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Sony PS3 v1.1 Patch on COD4 (Call of Duty 4): connect to worldwide servers, good or bad?

By: Daniel Chubb | February 12, 2008 | 23 Comments

Call of Duty 4 worldwide servers

Following on from our post about the recent v1.1 patch for Call of Duty 4 on the Sony PS3, while we had no details on what changes this update made to COD4, we now see a few changes.

Gamers have reported and I have also noticed that connecting to games is much faster, this is due to now being able to connect to worldwide servers on COD4, but is this a good idea.

Some gamers are finding that they get dropped out of games as their connection is too slow, they put this down to connecting to servers worldwide, personally I am finding getting on games much faster and all ok their, although the Tiscali P2P problem is still around…roll on BT, moving on 14th.

How are you finding the new patch on the Sony PS3 version?

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  • Sean Gaffney

    What I have noticed is I’m gettingdropped into games already under way a lot more. This I don’t mind but if you join a game late your win/loss ratio will suffer. Normally you’re added to the losing side as players drop out when getting beat rather than when winning !

  • Rob Willis

    Sean, i have noticed this too, spawn into a game on the losing side, get shot and game ends almost immedeatly, not good for stats…more often than not i’ve also found that the majority of people in matches are american and i find myself missing not being able to understand what our european cousins are saying…

  • Sean Gaffney

    There will be less chance of “banter” now as we go Global. I like playing against the local colonies / Cul-de-sacs (Wales & Scotland :-) ) as you get better interaction. The only AAmricans playing in the evening are the kids just home from school.

  • Sean Gaffney

    Can’t even bring myself to spell “Americans” correctly !! Still they wouldn’t have noticed ;-)

  • Rob Willis

    Haha, it does seem to be young kids from the Ameryka and with voice changer set to high they sound like Joe Pasquale breathing helium!!! Very annoying addition to the PS3 functionality…my tag is funkshui if you want to add…

  • Simon H

    Yeah its good that we join quicker but still when friends invite me and im in another game it says could not connect to host all the time it seems to be that we can only still invite if we are not in game. I nearly lost my mind hearing all the American kids with the voice changer on I joined two games with this and said to my friend I hope the next server we go in is not like this and lo and behold the next four we went in had at least one with the stupid voice changer in it. Please sony remove this its bad enough listening to whining kids but to add a high pitched chipmunk voice to this is over 100 times worse and there is nothing you can do about it apart from leave a game where you are for once doing quite well.rant over.

  • Rob Willis

    If we’re starting to rant…what’s the deal with the clan tags??? Why aren’t these like clans in every other game? They are just a name in CoD that anyone can use…You cannot see who in your clan is online or even better online and in-game. It’s very annoying trying to get all your friends into a party together and receiving invites left, right and centre during games. IW should look at the likes of Warhawk in this area and their buddie system, it’ll improve the online experience 10 fold..

  • Sean Gaffney

    Agree with the clan issue totally. It’s always a question of who is going to host the party, who’s already in a game so you left waiting for them etc. The ability to join a game (or join a waiting list if the game is full) is a must. Resistance worked very well in this respect.
    I want a clan which is fixed for just my friends where it is easy to come and go. We play rgularly on Wednesday evenings and we must waste 20% of the time just getting organised. Especially when someone gets kicked out mid game (or worse early on in the game) so they either wait or join anoher game without us !

  • Adam G

    I live in the US and since the patch went on the US loads games slower and now are often empty and do not fill. also the games lag has tipped to the realm of unplayable tho that maybe P2P problem. i have noticed a lot more game closing or early or the latest the game taking 5 minutes to load me in tho i can here my clan mates shooting. I have great internet so it is not my connection. I am glad the press is finally covering the dark side of COD4 on the PS3. people need to know that the COD4 for PS3 online multiplayer if horrific and IW needs to do something.

  • Rob Willis

    Odd as it seems the opposite effect here in Blighty. My friend lives in Canada and doesn’t have any issues with connection, over than what was highlighted by Sean. What games are you playing for them not to be filled? I mostly play TDM, Domination and HQ and just about always the games are full.

  • Rob Willis

    A guy yesterday commented similiar issues to yours Adam. Someone called Paul posted the following which seemed to resolve his problem… “Hi Pete I had the same problem as you, I change my Wirless Internet Connect to A cabled one and set the PS3 connection as A DMZ. All was then fine.”

