The author of this thread has indicated that this post answers the original topic. Yes definitely buy it, the multiplayer servers aren't shut down they are just not very populated, you can still find games on vanilla WaW as well as plutonium WaW. The community and mod scene is still very much active on here.

Steam Charts, Stats, and Live Player Count\n\n At the moment, Call of Duty: World at War has 278 concurrent players online and in-game. This is 63% lower than its previous all-time peak of 748 players achieved on 11/19/2024.