is nothing that any individual player can do to apply a solution. Some commentators suggest the ethernet cable as a possible solution, but considering the myriad of people affected by Call of Duty servers, it is unlikely that this change would eliminate the problem immediately.
Reddit isn’t the only place fans have gone to vent their frustration; X (Twitter) is overflowing with fans sharing their experiences. CarlosBitMe shared a screenshot of their packet loss reaching 27% – an unacceptable number.
Not everyone has seen such drastic amounts of packet loss: iizroberto posted a video that showed a consistent 5% packet loss and while that’s quite a bit lower than Carlos’ experience, any amount of desynchronization is completely unacceptable for a competitive FPS.
No matter where you look, players are complaining about the consistent server issues and it’s time for Activision to address the issue and work on a solution. The pessimist in me expects nothing to change until the release of Black Ops 6 where a new server infrastructure can (maybe) be put in place.
That’s all we have on the Call of Duty server issues. If you’re looking for similar content, check out the CoD Fallout bundle labeled “lazy” by fans, Black Ops 6 weapon leaks include SA87 (SA80) and LW3 Tundra (L96A1), and more on Pro Game Guides.
