CoD3 Valor Map Pack release news
All the Call of Duty 3 fans were waiting for the Valor Map Pack update. We were already happy with the free bonus map that was released. One week later there was supposed to be a pack with 5 new maps. They were released, but as we all know by now they didn’t work unfortunately. Microsoft and Treyarch have since been working around the clock to get the maps to work.
A member of Treyarch’s team, Axis0f3vil, has announced on the official Xbox forums that they are almost done with the Valor Map Pack and they also announced a Title Update.
Hey Call of Duty 3 fans:
We have some news that many have been anxiously anticipating. We will be re-releasing the Valor map pack for download over Xbox Live Marketplace in the very near future. Alongside that release, we will also be issuing a Title Update which addresses two key issues that many users have voiced in the forums:
1) When the Ranked lobby countdown reaches zero, the lobby will sometimes boot all users back to the previous menu screen.
2) When the game successfully loads into a Ranked Match, occasionally some users will fall outside of the map.Because we will be releasing both the map pack and the Title Update that addresses Ranked Match issues simultaneously, adequate time is needed for final testing with a release in the near future.
Thank you all again for your patience during this past few days. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience. We hope to see you all on the battlefield!
– Call of Duty team
We can expect the Title Update and the map pack in “the very near future”. If you are really curious about what to expect in the “Valor Map Pack” you can listen to the podcast of Major Nelson, where “Axis0f3vil” gives a detailed description of all the maps. Hopefully Treyarch doesn’t screw up this time and we all can play some CoD3 ranked matches without any hassle.
Thanks to J1980 for submitting the news.
When does the Velour maps get here?
the very near future
They’re having trouble with the track suits. They shrink too much when you first wash them. Just hang on…you’ll be draping yourself in velour before you know it.
cheeky bastard!!
comment meant for glovner..lol I made a typo in a previous news and called in velor…
lol - done it again…called IT velor not in - god I shouldnt be on here past 3am im all to fuck!!
I don’t even have to say anything, your managing it all on your own jst now.
yes someone should take away my laptop when im drunk!!
This game is bunk….
I actually like the game very much! It only has a few problems. And hopefully they are getting fixed by this latest title update.
How about addressing the lack of a static game lobby before a game? Its so bad that a sequel to a game which had the same problem then was fixed after out cry has the same problem. I want to be able to set a private room up for me and my friends, then chat crap for 15 mins or so if we wish before starting the game.
this information they released has nothing to do with the map pack, and is simply a smoke screen to hide their limitless incompetance. the game is great, but no part of it has ever been completely finished. the game lacks polish in the worst way, and this map pack fiasco is almost laughable. this particular tidbit of “news” from axisof3vil is truly insulting, and although i believe the devs probably want to satisfy AND make money, i fear they are only qualified to do one, and they already have our cash…
So? if the map pack comes online, you can just download it again. The dashboard will say you download this item already so you don’t have to pay again. So no loss here.
did you just ask “so?”
nice looking out for your community of gamers getting screwed. and the fact that people who have already paid for these maps will indeed, eventually, receive something, has little impact on the customer service atrocity that has been treyarch’s responses to their own comedy of errors. they have made countless mistakes, and have an army of gamers pissed at them (justifiably i might add). i do not have time to list the problems now, so please, do your own research, and DO NOT defend these guys.
I agree with MU.
A ball has been dropped. A very large ball. Incompetent isn’t a strong enough word to describe Treyarch at this point.
I agree with you, that Treyarch didn’t go a good job with the Valor Map Pack, but a lot of gamers are reacting like “OMGZ, they st0l3 my m0n3y”. No they didn’t. You bought the product and you will get the product……. only a bit later.
Spoken like people who have never developed software in their lives, or have any real clue what the sw development process is like. Unfortunately, it is a very complex process. Despite the best of intentions, bugs can occur. Despite QA (quality assurance) teams and good faith efforts to do sufficient testing, problems will creep in.
There are some environments (like when designing hospital sofware, or space shuttle software), where bugs are much less likely…simply because in those environments a huge amount of resources is spent on QA because of the repurcussions of serious bugs. Believe it or not, the repurcussions just aren’t the same in a gaming environment that supports post-release patches. If the same amount of QA resources were spent on games as are spent on hospital equipment software, there would be fewer bugs…and games would be more expensive (and shorter and less complex).
