Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 gets unranked dedicated servers

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Teach an old dog of war new tricks.

The latest iteration of Activision's annually updated war series may have landed last month, however there seems to be life in last year's Call of Duty instalment yet. Black Ops 3's most recent update—number 18—introduces unranked dedicated servers, and adds a number of new assets to its mod tools from the game's Campaign, Free Run and Zombies modes.   

You will also see a lot of new assets in the Mod Tools Additional Assets from the Campaign, Free Run and Zombies. Update 18 also includes bug fixes and a security update. 

As teased by Treyarch developer Cesar Stastny on Twitter this week, the addition of unranked dedicated servers means players can now host and manage their own private servers—playing by their own rules, independent of Activision's official forums. 

This Steam Community blurb details the basics on how to get started:

"To start, you will find two new items in the Tools section of your Steam Library, Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Dedicated Server and Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Remote Console. You do not need the game installed to run a dedicated server or the remote console tool.

"Both new applications will install in your Black Ops III game folder, commonly found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Call of Duty Black Ops III 

"The unranked dedicated server will allow you to run your own servers, manage the content on those servers, admin who can play on the server, and much more. The unranked dedicated server can be run from the same computer running the game or from a completely separate computer. If your server is run through a server hosting company or simply on a different computer, the remote console allows you to manage your server from any machine regardless of where your server is running."

Full details, including how to manage servers via the remote console tool, can be found this way. Patch notes for Update 18, on the other hand, are over here. 

Granted, this news comes late in the day for Black Ops 3, but is this something that will keep you playing/pull you back in? Let us know in the comments below.

Joe Donnelly
Deputy Editor, PC Gaming Show
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