  • Adam G

    I am wireless but my PS3 is Set out side the DMZ. me and the members of my clan have been experiencing tons lag and finding empty rooms that wont fill up. the game has been laggy all the time since we got the patch in december but it has gotten worse. there are about 30 of of us all experiencing the same problems from all over the US some of us are NY, SC, FL, IL and CA. there is definitely something wrong with the lag problems in the us because Activision Support told me so in a letter below. none of my others games have problems i just don’t like Warhawk or RS6 but i don’t like the game play.

    Thank you for contacting Activision’s Technical Support. I’m sorry to hear about your problem. This game uses peer to peer connections, meaning that if you are playing in a match with a persion with a very slow connection, it doesn’t matter how fast yours is, because the other player cannot send/receive information as fast as you can. Your upload is limited to 480 kilobits, which is equivalent to 60 kilobytes. That is actually very high for upload, however most DSL users are limited to 128 kilobits which is 16 kilobytes. Sixteen kb is not sufficient to support large games and leads to many problems. This is what creates most of the lag in games.

    Many users are using routers which are poorly configured or people do not realize that other people are using their connection too at the same time. If you are trying to play when someone in your household starts uploading files or pictures to a website, it will severely impact your gameplay.

    On top of that, many ISPs implement port throttling or packetshaping during “peak hours” which further hinder the game and people’s connections.

    The developers are working on improving the game as seen on the PS3 portion of the developer forums. However, there are a lot of issues like those addressed above that are out of the hands of the devs and reliant on the user and their ISP.

  • Adam G

    I have done those things and the problems are still there. My clan mates are having the same problems and there are about 30 of us active on COD4 tho there used to be more. The lag is produced by P2P connections. I know where the problems stems from but there is nothing anyone but IW can do to fix it. I america IW has an “F” with customer support according to the better business bureau.

  • Nathan

    i have had very few problems except for the fact that sometimes when i join a game before it has even loaded up it takes a too long to load and i can’t join until the second round begins(that only happens when i play search and destroy).

  • Nathan

    i also would suggest that the online lobby be more like the way Warhawk is set up.

  • Josh

    Man this is a late article. Since the v1.1 I have had to use the wifi connection becasue wired ethernet cable will not let server connection. kept on getting ethernet cable is not connected. Never had a problem before this update. have the 60 gig ps3. Need to still work out the bugs

  • killa_sam

    Look the patch has improved some areas, I don’t think it was what the majority of the COD4 community want from the lobby system. I can only hope that Activision adds features like the ability to create and join games, a list of games in the lobby and the ability as hosts to kick unwanted players out of the game. I would hope that Activision brings these features into the game so that all people can enjoy the game with the people they know. The current party system doesn’t work.

  • AL

    Hmm, to you guys over at US and EU, maybe it’s a great thing. Asians are suffering because of this. We are always getting connected to either US or EU servers. What’s worse, finding games are still slow…And once we managed to get into games, mostly we get 1 bar games.

    My question is, why is IW ignoring us at Asia and Oceania ? Your game sells here too !! Very well in fact, everyone i know who’s got a ps3 or xbox360 owns cod4. Dont forget about us IW or else you can forget about selling well with your damn cod6 !

  • devmetal

    they should allow gamers to select which server/game/region to join to. id rather wait to join a game where i have a good ping than die a million times in a game due to excessive lag.

  • scoob101

    I would suggest buying a 360.

    Mwahahahaha……

    (ducks to avoid torrent of abuse)

  • Adam G

    that is aggravating we have a complaint about one game and we should go buy a 360. Do you own a PS3? I have friends own both and don’t play their 360s anymore. Mostly because they are people talking stupid all over XBL and they dont want to deal with it. If i did go and spend the 700 bucks to match what my PS3 has what would be different, so that I can be other boards somewhere talking about RRoD…. yeah thats better and the when i get a refurb instead of my original 360 my downloaded content wont work because the DRM is on the machine instead of the user. I will tell you what i am going to do that is not stupid I and costly I am not going to buy any more IW/Activision games or games that use P2P connection. you can keep halo 2.5 and the pay service that works like crap anyways.

  • Sony

    COD4 online on the 360 is beasty!!! For you cornballs, that’s awesome. Ya silly rabbits, blue ray players are for movies!

  • ingfrancisco

    hey, i think the same i hate when that happens, i hate getting into a game and being in the losing side, that sure doesn’t help the stats.
    well i have one question, do you know what the new patch is about?
    mi tag is ingfrancisco if you wanna add
    thanks!