They're here!!!

Yes, Activision has finally released Clan Operations for Modern Warfare 3, nearly 4 months after launching their premium paid Elite membership scam.

So we can finally get down to earning some XP for our official clan, and unlock cool stuffs to make the other kids jealous! I'm not sure when they turned on this feature, but I'm sure I didn't see it Wednesday night before we played, and just happened to notice the new banner when logging off Thursday a.m. a bit later Wednesday night.

You can find the current and upcoming Clan Operations in the Compete section of Call of Duty Elite, either on the website or on the Xbox. It's just under where you normally go for Lone Wolf Operations (you've been entering like I told you, right?), and above the Events section. Scoring basically works the same. Here's the breakdown:

That's just one sample of the digital badges you can earn. They will vary depending on the event, but I just happen to like this zombie-ish one. Some events have actual prizes, ranging from silkscreened water bottles and hoodies to iPads and gift cards. Note that the top 50% get Bronze, and 250 Clan XP. That's all we need to push us over into Level 5, unlocking our Clan Emblem.

But before you despair, I should point out that they mean top 50% of entrants, and not necessarily participants. One little secret I have learned from entering Lone Wolf Ops is that you don't necessarily have to play to win a badge. For example, if 100 people sign up but only 40 make it online to compete, 10 people will automatically be in the top 50 without even turning on their Xbox. And if there are website issues leading up to an event or one pops up with short lead time, your odds of doing well increase dramatically. In one case, I actually received a silver badge for doing nothing. If I had only gone online for a couple minutes and captured 4 flags, I would have got gold. But that's a fluke. The actual number of players can be in the tens of thousands, but you get the idea.

On the other hand, cheating can also be an issue. It's not uncommon for the winner of a Lone Wolf Op to have nearly a thousand kills over the course of a competition, which works out to getting a kill nearly every ten seconds. For three hours. So I might as well show you a champion badge too, since we'll never be seeing one otherwise...

Man, that's a lot of XP.

But before you give up all hope of winning anything, I should point out that they only count the scores of the top 6 players in each clan. Luckily we even have 6 players, but one of them is Hardwood. If only there was one more person here who has the game, we could improve our odds immensely.

Oh well.

The first competition goes live Friday Feb. 24 at 6:30pm (EST), and runs 3 hours. It's for the highest total flag captures in Core Domination, so we should do just fine. The next one is Saturday at 2pm EST, and unfortunately it's highest total defends. We're all signed up for both, so just just show up during those times, and start earning us some points!