Lowered expectations

The world is a cruel place. And after last night I don't expect much more out of it. What happened? I lost rank in Call of Duty 4.

I put the disk in and was "downloading gamer profile" or whatever that message reads when it's loading up your rank. I waiting for awhile and it didn't seem to go away and I was getting invites from friends to join them so I did. As soon as I joined their party we jumped into a game and that started up almost immediately. I started to play and after I got my first kill I noticed the "Congratulations New Rank Brigadier General I". What?

I found the closest hiding place and pulled up the player's list. There I was listed as level 43. I should have been 3/4 the way through level 47. I looked at my weapon and noticed I had the P90 and no Red Dot Sight. I don't even remember selecting that weapon type. And I haven't played with the P90 in well . . . 4 ranks.

And losing rank wasn't the only thing wacky last night either. My system showed the Scorpion as my primary weapon for both my Assault rifle and Sub machine gun classes. I finished the map and did some more investigating in the Barracks. I found I had lost a bunch of completed challenges and some that I had been working on were now locked.

My teammates told me when things like this happen you're suppose to get off Xbox Live completely and get back on WITHOUT PLAYING. Hello! I think it was a little late for that.

So now I'm just over the threshold at the lower rank of 43 and any interest in playing the game has been killed. Don't they know that losing 4 ranks is over a week's worth of daily playing for me? yes, it takes me that long to level up.

I was starting to get excited about getting to the Prestige option at level 55. Getting to level 48 is so much closer to that than level 43. Now I have to do that all over again. I have a friends that's said this has happened to him several times. Now he refuses to play until they get the whole thing worked out.

I've been a pretty patient gamer during all the connection issues but this just takes the cake for me. In addition to the dip in my rank my expectations have been lowered as well. If it can happen once, it can happen again. Maybe it's time to start looking at PS3s.