Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Is Already A Mess

Ahead of its November 10 launch, Activision has given paying customers a head start on the campaign for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3." A retelling of the original "Modern Warfare 3," the new game's campaign challenges Task Force 141 to stop a terrorist plot headed by Vladimir Makarov before he can kickstart World War 3. The original "Modern Warfare 3" is often pointed to as one of the narrative high-points of the franchise, so longtime fans have been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to play through the reimagined plot. Unfortunately, now that the campaign mode is in early access, those same fans are running into one headache after another.

Scrolling through the subreddits for Activision and various "Call of Duty" groups reveals one player after another whose excitement has been diminished by one bug or another. Fans who have paid for early access are finding themselves banned for no reason, their character progression reset to 0, or that the game is entirely unplayable. Needless to say, it's not the most auspicious start for the latest entry in the rebooted "Modern Warfare" series.

"Call of Duty" fans were pretty stoked about Activision and Sledgehammer Games' announcement of the "Carry Forward" program. With "Modern Warfare 2," "3," and "Call of Duty: Warzone" all under a single umbrella, players are able to carry over character progression and certain goodies between games. That's a great touch for a live-service franchise like this — as long as the newest installment doesn't erase all of the hard work you did on the previous entries.

Unfortunately, players are reporting a bizarre glitch that resets their characters to level one after playing the "Modern Warfare 3" campaign. Some of these reset accounts are also seeing all of their hard-earned gear, including rare character skins and other unlockables, being erased outright. Those who have kept all of their treasures after being reset to level one are still getting kicked while they're down, as many are suddenly finding their accounts suspended upon trying to log back into "Modern Warfare 2." It seems the game's anti-cheat functions detect all of the loot on a level one character and automatically assume the player has used some kind of unlock tool to get all of it.

The developers are currently working to fix these issues, but this has also apparently had the side-effect of intermittently interrupting service for the game. At this point, players have not been shy about ripping into the state of "Modern Warfare 3." Referencing Microsoft's recent purchase of Activision Blizzard, one angry gamer remarked, "How are you worth $68,000,000,000 but have issues CONSTANTLY?"

The newest "Modern Warfare" entry attempts to shake things up a bit with the addition of Open Combat Missions, which aim to break from the more rigid mission structure of previous games. These missions present Task Force 141 with a series of objectives needed to finish the mission at hand, but otherwise allow players to complete things in pretty much any order they choose. Though Sledgehammer Games designed these missions to afford players a bit more freedom in how they save the day, some gamers are less than impressed. In a thread that's gaining some traction on the "Modern Warfare 3" subreddit, one player went so far as to call the new campaign "'Warzone' with cutscenes."

This campaign is basically Warzone with cutscenes...
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u/ItsmejimmyC in
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Another player remarked, "I'm struggling to keep playing this ... Fly into map/mission. Then you have to sneak around, collect vests, plates, guns etc. How is this ['Call of Duty']?" Other gamers are complaining about the inconsistent level design in the campaign, with some missions moving at lightning pace and others seeming to drag, as well as graphical issues ranging from cutscenes to gameplay.

Players who have completed the campaign — which runs roughly four hours in length — have noted that the open mission structure starts to make a bit more sense as you get into the game, and that the narrative later in the campaign is much more focused. Since there are only six of these open-world-style missions, anyone who feels put off by these more non-linear missions early on may still want to stick with it. That is, if they can even get the game to start up.

Some players haven't gotten deep enough into the game to run into the kinds of issues populating Reddit and Twitter. When attempting to fire up "Modern Warfare 3" on the PS5, a number of players are reporting an error message that tells them they need to have the PS4 disc for last year's "Modern Warfare 2" inserted to continue.

mw3 not working on premiere, "mw2 disc required"?
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u/Practical_While_ in
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Players began trying to find ways to fix this issue, including restarting the game and specifically selecting the early access button on the menu, rather than the regular "campaign" option. This wasn't a catch-all for everyone, though, meaning several players were simply out of luck (unless they figured out a way to somehow insert both "Modern Warfare 2" and "3" at the same time, which probably isn't the smartest call). The devs were quick to respond to this bug, releasing a software update that takes care of the "disc required" error. Unfortunately, now some players are reporting that their copy of "Modern Warfare 3" has fully crashed, and now they are receiving a message that urges them to pay for the $100 "Vault Edition" of the game in order to continue the campaign.

Hopefully this rocky start isn't a sign of things to come, especially as some players are already requesting refunds and vowing to wait until the kinks have been ironed out. Early access periods are great for weeding out odd problems like this, so perhaps "Modern Warfare 3" will be firing on all cylinders when it officially launches next week.