All 26 Call of Duty Servers Locations and Why It’s Important

The CoD MW3 server locations don’t just decide your ping, they can be a major factor in your performance. Where are all of the Call of Duty Servers and why does your distance from them matter?

When it comes to competitive shooters, Call of Duty is one of the most iconic. With a fresh game getting released pretty regularly and player numbers that can make or break an entire console launch, it’s huge. As you’d probably gather from that size, the Call of Duty servers have to sustain a decent number of players.

There are tons of different CoD servers locations that your game could be connecting to. Not to even get into Warzone servers, dedicated entirely to the Battle Royale spin-off title.

The CoD MW3 Server locations aren’t just a matter of how close you are though. Your distance from the server can impact your gameplay. It decides how high or close your ping is. this will have a big effect on how you perform.

The best CoD players tend to try and get a low ping, but can you do that without being close to one of the CoD MW3 servers? Professionals might have to move, but the Activision servers are spread pretty evenly.

This is what we know about the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 server locations. It’s where they’re located, how it affects your game, and how much it actually matters.

Call of Duty Server Locations

Before we can jump into the CoD MW3 server locations, it’s important to know what the server status is as a whole. How can you check it? Activision has a public-facing set up for this. You can visit their official site to see if your closest of the CoD servers is down or not.

For the most part, servers will be up outside of updates and major problems. If there’s an update dropping soon, you might see the servers down. You’ll know from it popping up in Call of Duty news. Otherwise, they do maintain pretty strong hit rates for up and down time. 

Once we move onto a new Call of Duty game, there’s often more server instability. Just because of the bulk of players hitting the Activision servers at once! However, for the most part the servers do tend to hold up pretty well.

How Many Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Server Locations Are There?

That’s if the servers are up or not, but how many are there? Given the sheer size of Call of Duty, you’d expect players to never be too far from a server. You’ll need to know where each of them is though. If you’ve noticed you’ve gotten a higher ping than you might expect, this could be the problem.

There are currently 26 different server locations! These are spread around the world, but with concentration in some very specific spots. The North American region has a ton of dedicated servers. Europe has a decent handful, but other areas like South America and Africa are pretty poorly served.

If you’re getting worse ping than you expect, you might be too far away from one of the CoD MW3 servers. Kind of like Fortnite servers, there are some locations where you just won’t be very close to one.

Is the solution to move? Well, there’s more you can do to improve your ping. However, your distance from them is still important. So where are they?

Exact CoD MW Server Locations

These are each of the exact CoD servers locations, so you know exactly how far you are from one.

North America

• Atlanta
• Chicago
• Columbus
• Dallas
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Portland
• Salt Lake City
• San Francisco
• Washington

South America CoD MW3 Servers

• Sao Paulo
• Santiago

Africa 

• Cape Town

Europe CoD MW3 Server Locations

• Amsterdam
• Helsinki
• London
• Madrid
• Moscow
• Paris

Asia Call of Duty Servers

• Bahrain
• Hong Kong
• Riyadh
• Seoul
• Singapore
• Toyko

Australia CoD Servers

• Sydney

Each of these spots hosts a dedicated server for nearby players. Everyone in the surrounding region is competing here. This can mean those right by these cities get the best connections to the Activision servers.

What does that mean for your performance though? It has its biggest impact on ping.

Do Warzone and CoD Use the Same Call of Duty Servers?

No, Warzone and CoD Server locations aren’t the same. Since both games (theoretically) should have enough players to need their own, they’re kept separate. This is good for reducing the load especially when a new release like the CoD MW3 Vortex event coming to one and not the other.

Warzone 2 and the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 server locations are separate. You aren’t on the same CoD MW3 Servers for Warzone, but they’re in very similar places.

Activision Servers

Activision, or Activision Blizzard, does quite a few big games, even with their smaller footprint in 2024. Call of Duty is in similar locations to their other games. However, they probably aren’t the same servers physically.

Games like Overwatch’s servers and CoD’s are separate servers, but there’s a lot of overlap in location. Since even Warzone is separate, it makes sense to separate out every Activision server location.

Nobody wants worse performance in CoD because Candy Crush pushed an update. The Activision Blizzard server locations are separated out to prevent games from impacting each other.

Why Does Server Location Matter? – Ping

CoD server location is a fun bit to know, especially if you’re right by the city. You can be aware of just how far your inputs in-game are traveling. How does it impact how you play though?

There’s one area where CoD MW3 server locations really impact you. That’s Ping.

It’s probably a line you’ve seen thrown around in competitive gaming. What exactly does ping mean though? When you’re playing an online game, both your own inputs and those of enemies are communicated from your device locally, over to the game’s servers, and back again.

It’s how you communicate and interact with the game. The communication to and from the CoD server locations is how you play the game; distance equals more space between you and the CoD servers.

This factor is expressed in ping. Essentially, a measurement of how long your game is taking to communicate with the game. A higher ping means you’re taking longer to communicate back and forth.

This can lead to unfortunate problems like missed inputs and your game not responding as quickly as other players. In close combat 1v1s, it can lead to deaths even if you input a shot first because the other player might have a faster ping.

What Can You Do About High Ping?

That’s how the CoD MW3 server locations work, is there anything you can do if you’re far away from them though? It’s tricky. On the one hand, there will be a disadvantage. You won’t be able to improve your ping beyond a certain point. You can make some improvements though.

Following best practices to cut down on lag is pretty important here. If you’re using a decent wired connection and have everything sorted with your hardware, you’ll get a better ping. This is great if you’re willing to make an upgrade. It will be difficult to get your ping down to something very low without being close enough to the Call of Duty servers.

Unfortunately, distance from the CoD MW3 server locations will play a role in your PC’s performance with the game. On the plus side though, you can still make improvements. The CoD MW3 servers are numerous too, so a lot of players will be located fairly close to one or another.