MW3 devs pull maps from Hardpoint while investigating spawn problems

Quarry, Rundown, and Scrapyard have been temporarily removed from the Hardpoint playlist in Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare 3 just hours after launch while developers Sledgehammer Games look into an issue causing less-than-ideal spawns on these maps.

Sledgehammer confirmed the maps’ removal on Nov. 9 via a public Trello board listing ongoing issues with the title, but hasn’t said how long the maps will be removed. Players on both teams kept spawning in the same spots again and again, and it turned into a big mess where everyone was killing each other.

This problem has been around since launch even though the developers tried to fix it in a day one patch by adding spawn anchors to help control where spawns occur. It looks like it didn’t make any difference, so they’ve disabled the maps while looking further into the issue.

Spawning is important in all modes, but it’s super important in Hardpoint. Teams have to hurry to take control of a spot on the map and protect it from enemies. If players keep spawning too far away, too close, or right on top of enemies and dying, it makes the mode impossible to play.

However, it’s not the only thing they’ve got on their to-do list. Other issues include problems like the minimap not showing if an enemy is above or below a player, players setting their field of view wider than they’re supposed to, and players placing the bomb at Bombsite A in Terminal in Search and Destroy from a spot they shouldn’t be able to.

All these problems, along with some strong complaints about the campaign, have led many players to believe the game was made in a hurry. This idea gained further traction thanks to a report from Jason Schreier at Bloomberg who said MW3 was made in “half the time” compared to its predecessors. The report and public reaction have since forced Sledgehammer devs to go public with a statement saying they have been working hard on MW3 for a long time.

Either way, it looks like they have a lot to do right now. Getting those maps back into the Hardpoint rotation is probably their number-one priority at the moment, but it could take a while. While many players have snuck into multiplayer thanks to the “New Zealand trick,” MW3 officially goes live in just over three hours from the publication of this article.