The 11 Biggest Mistakes Modern Warfare 3 Made, From a Historically Bad Campaign to Relentless SBMM

Modern Warfare 3 2023 started out as a pretty widely hated game, and it was also in a rough spot from the jump. Activision went back on their promise to ditch yearly releases, and everyone could tell this was just a DLC being repackaged and sold for full price. It also did not help that there were quite a few major bugs and content issues upon release. But after tons of updates, Modern Warfare 3 is now a fan favorite mostly. Here are 11 things Modern Warfare 3 actually got wrong and still gets wrong to this day.

Let me know what you think about the game's redemption arc.

The campaign is historically bad, maybe second only to Black Ops 7

If it were not for Black Ops 7, this would be the single worst campaign in Call of Duty history. Not only does the story make zero sense with a bunch of random plot holes, but the gameplay is not good either. The missions are very basic, and the few open combat missions are really just bad excuses to use parts of the Warzone map instead of actually designing levels. "Modern Warfare 3's campaign fails in literally every regard," and it is amazing this was ever allowed to come out the door.

Remember, this was originally going to be the story expansion for Modern Warfare 2 if the game was never spun off into its own release. That means this campaign was always going to be this bad. Even though Sledgehammer was forced to convert it into a full game, they were not rushed and there were no external forces working against them. The campaign was just terrible on its own merits.

Zombies mode was rushed after Infinity Ward's original plan fell through

Unlike the campaign, the zombies mode was bad for reasons out of Sledgehammer's control. According to insider reports, Infinity Ward was originally going to provide the third mode for this game, but after disagreements during development, work fell behind and Activision brought in Treyarch to quickly throw together a zombies mode instead. According to leaks, the original Infinity Ward plan was going to be a new update to DMZ.

MWZ was then rushed to the finish line, and corners were cut wherever possible, which meant reusing the Warzone map instead of designing new levels. That is how the third mode ended up being terrible. Aside from the technical issues, it was just a bad idea in concept, since open world zombies does not really work, especially when there are people with guns wandering around in a zombies mode. It is kind of crazy that two out of the three modes at launch were that bad, and the multiplayer seriously carried the entire game.

Modern Warfare 3 had no original multiplayer maps at launch

This was thankfully fixed up with patches, but when the game came out it was heavily criticized for being the first mainline Call of Duty game ever to launch with no original maps. Every multiplayer map was a remake from classic Modern Warfare 2, likely because this project was originally meant to be DLC for the new Modern Warfare 2.

It was neat to see nostalgic maps like Terminal, Afghan and High-Rise recreated, but it was also frustrating to pay 70 dollars for a game with literally zero new maps. That was a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people who knew going in that they were paying full price for repackaged DLC, and that repackaged DLC did not even come with original maps of its own.

Even the launch maps that carried over were bad ones, like Wasteland and Derail

People like to forget about the really, really bad maps that were in classic Modern Warfare 2, and those maps were also in this game at launch as a result. Classic Modern Warfare 2 had all time greats, but it also had all time worst entries, and maps like Wasteland, Derail and Underpass were bad back then and no better in Modern Warfare 3.

Look at the bigger picture here. Not only were players paying 70 dollars for a game with no original content, but a chunk of the maps they were getting were already known to be bad. Everyone knew on launch day that Wasteland, Derail and Underpass were going to play poorly, but since there was no original content in the game, people were stuck playing them anyway.

Faster movement broke the flow of classic maps like Afghan

These carried-over maps were not designed for the movement of Modern Warfare 3. Classic Modern Warfare 2 is a much more straightforward game, and its maps were designed around that relative simplicity. Adding things like unlimited sprint, tac sprint and fast midair mantling meant a very fast paced game was being played on maps built for something much slower.

A good amount of the classic maps still play well with this movement, but several previously good maps just were not fun anymore because players could get around them too quickly, which screwed up the flow. Afghan is a perfect example, a fantastic map back in the day, but in Modern Warfare 3 the fast movement messed up the power position since players could reach it quicker and avoid the hot spots. If Sledgehammer had not gone so hard with free DLC maps afterward, there is no way this game would have become a fan favorite, because the launch map selection was rough.

