The biggest battles in Call of Duty 3 online right now are not between happy gamers, but between users and an apparently bug ridden service. An online petition has sprung up calling for Activision, the game's developers, to rectify the situation by producing and making available a patch, however according to the petition, currently the software giant seems unwilling to accept there is even an issue.

The problems noted in the petition include:

• Regularly being dropped from ranked match lobbies after the timer has reached zero.
• Receiving a "Game session no longer available" message in player matches.
• Falling through the map floor in ranked matches.
• Players unable to shoot an enemy, with the crosshair failing to turn red when they move over that player even at close range, and the bullets failing to hit them.

Above: Four seconds after this screen was taken all eight players may have been disconnected

Stephen Pierce, GamesRadar's Editorial Director and regular Call of Duty 3 player says,
"I have experienced major problems myself over the last few weeks with Call of Duty 3 when trying to play online. I constantly get 'game session no longer available' messages as well as being informed that I couldn't connect to either 'all players' or 'the host.' In fact I only seem to be able to occasionally join matches with fewer than two or three participants. I've taken to starting a game on my own and just waiting around to see if anyone else joins me. In fact I've noticed a number of games seemingly with just one participant over the last two weeks, so I wonder if others are trying this tactic too? All my other games work just fine and my connection is laser fast. "

"What we mustn't forget is that this piece of software costs $49.99 today on Amazon. That's a lot of money to result in this kind of dispiriting experience. So I say, what are you gonna do about it Activision? "

Having Call of Duty 3 online problems? We urge you to join the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/cod3360/petition.html

February 23, 2007