What you need to know
- Call of Duty servers experienced a bug that wiped out gameplay for weapons, Ranked Games, and battle passes overnight.
- To combat the problem, the Call of Duty teams suspended player access to Ranked Play and Modern Warfare Zombies while the bug was investigated.
- There is no time frame on how long it will take to resolve the issue or if player development will be restored.
- An update has been deployed to fix the prediction issue and restore player progress in affected games.
- All Ranked Play modes and Champion’s Quest for Warzone have been disabled until progress recovery is complete.
Update #2 (February 24: 12:31 PM ET): Ranked game modes for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer and Call of Duty: Warzone are now online. Players can access Modern Warfare Zombies and the Warzone Champion’s Quest challenge has also been reactivated. As mentioned earlier, the Double XP event was activated for the weekend. The end of the double XP event has been extended to Tuesday, February 27, and players can collect double skulls for the currently active Horde event.
📢 #MW3 #Warzone #ModernWarfareZombies Our progress tracking fix has now rolled out across all platforms. In addition to this fix, players will earn 2X Skulls in the Horde Hunt Event and the Double XP Weekend has been extended until 8am. Tuesday, February 27. https://t.co/c9SXmLmFIxFebruary 24, 2024
The COD team still has some minor bug fixes to work on heading into the weekend, including an issue with player-controlled cruise missiles in multiplayer patches.
Update #1 (February 23, 7:47 PM ET): The official Call of Duty social media accounts have announced that a fix has been implemented to restore player progress in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Modern Warfare 2, and Warzone. However, the Champion’s Quest challenge for Ranked Game modes and Warzone will remain inactive until the progress recovery process is complete. Double XP is also enabled.
🛠 #MW3 #Warzone #ModernWarfareZombies We are currently working on a fix for this issue. Players will continue to see development resume in affected games. Champions Quest and Ranked Game Modes will remain inactive until progress recovery is complete. https://t.co/xEPlidPgezFebruary 23, 2024
Original story: Early morning players logging into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Warzone were looking at an unfortunate surprise where player level and weapon progression were reset to 1. Along with player development, some have found their purchased store packs unavailable. Issues have been reported in Modern Warfare 3, Warzone, and Modern Warfare Zombies.
The Call of Duty team posted on social media that both Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone have suspended access to ranked play and player access to Modern Warfare Zombies while the issue is being investigated. Call of Duty: Warzone Champion’s Quest has also been disabled, although a fix has already been applied to downloads. Issues are actively being investigated.
📢 Ranked Game Modes #Warzone Ranked Game: Resurgence and #MW3 Ranked Game have been taken offline while investigating known progression issues. https://t.co/xEPlidPgezFebruary 23, 2024
First CharlieIntel This was reported on Twitter Skill-based Match Making, the algorithm used to balance matches in online play, was also affected. According to players, the matchmaking rules for Modern Warfare 3 were drastically eased and matches seemed easier to manage while the challenges persisted. While it’s still possible (at least as of this writing) to log into multiplayer to try Modern Warfare 3 without SBMM enabled, players will notice unusual behavior with player ratings and weapon progression if they play during this time.
Sledgehammer Games, the lead studio behind Modern Warfare 3, recently explained to players how SBMM works for the massively popular first-person shooter. The developers have even shared plans to create an experimental playlist to allow players to join matches without SBMM, though no date has been announced for the experiment.
The shortage follows Call of Duty’s announcement as the best-selling game of January 2024. The massively popular first-person shooter franchise from Activision is under the wing of Xbox after Microsoft bought the publisher for a record-breaking $70. billion, was officially closed last October. In January, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees, including many responsible for the development and ongoing maintenance of Call of Duty by Activision and Activision-owned studios.
Xbox also struggled to add Call of Duty titles to Xbox Game Pass, in part due to lingering legal challenges to the deal that limited cooperation between the companies involved in the merger until the deal closed.
This is an evolving story…