UPDATE: Elite service still seems to be intermittent for many users, who are reporting a wide variety of problems. They are taking to Elite’s Twitter account to post their issues.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Modern Warfare 3 has been out for a few days now, and it looks like, for the most part – so far so good. It’s received nearly unanimous acclaim from critics and has broken all kinds of sales records by taking in $400 million on launch day. So apart from Battlefield players spamming review sites with negative reviews, it looks like Modern Warfare 3 is going to be one in a long line of commercial successes for the Call of Duty franchise.

The only problem is with the Modern Warfare 3 companion service, Call of Duty Elite. The service, which is basically a social network for COD gamers, allows players to track stats, share recorded match videos, and find players with their interests and skill level for matchmaking.

But if you’ve tried to access the service over the past few days, you know that it’s not really working. And the users that are able to register their accounts are finding that there are some serious flaws with the stat tracking and other services.

Personally, I’ve been unable to connect at all. The one time that I was able to register my account and link my gamertag, I was instructed to log back in and Elite said that my username did not exist. Since that time, I’ve been unable to sign in at all.

Apparently I’m not alone in having issues, and the Elite team posted an explanation to the Elite status page:

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.

They also promise premium subscribers an additional month of the service free of charge, and they will extend the “founder eligibility” where new members can sign up for premium by one month.

As of right now, the service indicator reports intermittent service.

Have you been having problems with Call of Duty Elite? Let us know in the comments.

Here’s the full statement:

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.