Are Dedicated Servers Ranked or UnRanked?
Only matchmaking to public games are Ranked (meaning, you have to rank up to unlock weapons to rank on the leaderboards), choosing to play on a Dedicated Server is UnRanked. Meaning unlocks are completely controlled by the Server Admin. They can choose to unlock everything or limit class restrictions to whatever they like to fully customize the experience. You do not have to rank up in Public games to have access to weapons in Dedicated Servers, you have complete control over what is unlocked for you in a Unranked Dedicated Server.
Does Modern Warfare 3 on PC support an in-game Server Browser? Can you also use matchmaking?
Yes! In addition to the public matchmaking system for finding Ranked public games, you can use the in-game server browser to find and favorite unranked Dedicated Servers to join, which can be filtered by a number of options mentioned above.
Clicky Me
If its how it looks by reading that paragraph, whats the point of ranking up... unless they have an exclusive hosting provider for ranked..