Infinity Ward "actively working" on Modern Warfare 3 weighted matchmaking issue

The Xbox 360 online matchmaking issue that affects low population Modern Warfare 3 territories is being "actively" worked on, according to developer Infinity Ward.

The issue, caused by the game's "weighted matchmaking" feature, had been absent from a to-do list Infinity Ward shared earlier this week.

But now, after insufficient explanations by Xbox Support - which tried to pass the problem off as a symptom of gaming within an unsupported Xbox Live region - the matter has the due attention it deserves.

"For those following this topic, we are actively working on the issue affecting matchmaking for players in low MW3 population territories," wrote IW dev "G IH A IN ID II" on the MW3 forum.

"Thank you all for your patience while we work on this. We are acutely aware of the frustration this must be causing."

Sure enough, "improvements to 'weighted matchmaking' to improve games for regions with low populations" has now been added to that original MW3 to-do list.

Infinity Ward dev "G IH A IN ID II" has subsequently posted a lengthier explanation of the MW3 weighted matchmaking issue.

"The problem with weighted matchmaking for those in territories with a low MW3 player base is that the game appears to not be expanding the geography searched correctly in increments through successive searches on the Xbox 360, resulting in matchmaking taking a long time or people struggling to join any matches for some of the less common game modes," wrote "G IH A IN ID II".

"The matchmaking was designed using a regionally weighted sesarch for many reasons: to ensure people tended to group with those nearby to optimise averge ping to the host; increase the likelihood that people played with those players who speak their language amongst others.

"We have an issue, however, in the case of regions with few players, since it appears too much weight is continually applied to locale throughout the search for active sessions.

"We are actively trying to fix this problem," added "G IH A IN ID II", "and are in contact with our counterparts at Microsoft (we use Live for matchmaking on Xbox, on other platforms a proprietary solution) to determine where in the process the issue exists and fix it."

"... care needs to be taken as we solve this issue to ensure someone from across the globe is not being matched with a lobby hosted in Los Angeles, for example, because this can influence lag for all parties."

Infinity Ward also announced plans to fix the PS3 hit sound, which should now be in effect.

PS3 voice chat quality has been improved, too, but "will not get pushed until the New Year".

Our thanks to Ivan for his help with this story.