The progression system may be the worst unlock system in Call of Duty history

Modern Warfare 3 probably has the worst unlock system of any Call of Duty game to date. Because this game was essentially DLC, Sledgehammer was forced to keep the Modern Warfare 2 progression system, where players had to use a random gun for a certain amount of time in order to unlock a different random gun, instead of just leveling up and having guns tied to set unlocks.

On top of that, Modern Warfare 3 had a daily challenge system where players could unlock class content by completing daily challenges, such as unlocking a new gun through tactical grenade kills or melee kills. The old fashioned approach of putting guns at set levels and letting players grind XP for them would have been simpler. This is probably more Infinity Ward's fault than Sledgehammer's, since the game had to work within Modern Warfare 2's existing foundation.

Carry Forward weapons were a good idea let down by poor testing

It was cool for Modern Warfare 3 to bring back all the Modern Warfare 2 weapons in addition to new ones, giving the game an absolutely stacked weapon lineup on launch day. On the other hand, Carry Forward was pretty clearly not ready for launch, because Sledgehammer did not fully test all the weapons before the game dropped.

A few carried over Modern Warfare 2 weapons ended up overpowered in Modern Warfare 3, but the more common issue was that a ton of these guns were underpowered to the point of being useless. What is the point of giving players a huge arsenal if half of it is unusable because it is weak? Even to this day, some Carry Forward weapons still are not good enough to keep up with the rest of the guns in the game. Giving players a massive arsenal at launch is a solid idea, but the guns actually need to be fun to use.

Launch day spawns may have been the worst in Call of Duty history

The spawns at launch were truly something to behold, and this might have been the worst spawn logic in Call of Duty history at the time it was thrown at players. It is still not entirely clear how the spawns got so messed up. They are not nearly as bad now, though they are not great either.

It might have something to do with the fact that this was originally a Modern Warfare 2 DLC and Modern Warfare 2 had rough spawns as well, but this game plays much faster, so maybe the spawn engine was just getting confused. There is no certainty about exactly why it happened, but it is certain that Modern Warfare 3 had horrendous spawns at launch, with people spawning directly in front of enemies, directly behind enemies, and Domination spawns flipping for no reason. Sledgehammer fixed it up the best they could, but the first couple of months were pretty rough.

Aftermarket parts were a strong idea broken by one outlier weapon conversion

The idea behind aftermarket parts is a good one. They work like conversion kits that players can grind and unlock to turn a gun into something totally new and often pretty wild. Most of these aftermarket parts were balanced well enough, but a few crazy ones plagued multiplayer until they were patched.

The most infamous example was an aftermarket part for the Reclaimer 18 that turned it into a completely broken akimbo weapon. Sledgehammer was clearly rushing some of these through development so they could use them to hype up new DLC seasons, similar to how operator mods worked in Black Ops 4. The concept is mostly well balanced now, but a handful of standout outliers messed up the whole system for a while.

There are roughly 50 different versions of Shipment and none use the original design

There is no clear need for 50 different versions of Shipment in every game, between regular Shipment, Sunny Shipment, Arena Shipment and Shipmas. Treyarch's constant Nuketown reskins were already annoying, but this goes even further.

What makes it worse is that none of these versions of Shipment use the original 2007 design. Going out of the way to include so many versions of the map without a single one featuring the classic, well liked layout feels like a strange choice. "It feels personal," honestly.

Skill based matchmaking is the one flaw holding back one of the best COD multiplayers in years

The skill based matchmaking did serious damage to the potential of this game. Despite all the complaints above, this is still one of the best Call of Duty multiplayers of the last decade, and it is arguable that "it is the best COD multiplayer of the last decade," but the SBMM was cranked up so hard that it was sometimes genuinely difficult to enjoy despite how good the game actually is.

It is comparable to Black Ops Cold War in that regard, another multiplayer that was well made with a lot of great elements, but one that was hard to enjoy because the SBMM was so strict it made it impossible to play casually. Modern Warfare 3 is the same way. It is a great game from a design standpoint, basically everything a modern Call of Duty player wants, but it still has the SBMM cranked up to a point that can kill the fun when someone just wants to kick back and grind camos like in the old days. If the SBMM were removed or turned down, Modern Warfare 3 could possibly land in a top five list of favorite Call of Duty multiplayers, which is a wild thing to say about a modern entry.