How much is too much? Black Ops Part 1

Wow, wrapped up another wonderful weekend last week of double point days. So it has begun, the beginning of the end of Fun! Activision has confirmed shutting down Guitar Hero and consolidating all Infinity Ward, SledgeHammer, and Raven studios to produce the newest series of Call of Duty. WHY? Well I know that the CEO gave a statement and I know that one of the designers gave a statement but did we get the answer we were looking for? Guitar Hero for the longest time has not only been a well diversified game, but a true challenge for an enormous amount of people. I play the real instrument and I can tell you that GH is actually harder than the instrument. Why take away all the great glory of fun from the gamers. Well to be honest I wonderedb so I did some investigative reporting and here's the scenario.Quick note: shout out to http://cheater-free.com/ a cool clan/party, and some nice people. Look em up.

Contacted: Infinity Ward who has no link left to contact them by per se, unless you are seeking a job and those are limited too, however as of Feb 14th 2011 at 06:47pm they will be releasing what will probably be the final security patch for Modern Warfare 2. Remembering the last patch was like remembering the name of my first dog.  Supposedly you can no longer get inside the "rock" and hide from your attackers on the map "FUEL"!
Really? Come on; like it took that long to update that one glitch? Besides, it was boring going in the rock anyway (so I heard). Whatever; point is you cannot contact IW for any issues.

Contacted: Treyarch: Treyarch has a customer service link that doesn't do a doggone thing when you click it, and yes they are hiring for all you techies out there. I'm sincerely concerned about letting them know that there are several LAG issues going on that they aren't aware of. (please do not start the PS3/XBOX argument when replying, that is for another article) Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that Treyarch knows that there are issues and admits it and are supposedly working on it. However, I and many others almost quit on double point weekend because we seriously waited on games to establish for at least 10-15 minutes. Do they care? yeah lets just see How many of you know about the pulling of the ethernet cable outta the gaming system to avoid taking any loss or deaths during a match? I do and trust me, they know it too, they wanted to fix it but this results in serious instability issues with a patch. How many of you seen your care package drop in front of you and keep on going? Yup lost 15 that night; so did you really get double XP or did you get the same as you would have, only double the headache from not playing as many matches as you could of? You let me know.

Contacted: Activision: Figured this would be the absolute best alternative and that maybe they were not aware of Treyarch's ability to not handle customer support. This takes the cake for the stupidest support I've ever seen from any company. I guess they are so high and mighty that you can contact them and fill out your grievance report with name and phone and address and your life's worth and then your e-mail and they will respond promptly. Sound good right? Your own e-mail address is bogus, so I tried my other one(s). Then I tried a fake one? Then I just typed edward@activision.com and it came back as company does not exist. Jeeze Louise! What the heck do you have to do to notify a company that they sold a product that CLEARLY creates a huge NON-ENTERTAINMENT value. The only reason you bought the game is to have fun and so far I can tell you that 3 months of playing it has given me one big headache from trying to understand LAG. Incidentally NAT type does effect the entire party so please pick one way to run a NAT and have everyone in your clan link the same way, it does help but it's not the cure.

I apologize to each of you who has the same frustration (could be millions) that I do share; I have tried to reason with each company to no avail. I don't know what else to do other than listen to Treyarch's spokesperson saying every other day that they are working on it. Well let's do some math cause I know it's every one's favorite subject, right? 310 MILLION dollars the very 1st day of release of Modern Warfare 2. That's 5,166,166 copies sold in 24 hours. 650 MILLION dollars in the first 5 days of Black Ops and that's just the beginning. Here is the point of this: If you have a BILLION dollar video game then get off your ASS and fix it before we figure out how to NOT buy Modern Warfare 3 which will be made by Infinity Ward, SLEDGEHAMMER, and Raven games and consisting of a vast amount of  leftover programming. NO COMPANY has the right to put out a faulty product. You wouldn't see Toyota or Ford release a faulty vehicle without reprimands, so why does Activision get off scott free?

On a positive note: Check out the newest Battlefield 3 video ( http://www.ea.com/battlefield3)and it just looks so amazing that I'm getting really excited about the release. Battlefield is an EA release and made by DICE which you can contact, including getting weekly updates about there status. I'm just sayin...........makes you wonder why Activision dropped Guitar Hero and are laying off 5000 people in these economic times?????????

Earn what you Burn
Ed Rivas
PSN: edward-10