Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War players are having trouble connecting to the server

Live view of the #CallofDuty Black Ops Cold War servers pic.twitter.com/NR2YPJQjpvNovember 13, 2020

The launch of a game as popular as Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War was never going to be entirely smooth, but it seems like players on PC are having trouble even connecting to the game, getting a message that tells them, "The Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War server is not available at this time." When they restart, they're put in a queue, and the subreddit is full of complaints like, "Well it put me in a queue for 40ish seconds. Then it just [went] up to 77000 minutes wait time. Guess I'm not playing it today" and "The estimate to play time is going up not down lol".

Though some players are reporting not being able to play the campaign mode, which shouldn't require a connection once you've got it installed, our reviewer was able to just fine. He also notes that you can choose which parts of the game to install before downloading, if you want to exclude the campaign, or Zombies mode, or Dead Ops Arcade. The full game should be an 82GB download, or 125GB with "ultra graphics". Which is positively svelte by Call of Duty standards.

If you're in a queue with nothing to do, can I interest you in the weirdest cameos in Call of Duty, ranked?

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.