Summary
TheCall of Dutydevelopers explain how matchmaking works inCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 3Season 1, as the team commits to more communication with its community regarding online play. Skill-based matchmaking is a controversial topic among hardcore players in theCall of Dutycommunity, and Activision hopes to bring clarity and insight to the community into how this matchmaking system operates.
Season 1 ofModern Warfare 3andWarzonebegan on June 22, 2025, with a slew of new multiplayer content, maps, and weapons. At the time of Season 1’s launch, theCall of Dutydevelopment team promised to have a “conversation” with its community about matchmaking. TheCall of Dutycommunity saw this as a sign that matchmaking changes could be on the way, since many players did not shy away from voicing their concerns and frustrations with skill-based matchmaking.
Activision Explains the Call of Duty Matchmaking Process
AnewCall of Dutyblog postdelves into the matchmaking process in multiplayer modes forModern Warfare 3, and the development team hopes to work on improvements going forward with feedback from the community. Firstly, Activision explains that matchmaking involves eight different factors: connection, time to match, playlist diversity, recent maps/modes, skill/performance, input device, platform, and voice chat. Connection is the most critical and heavily weighted factor for matchmaking, with the time to match being the second most important factor in the process. Matchmaking works through connection and time to match, first since these factors ensure the player will have a stable experience with a consistent flow of matches while playing multiplayer inModern Warfare 3. A connection metric known as the “Delta Ping” is vital for determining how a player is matched to a nearby data center, since it considers how fast data will travel between the player and the data center in a client-server process.
Meanwhile, the game’s netcode works to reduce latency as the matchmaking process prioritizes stable connections and low ping. Since matchmaking takes time,Modern Warfare 3will work to place players in empty slots during active matches to reduce the time to match, ensuring that players do not need to restart the matchmaking process. Moreover, skill rounds out the top three major factors of theModern Warfare 3matchmakingprocess since it’s crucial for matching teammates and opponents for a match. A player’s overall performance, including kills and recent matches, determines the other players they will be matched with. This metric also ensures the disparity between the most and least skilled players in a match is not vast.
However, Activision understands that the skill factor causes skilledCall of Dutyplayers to get in matches that are hyper-competitive or “sweaty,” leading to less variety in their overall multiplayer experience. The current process causes lower-skilled players to quit out of frustration, leading to a negative impact on the experience for those actively playing the game. These negative impacts were felt as far back astheModern Warfare 3launch in November 2023, with many players voicing their frustrations about skill-based matchmaking. Activision will continue to test new methods that will help mitigate the concerns of the community.
TheCall of Dutytechnology team plans to publish a comprehensive paper detailing the matchmaking process and ping at a later date. What’s more, Activision will explain the matchmaking process forCall of Duty: WarzoneandModern Warfare 3’sRanked Play modessoon. These future posts should paint a full picture of what the current matchmaking systems are for both of the currentCall of Dutyentries.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023)
WHERE TO PLAY
The war has changed. Call of Duty returns with an all-new campaign, modernized versions of classic Multiplayer maps and an open-world PvE Zombies experience. The campaign, a direct sequel to the record-breaking Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, sees Captain Price and Task Force 141 face off against ultranationalist war criminal Vladimir Makarov as he extends his grasp across the world. In Multiplayer, the 16 maps that launched with Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 return with upgraded graphics, new modes and innovative gameplay features. In Modern Warfare Zombies, team up with other squads for the first time ever as you work together to survive in the largest Zombies map yet
