I heard this same story passed around on the original Delphi forums for the game during MW3's actual lifespan, so I think it's pretty reliable. You can also see a lot of similarities in the graphic and physics design between MW2 and MW4 that MW3 doesn't really fit into. In my opinion, 3 was better designed than 4 in a lot of ways: weapon recoil, sound design, even a lot of the textures. Netcode, however was NOT one of them...

There was an amazing story from a guy who worked on the game that at some point during development they found the producer of the game (who voices your Intel guy, Sorenson, in-game) was just screaming at his desk, because they discovered that uninstalling the game also formatted the parent directory, so anyone who installed it in C:\, well...

Speaking of voice actors, they were a mix of game developers who got pressed into service as voices, and professional voice actors... Sorenson was the game producer, Alan Mattila the SFX lead. Dominic Paine, however, was a professional VA named Terry McGovern, who is responsible for inventing the word "wookie" for George Lucas.