When you fire up your Call of Duty 3 copy today you will find out it needs an update. This is the multiplayer patch we’ve all been waiting for. A member of Treyarch’s team, Axis0f3vil, aka Dan, announced the patch earlier today. The patch should resolve all the issues we had with ranked multiplayer matches.

When it propagates, the update will download automatically upon logging into Xbox Live and running Call of Duty 3. This update addresses many of the Ranked and Player Match issues that we’ve discussed over the last few weeks. While we’ve made a number of enhancements, the most significant improvement is that Ranked Matches join lobbies much faster through both Custom and Quick Match. Player Matches through Quick Match will now query a higher number of games before attempting to join, thus returning a better variety and better quality for the player.

Additionally, we’ve added some gameplay, HUD and options enhancements. For example, brightness settings will be saved across both single-player and multiplayer; players will be able to instantly punish medics who maliciously team kill and revive continuously; Auto Team Balance will remain turned on after multiple map rotations, ensuring that each team always has an equal number of players; and players will be able to select either Axis or Allies in Ranked Battle games.

Summarized changelog

• Solved Ranked and Player Match issues
• Brightness settings will be saved across both single-player and multiplayer
• Players will be able to instantly punish medics who maliciously team kill and revive continuously
• Auto Team Balance will remain turned on after multiple map rotations
• Players will be able to select either Axis or Allies in Ranked Battle games
• HUD enhancements

Skeptic as we are we tried the patch our selfs, and the patch really works. We were able to start a ranked matches under 1 minute. The CoD3 team really outdone themselves with putting out the patch so fast, contrary to the horror we had with the CoD2 patch that also suffered with multiplayer problems.

Thanks to Predator GR, Constantinos360 and Glenn for submitting the news