Elite: Please tell me what it's best feature is

OK, I have done all the requisite sign up stuff and now I just need to know just what in the hell to do with it. I know you can set up classes and track challenges, etc. What are you guys using it for? Other then getting a bit of double XP and yellow tags, what's the big exciting benefit?

It is certainly interesting, but I'm underwhelmed.

I'm very new to this game (like 5 hours played) and I was going to try and learn the maps, but that section under IMPROVE is farked.

Am I doing something wrong?

Please educate this MW3 rube. Thanks in advance.

A lot of the elite stuff is "under construction" sometimes it works and sometimes not.

I want to know what are the cool extras for clan stuff.

I've been using Safari to log into Elite and it seems to work better than IE or Mozilla. I've been able to check out the heat maps, change class setups, and go over recent games.

But it's still not all the way up yet. Check out the enlistments, they have some XP and other competitions going on this weekend you can sign up for.

Elite has 3 facets, 1 being the combat record you are familiar with in Blops is there for MW3. Plus maps with flag/spawn locations.
2 a social network type arena within CoD. We have the forum, so this is relatively useless to us.
3. Competitions similar to contracts from blops ie most kills/caps/headshots/sticky's. There are a few up now, and it is supposed to be an ongoing thing. Some challenges are clan based and some are 'lone wolf'. There are video and screen shot comps if capturing the moment is your thing.

The real benefit to all of us that bought the premium/hardened is that we get the maps early and they are all paid for. Elite itself is kind of a gimmick but thats ok because thats not what I paid for, I bought it for the MP's.

Thanks for the intel. I too bought it for the maps, but I just wanted to be sure I was using it for all it was worth, which right now, isn't much as it is usually not very functional.

I bought it for the maps. all the other shit is just bonus.

I see no reference to the clan on my elite page. Where do I need to go to see any of that?

On elite page, connect tab, then should see over30clan, clan, and group tabs

I only see groups and featured groups...nothing for clans. Let me log out and then back in to see if it resets.

the Over30clan, clans, groups will be at the top of the page. and right under those it will say Connect Groups. Just click on the Over30clan when you have that on your screen. With how elite is it could be a while. I have it up but others could be having problems to.

I had to log out and then back in and it worked. The site is still VERY buggy. I couldn't even log out...had to wipe the cookie manually and then refresh and log back in.

Yea not alot we can do the there yet.

One thing I think we should start doing is differentiating between Elite (the free version) and Elite Premium (the paid version and what ships with Hardened). I'm currently on the free version only and am debating opening my Hardened Version to use Premium. Don't really see the point other than the maps, but I'm not all that into the game, so I don't know how much DLC I want anyways.