We’re just days away from the Early Access launch of the Modern Warfare III Campaign on November 2nd and the arrival of the full release of the Multiplayer version just over a week later and we finally have some news to share.
If you pre-ordered the game via Battle Net, Steam, or one of the console stores, then like last year with Modern Warfare II, you’ll get access to the full Campaign just over a week early and you’ll be able to pre-load the full game at different points so that when it goes live, you’ll be ready to dive right in.
Here’s what we know so far, courtesy of the Call of Duty Twitter account.
MWIII Campaign Early Access and Pre-Loading
The Campaign will become available to everyone around the world across all platforms at exactly the same time – November 2nd, 2023 at 10AM Pacific Time – for quick reference points, that’s the equivalent of 1PM in New York, 5PM in London, 2AM in Tokyo (Nov 3rd), and here in Sydney, it’s the usual 4AM on November 3rd.
It appears that pre-loading for the Campaign on PC is going to be somewhat staggered – formally, the Call of Duty account is saying it will become available for pre-load on November 1st at 9AM Pacific Time, but I think that’s just for Steam. I say that because I purchased via BattleNet and I think the pre-load of the Campaign just happened today.
Anyway, those are the formal dates and times, your mileage may vary, but if you’re keen to get a jump on the Campaign because you pre-ordered, best to pre-load.
MWIII Multiplayer Launch and Pre-Loading
This is going to get a little more complicated, so buckle up.
First off, consoles and PCs will have different launch times – this is because the systems the consoles use for pre-loading and launch is a little more basic than PC.
Let’s start with the easy thing – pre-loading.
Pre-loading for Multiplayer and Zombies will kick off on November 8th at 9AM Pacific Time.
The full launch of Multiple and Zombies is on November 10th at Midnight Eastern Time.
Here’s the catch… it’s different for PC and Console!
For consoles, it will launch at exactly Midnight on November 10th, whenever that is for you… in simple terms, my console friends here in Australia and New Zealand will get access a full 16 hours ahead of people in New York.
For PC players, the game launch is at midnight on November 10th, Eastern Time – so that’s 5am in London, 2pm in Tokyo, and 4pm here in Sydney… confused yet? Me too.
Quick note here for those of you not in the US, re-check all of these times for AFTER the Campaign Early Access because the US time zones shift and go back an hour to standard time during the first weekend in November… right between the Campaign Early Access and the full launch a week later.
Zombies at Launch on the New Urzikstan Warzone Map
An interesting side note to all of this is that we likely won’t see the new Warzone map, Urzikstan in the battle royale mode until the launch of Season 1 in early December if history serves, but Urzikstan will be playable in Zombies.
If you’re not familiar with the details around Zombies mode this year in MWIII, the game is a PvE mode played on the Warzone map, so yeah, we’ll all get our first looks at Urzikstan from a playable perspective getting to shoot some Zombies.
I wasn’t sure how they’d approach this but it looks like they are going to cleverly use Zombies as a way to massively playtest the new Warzone map.
