I hear your frustration. I really like the game so I am willing to put up with whatever it throws at me.
Our servers are empty quite a bit, sometimes they play fine for hours and then someyimes they crash every other map. When they crash people go to a different server instead of rejoining ours.
Someday they will get the bugs worked out and it will be an awesome game. Remember COD5 took 7 patches.
The only thing that I like about Steam is that it does the pathches automatically. You don't have to search some where to down load it from and then down load it and then install each patch. Steam does do that for you. Not much help, but some.
You have to prestige (Level 50) in order to unlock the customs.
Once you do find our servers in the list or have a game invite, then save it to your favorites. It should stay there, but I have heard on occassion that it doesn't.
Good luck, don't get discouraged, it is just another hurdle we have to cross. And it can be a pain in the ass.
I didn't start playing online games until COD5. Just never had the interest, always working. After working 80 hours a week for 25 years, it took it's toll on me. So now I have all of the time I want. Not by choice. I am 52 and disabled. So I think that all of that hard work wasn;'t worth. Maybe it would of been if I was getting paid better.
I could never get into COD2. To me it is like playing cartoons. Look at the graphics for the same map, between COD5 and COD2, there is no comparison. COD5 is way better, but to each his own.
The main thing that there is always an XI server that you can play on at any given time.