Not even repeated alpha and beta tests could help Infinity Ward and Activision prepare servers for the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The servers are mostly down and players, streamers, and other influencers cannot broadcast on the biggest day of marketing for the company's biggest product of the year.
Live service games are far too frequently unable to take massive spikes in concurrent players, especially at launch, and as we write this, the annual killer app is not even immune. Earlier this month, Bungie's launch of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep was completely shutdown due to server issues as well.
The official Call of Duty channel is currently "investigating" so there's no clear reason or solution just yet. Some users are able to get in, and some who got in before it opened up to everyone are still playing. The PC version seems to be suffering the most.
Update: More players are able to get into Modern Warfare and you're mostly good once you're in. Otherwise, it could be a while before you can play. Welcome to the online-only world.
Update 2: Servers are coming back! Early and eager adopters only lost one evening.
This is precisely why some of the earlier, hand-selected reviewers opted to not publish a final score for a product that hasn't been tested on a real-life consumer-facing environment. In our Modern Warfare reviews roundup, we noted that a portion of the publish reviews were waiting to test multiplayer for real before submitting an official product score. The reviews for the Modern Warfare reboot are generally positive, but not as high as in previous games in the series.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) releases on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 25, 2019.