Possible 12 v 12 on Black Ops

The last Call of Duty game Treyarch developed, World at War, had a maximum of 18 players online. Sony says it will be 24 this time around in Black Ops.

Sony has updated their Black Ops page on PlayStation.com » with information that sounds quite exciting; hinting that the game can be played with 1-24 players. Since Xbox.com » has not updated their page with this information yet, we can not tell with complete certainty that it's confirmed or not. It sure does look like it, but only a few days back they made a mistake with announcing » new multiplayer material that didn't come through...

If it is true however, let's think about what this means for a second. The difference between 18 (World at War and Modern Warfare 2) and 24 players in an online multiplayer game mode can be huge. Even though 3 more team mates doesn't sound that many, it completely changes the way games will be played. First is the subject of lag (latency between you and the server, more info on wikipedia »), since the more players in a game will cause more lag and will make it less fun to play. Maybe Treyarch has found a way to keep the lag down with more players in the same game, which would be the ideal situation.

Besides the lag, we're excited to see how Treyarch will make this work map-wise. Smaller maps will be packed (usually resulting in a grenade-fest) and larger maps will look empty if not played in a 12 vs. 12 game. Original Source

If this turns out to be true there are going to be some insane games instore for us