Activision posts update on Call of Duty Elite service woes

Activision Blizzard posted an update on the service woes for its gamer social network Call of Duty Elite. The service was supposed to launch on Tuesday with the debut of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. But the huge number of registrations and other issues brought down the service and users have had trouble accessing it ever since.

The outage has been frustrating to gamers who want to access data such as their career stats and competitive opportunities. It hasn’t affected the ability for users to play the multiplayer version of Modern Warfare 3, but it is embarrassing for the company because it billed Elite as a way to deepen gamer engagement on a year-round basis for the Call of Duty games.

“We are having trouble scaling the service to meet demand,” the company said in its post. “Many of you are trying to get in and, unfortunately, you can’t right now. You’re frustrated, we know it, and we know we need to fix it.”

The post explains that registration and login systems were crushed by too many gamers signing up at the same time. That part has now been fixed. But high demand is still crashing servers. The company is deploying more servers, but it has to temporarily limit access to Elite services on the console and web site applications in the meantime.

The update is similar to what Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Beachhead Studios, told us yesterday afternoon. The post reiterates that users will not lose their career stats from playing Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer. All game play data is safely stored in separate gaming servers. Activision Blizzard is extending the period for signing up for Founding Member status for the paid version ($49.99 a year) by 30 days.

Here’s the full text of the update below:

ELITE SERVICE NOTICE
Latest update: November 10th, 7:30AM PST

Since Tuesday’s launch, Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer has been working great. In fact, the amount of players online is even higher than what it was this time last year for Black Ops. Have fun — we hope you continue to enjoy MW3 to the fullest.

However, on Call of Duty Elite, we are having trouble scaling the service to meet demand. Many of you are trying to get in and unfortunately, you can’t right now. You’re frustrated, we know it, and we know we need to fix it. Our teams have been working non-stop to identify issues and resolve them as quickly as possible. Again, these issues have no impact on the performance of the game.

We want to share with you what we know at this time and what we are doing:

At launch, our registration and login systems were crushed by gamers trying to enter the Elite site at the same time. We have now fixed the registration and login systems, but we have found that the greater than expected demand is crashing servers. We’re immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system. We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We’ll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible.

As more users log into the Elite system, you may find that the wait to get into Elite is longer than you expect. We know how frustrating that is and we appreciate your patience. Many of you are now able to see your player card and stats, but if you don’t see all your recent matches or career summary, don’t worry — your gameplay data for your entire careers in both Black Ops and MW3 is safely stored, and it will all be available to you once these issues are resolved.

And for our premium members who are Founders, know that granting your status and delivering your in-game benefits in MW3 is a priority. Also, to ensure that every premium member receives their full money’s worth, we are immediately and automatically extending your membership to Call of Duty Elite by 30 days at no additional cost. If you’re still considering becoming a premium member, we’re going to extend Founder eligibility until the end of the month, and you will also receive the additional 30 days of access.

The Call of Duty Elite team will keep you updated at callofduty.com/elitestatus. Continue to check back here for overall Elite status or for a complete list of FAQs, check out our customer service site. We will also give you updates regularly through the official Twitter account, @CallOfDutyElite. Our top priority and sole focus is delivering the best possible service experience to our gamers and we’re sorry we’re off to a rocky start with Elite. We will not rest until Elite delivers the full set of features we promised you. We are committed to Call of Duty Elite for the long haul and are working around the clock to resolve these issues. Thank you for your patience and understanding.