They releaed something with some bugs. That doesn’t mean they’re grossly incompetent, it means they screwed up somewhat in QA (probably their test cases weren’t sufficient to cover all possible scenarios). It’s not pleasant for the people that purchased the maps already, but it’s not the heinous crime (”incompetent isn’t a strong enough word”, “customer service atrocity”) that you’re making it out to be. Game developers spend countless hours of unpaid overtime trying to make good games that they would enjoy playing. Cut them some slack when they make a mistake once in a while, particularly if they’re trying to jump through hoops to rectify the situation.
1 - no one is comparing a video game to ANY type of hospital or aeronautical software
2 - We did cut them some slack. First with CoD2 and the MONTHS before they addressed anything! And now CoD3 and its various problems.
And I don’t see how charging people for a d/l that doesn’t work is exactly “jumping through hoops” as you say. The game’s been out for approx 3 months now and no real solutions have come in.
Why are you so ready to defend Treyarche for this steaming pile of turd they’ve given us?
Did you know that CoD2 was developed by an other developer than CoD3? CoD2 was developed by Infinity Ward and CoD3 by Treyarch. So you can’t blame them for “screwing up CoD2″
LoL. I work in QA, chief. We have a ZDP. Zero Defect Policy.
Treyarch apparently does not.
I know what’s involved in a software development lifecycle, I know problems occur, release dates are pushed back…. but I also know that Treyarch has dropped the ball far too many times in far too short a time frame.
Seriously. The defects we’ve encountered so far with COD3 are “show stoppers”. They may as well be crashing the game, they’re that severe. Initially, well over half the customers were unable to access online play / ranked matches. This is not acceptable. This is not a small ‘defects will happen’ type defect. This isn’t a period instead of a comma, a gap in the audio, a glitch in a cutscene…
This was a defect that prevented over half the available game from being played. Pathetic. Show stopper. Should’ve been caught by their internal testing teams, no if’s and or buts about it.
Then, after 2 pathetic months a patch was released allowing people to play online. Cool. Some people were willing to forget Treyarch ever dropped the ball, some people moved on, enjoying the game but remembering…
Then… an ulta cool, ultra new map pack was released… AND IT DIDN’T WORK? Even more pathetic than the initial release of the game w/ the inability to connect to multiplayer, was the release of an upgrade that people weren’t on the edge of their seats crying for, an update that didn’t have a release date Treyarch was trying to meet, an update that DIDN’T WORK???
It really is pathetic.
i don’t think mass9 was blaming treyarch for screwing cod2 up, just acknowledging that it was a severe problem with the FRANCHISE we all had to deal with in the past. it doesn’t matter who is to blame, and we will never really know, but the amount of crap we have had to deal with to play these games has been unreasonable. why don’t we all give the devs at treyarch a break, and blame activision for awhile. it was probably the money men there that set an unreasonable release schedule for the game to begin with. i guess my point is, the games are enough fun, and we all paid enough for them, that when they don’t work for weeks and or months at a time, we all get a little disgruntled.
nice job bringing up some good points AugustBot, and sorry if i got a little defensive, these games have given me a lot of trouble, but i truly love them both, but regardless, that latest release from axisof3vil was an afront to our collective intelligence and patience.
Call of Duty games are excellent. They’re managed very, very, poorly.
The question I keep asking myself over and over is - didn’t one single person from Treyarch/Activision/MS actually download and play the maps like you or I would? It seems that the real problem here is that they didn’t perform one real-world test scenario, with a production XBOX 360.
Sure, it must have worked for them in their dev environment, (and I would assume QA environment) but apparently they couldn’t, or neglected, to test in some small segment of the real world. Maybe MS doesn’t make a provision for this, although I would think it’s possible, given that some downloads can be limited to certain people (Halo 3 beta, for example.)
I would think that there is some way for Johnny Developer to work all day on the new maps, then go home at night and download them to his personal XBOX 360 and try them out. Why not squeeze out a little more “work” from these guys while they’re “playing” at home? If that had happened, they could have averted this mishap.
And to all the h8ters out there, I know it’s not the end of the world, and I don’t hate Treyarch for it, it just seems to me that this problem could have been easily avoided before any of us ever knew that a new product was about to be delivered. It may not be such a big deal to all of us, but Treyarch is paying salaries that pay mortgages and that’s serious business when people’s livelihoods are put in danger by something like this. Who knows, maybe all’s well that ends well, or maybe Treyarch never gets another opportunity to make a CoD game again.
So are the new maps a go or no go?
the new maps are up, working, and quite fun.