Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 3 online matchmaking problem

By Robert Purchese Published 13 December, 2011

Limited to unsupported Live regions only?

Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 3 online matchmaking won't work properly in countries not supported by Xbox Live.

PC and PS3 versions appear to have no such problem.

The official Xbox Support Twitter account told Croatian blogger John385 that, "COD: MW3 multiplayer online is only accessible if you're in an eligible Xbox Live region."

Croatia is not an official Xbox Live region.

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling offered a similar explanation, although hinted there may be more to it.

He told Twitter user Victor Bilan that, "With matchmaking you must look at more variables than just game code, especially when only impacting only certain regions."

"Regretfully no ETA at this point," he added, on the topic of a fix. "It's something actively being discussed and investigated. Talking to users being affected."

However, such a fix wasn't on the list of MW3 issues being addressed and/or discussed at Infinity Ward that Robert Bowling shared last night.

Blogger John385 claimed the Modern Warfare 3 matchmaking system was weighted to prioritise local players when searching. He then alleged that problems weren't restricted to unsupported Xbox Live regions; he said he'd heard similar reports from Malaysia, Norway, Portugal, Creece, Cyprus and Finland.

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 forum has a long thread of people sharing their online matchmaking problems. The thread, incidentally, was started by Robert Bowling.

But Eurogamer Norway told us it was yet to have any such problem come to its attention.

John385 has supplied a video of the specific problem he, in Croatia, experienced.

Eurogamer has asked Activision for clarification, but has yet to hear back.

Until we do, we'd like to ask you if you've experienced any of the same problems or have any helpful information you'd like to share. You can either post below or contact us directly.

Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 multiplayer performance.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 5 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • telboy007 #1 5 months ago

    I played this the day I got it, got up to level 20 odd that night and have never played it since. The online side seemed so shallow, is it any better? Are they patching fun back into it?

  • bemaniac #2 5 months ago

    telboy007 not really it tends to be a very grey and forgettable experience.

  • DefendoCroc #3 5 months ago

    Glad i rented it, played it for about 2 hours and took it back to blockbuster, utter mehness.

  • arcam #4 5 months ago

    MP not working for CoD is as big a bug as Skyrim failing in late-game on PS3. But I guess no one really cares about Norway or Croatia enough to make a fuss :(

  • Eraser #5 5 months ago

    So basically what they're saying is that online play on XBox 360 won't work in countries where there's no XBox Live. That sounds to me like Captain Obvious at work here, or am I missing something

  • arcam #6 5 months ago

    @Eraser People in those countries get an Xbox Live account from another country to play online. So this guy will have been able to play multiplayer for previous CoD titles, but for this one it doesn't work

    Despite what Xbox Support says, I suspect it's got nothing to do with it not being a Live-supported country.

  • Brakara #7 5 months ago

    Eurogamer Norway?

  • john385 #8 5 months ago

    @Eraser
    hi! john385 here, the author of the aforementioned blog/news.
    it's not a "Captain Obvious" situation. @XboxSupport was wrong about this because a ton of people reported this issue, even from officially supported XBL countries. There's even a dedicated thread on this issue on the official MW3 forums started by Robert Bowling himself: http://t.co/5pcO0Uxp
    Again, it's not an "X360 region" issue. The problem seems to be in the heart of their X360 matchmaking netcode that prioritizes local players over "distant" ones which is great, IF you have a good number of X360 that are near you. That's why the UK, Germany and especially USA don't see this problem because your "X360 population" is huge compared to Croatia and other "small X360 population" countries.
    This is the first time I've seen any title doing this. Strange...
    I hope, now that this has hit the news (and again, thank you Eurogamer), that they'll fix it somehow. But they should do it carefully, without harming those players which have a good connection/experience.
    Regards,

    - john385

  • Dr3amCa7cher #9 5 months ago

    Xbox 360 matchmaking works different from PC and PS3.
    It looks like on Xbox it search for games only in your country.
    Everyone who lives in small populated country is having this problem. On CoD MW 3 forum there are a lot of topics regarding this problem. Even one topic was open by Robert Bowling, but he never said anything about it.

    http://www.callofduty.com/thread/100570890?start=0&tstart=0

    http://www.callofduty.com/message/106092180#106092180

    If you type in matchmaking in search on forum you will get this
    http://www.callofduty.com/search.jspa?start=0&q=matchmaking&peopleEnabled=true&c

  • Recarnate #10 5 months ago

    Thank you, EG for picking up this major issue and reporting it. My brother lives in Aruba (Dutch Caribbean) and he has this exact problem. He never had an issue with Black Ops or any other multi-player game like BF3, Halo, GeoW ect.

    IMO, I think it has something to do with the net-code in Mw3, because there isn't any problems with previous COD games.

    Thank you again EG for reporting this issue.

  • drakerc #11 5 months ago

    There's a problem with matchmaking in countries supporting Xbox Live. I'm from Poland and it's region-locked - I can only play with people from Poland, and Xbox isn't very popular here, so it takes a few minutes to find players and it's impossible to find gamers in non-popular game modes like Search and Destroy. Weird thing is that Spec Ops works perfectly, it searches for players from UK, France and other countries.

  • Sp3ct3r #12 5 months ago

    @drakerc - Same problem here. It seems like i'm playing with the same people all the time.

  • DRUNK3N-_-DRAGON #13 5 months ago

    the whole fukn game is a problem! can i have my £90 back please?

  • yellowbl #14 5 months ago

    Whats this Eurogamer Norway? If this is the country Norway he refers too, that doesnt make sense! Its the same problem all over the world. The only parts that doesnt suffer is the USA and the UK, and some other bigh populated countries. This is not only for Croatia and what they call "eligible Xbox Live region", its all over!

    I am from Norway and could only play Team Deathmatch, Domination and sometimes kill confirmed since the release of the game. We play with the same boring people all the time, and when noone from Norway is online, we cant play, simple as that. Nothing too do with the connection setup, works like a dream in Black Ops, mw2 etc etc etc. I have tried 10-20 times address this issue too Robert Bowling on twitter, but he ignores it all the time. Also there is loads of complains about this on the callofduty.com forums in the xbox360 section. Its not only countries in Europe, its South America, Asia and so on.

    For me this new forced local matchmaking system is based on US clans getting feedback too Robert Bowling and IW. They just wants the best of everything and IW have got feeback from them and also the locked beta, where I guess only staff from IW was attending. We norwegians cant even play against scandinavians (Sweden, Denmark), our closest neighbors. If this keep on the 2013 COD will be terrific, whats next from IW then? Forced street matchmaking, only play with people living in the same streets, cause the feedback from Clan players cant live with the lag? I am a huge cod fan since cod4, and played it general for 70-100 days in-game time, never complaint about anything. But this is just too dumb!

    Also we cant participate in the Elite competition on the same terms as the US/UK players, not enough games too find. Thanks too Eurogamer bring this issue up, cause as regular players from small countries we are overlooked and ignored. Thanks!

  • Mentat_Idaho #15 5 months ago

    I've always struggled to find players in gears 3 and live in Asia. I wonder if this a similar issue? I can't be arsed to play with bots...