Call of Duty is working hard on answering a number of issues that fans have been complaining about for years ahead of Modern Warfare 4’s launch next month.
Last week, Activision revealed it would be adding a toggle to only display MW4 operators in Warzone (to avoid having to see silly collab skins), and today, the company revealed it was acquiescing to another long-standing issue: double XP tokens will now only count down using in-game time.
Double XP tokens have been a big part of CoD for the better part of a decade, allowing players to unlock weapons and attachments faster and level up through Prestige quicker, but they always counted down using real-world time. This meant that every second sitting in a lobby, or at the main menu when running to the bathroom, was wasted. Now, it will only use the time you’re actually playing. It’s a good change, full stop.
My question is: what gives? Why now? What took so long to implement these things? Surely there were some sort of technical limitations or specific reasoning behind things being the way they were, but my answer to my rhetorical question here is that CoD is really and truly feeling the heat.
It’s not much of a secret that Black Ops 7 did not perform well sales-wise in the eyes of the company, and after MW4’s beta had a lukewarm reception at best earlier this summer, Activision must be feeling the need to really give players what they’re looking for to try and get them back.
I think it’s also likely a matter of competition. CoD has dominated the casual games market for so long that it didn’t really need to innovate or give in to every complaint. Last year, CoD directly addressed skill-based matchmaking in BO7 with Battlefield 6 dropping close by. Now, with Grand Theft Auto 6 on the horizon, Activision knows that it needs to somehow drag people out of Vice City and keep them spending on CoD.
I’m not sure about how big the player overlap between GTA and CoD is, but I’m assuming it’s pretty substantial. The same gamers who buy the new CoD every year are likely all waiting for GTA 6, along with the majority of gamers everywhere, if pre-order estimates are anything to go by. And speaking of pre-order estimates, I can’t help but wonder what MW4’s are looking like for Activision to be so proactive about positive changes before launch.
The biggest thing that I think will make or break MW4 this year is its DMZ game type. The extraction mode hasn’t shown much of anything yet, but it was a big hit in Modern Warfare 2 (2022) with its beta version. The mode popularized by Escape From Tarkov has since widened with titles like ARC Raiders and Marathon, and it could be a big separator for MW4 the same way that Zombies mode is for Black Ops titles.
I’m assuming DMZ will get a showcase or some sort of reveal before MW4 launches on Oct. 23, but the sooner, the better, even if Activision plans on continuously dropping good news every week from now until then.
Here’s hoping one of those good news bits will be about skill-based matchmaking…again.
