Despite Call of Duty: Black Ops' successful sales, it didn't exactly have the smoothest of launches. Many users complained of bugs and performance issues that made the game unenjoyable for some and unplayable for others. Treyarch has been working to solve those issues and last night the developer released a massive patch for PC users.

The list of changes is pretty extensive – at least compared to previous Black Ops patches. This update further tweaks performance for dual-core machines, along with "additional performance optimizations." There's also a fix for random freezes on certain computer configurations, an option to pre-cache all shaders during load time, and more.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Black Ops received a similarly hefty patch earlier this week, addressing various multiplayer bugs, exploits and imbalances. PC users should get an automatic update via Steam. Have the updates solved your issues or does the game remain plagued with unaddressed bugs? The full patch notes are below:

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops

  • Improved threading performance on computers with only 2 cores.
  • Additional performance optimizations
  • Added an option to pre-cache all shaders during load time. This fixes hitching related to shader compiling on some video cards when viewing an area of the map for the first time.
  • Fixed random freezes in certain computer configurations.
  • Allow Team Change on Ranked servers when it does not unbalance teams (this is a server admin option).
  • Allow Team Change grace period at start of match (server admin option).
  • Added 4 more reserved slots (server admin option)
  • Added /connect
  • Improved quickmatch results (server side change)
  • Fix for watching films through Combat Record
  • Fixed compassSpectatorsSeeEnemies exploit
  • Fixed 3rd person fov exploit
  • Fix for infinite supply drop exploit.
  • Fixed crosshair flickering when stereo is active.
  • Various spawn improvements
  • Various sound improvements
  • Fix for Zombies - Teammate shadows not displayed properly.
  • Fix for radar not staying on in One in the Chamber when it should.
  • In a Domination match, the Position Secured medal is no longer delayed.
  • 'Hardened: Equipment Shot' Challenge can now be completed by destroying a 'Camera Spike'.
  • Fix for choppy final killcam in dedicated servers.
  • Various map glitches fixed.
  • Weekly and Monthly leaderboards will now track all kills, deaths and assists properly (All Time leaderboards were not affected by this)
  • Added mixed hardcore playlist
  • Added mixed barebones playlist
  • Added 12 player versions of all playlists

    Rcon

  • Reduced timeout values. Connect (or failure to connect is faster).
  • Added all white-listed dvars for Ranked and Unranked. Admins have rcon access to ALL available dvars.
  • Added Settings and Console tabs for Ranked servers.
  • Fixes a bug where the "Server" tab doesn't update values when connecting to a new server.
  • Added version number to the title bar.
  • Fixed a bug where UI state didn't persist after switching to another server.
  • Added "disconnect" button.
  • Fixed map "set" to not use admindvar.
  • Changed all dvars which could be possibly float, to float. Mostly these are time-type dvars.
  • Fixed bug where entering a value of zero for Message Duration would cause a unhandled exception error
  • Truncated all message fields to 140 chars