No, you're not the only one having issues with Black Ops

Nope, it's not just you. As Steam stats tell us that more than 76,000 people have already piled into Call of Duty: Black Ops on launch day, some portion of that playerbase is reporting intermittent lag issues following them through multiplayer that don't seem to be caused by elderly hardware. Within the Steam forums , the current theory is that it's a resource issue: CPU load for players experiencing the lag is running at or near 100%. Anecdotally, I'd agree that the three-to-four-second full-stops I'm experiencing online definitely don't resemble a network problem.

Evan's a hardcore FPS enthusiast who joined PC Gamer way back in 2008. After an era spent publishing reviews, news, and cover features, he now oversees editorial operations for PC Gamer worldwide, including setting policy, training, and editing stories written by the wider team. His most-played FPSes are Hunt: Showdown, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, Rainbow Six Siege, and Counter-Strike. His first multiplayer FPS was Quake 2, played on serial LAN in his uncle's basement, the ideal conditions for instilling a lifelong fondness for fragging.