Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has been teasing a nuke event and possible map change since mysterious bunkers opened up on the Warzone map nine months ago. It hasn’t happened yet and we’re looking over rumors, leaks, and what’s happened so far to speculate if Cold War Season 3 will finally deliver.
By
Aaron Sampson
and
Richie B
on
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has been teasing a nuke event and a possible map change since mysterious bunkers opened up on the Warzone map nine months ago. It hasn’t happened yet and we’re wondering if Cold War season two will finally deliver. There have been a number of unconfirmed leaks recently containing audio files referencing races, plague zones, Verdansk being overrun with zombies, and nukes inbound. These could be hinting at a map change, a limited-time mode similar to The Haunting Of Verdansk, or a season-ending event similar to Know Your History. So far, Cold War Season two has seen a mysterious ship carrying Nova 6 gas crash into the battle royale map and split apart. Zombies that players can trigger and fight by activating Trials computers have migrated from the Ship to the Prison and Hospital as well as started evolving.
In this video, we talk about how slowly the event has been progressing and the mixed messaging about it on official Call Of Duty social media. We’ll cover the audience mismatch between Cold War and Modern Warfare players and why the Cold War takeover is still having a negative impact on the battle royale map. We’ll talk over Warzone’s past events and why limited time modes are important. Finally, we’ll take a look at your comments and how you’re feeling about Modern Warfare and what Activision could do to keep Infinity Ward’s game alive.
Fans are hoping Call Of Duty: Warzone will have some type of major event between Season 2 and Season 3, which could happen in mid-April. Call Of Duty: Warzone seasons typically run about 10 weeks, with the current Battle Pass ending on April 20.
Aaron 0:00
Let’s talk about the new event in Call of Duty. I’m joined here by Richie Bracamonte. And we’re going to go over how odd the rollout has been so far what some of the leaks and rumors are pointing to in the future. And I don’t know if we think it’s even going to happen at this point. This episode is brought to you by Daylight savings, daylight savings, screw your sleep schedule. Alright, Richie, let’s talk about what’s been happening so far, because it’s kind of odd.
Richie 0:25
It is odd. We’re getting a lot of mixed messages from Call of Duty over on Twitter, about this whole zombie Outbreak, and possibly leading to some sort of bigger event like the nuke, the next season will end April 20. And that’s our that’s our latest date, like our big anchor day to see if something happens. But this point, it’s sort of mixed messages between ending the zombies Outbreak event and the future of Warzone.
Aaron 0:50
Yeah, how freakin weird is that that the zombie event ended before the zombies spread on the Warzone map, I’m trying to figure out what they were attempting to accomplish with that other than maybe push people to buy Cold War and play the Outbreak mode in Cold War. But you would think that their main mode involving zombies would tie into Warzone where the zombies are spreading. They’ve also just done a lot of really weird stuff. Like one week they tweeted that zombies were leaving the ship, but the zombies didn’t leave the ship for an entire week. And then just this week, they tweeted enemies with living and undead are all around the shipwreck. How many can you find? No, they aren’t. So like, that was tweeted out this week, and the zombies already moved to the prison and then they’re going to the hospital and they keep removing the challenge machines from places they’ve already been. And by the way, like so far, the zombie event has pretty much come down to a zombie challenge machine moving a couple 100 yards in any given direction, like every two weeks or something like that. So the rollout of this season, and supposedly with leading up to nuke event has been slow and bizarre and starting to actually wonder if they’re going to do much this season. Other than just roll out like an LTM at the very end between Season Two and Season Three, which as you mentioned, you know, given a 10 week credit season should happen sometime mid-April.
Richie 2:08
This whole nuke event has been rumored for almost a year now Aaron I found a video file of me capturing footage of the dam before you know before the new cabin and that was dated last June. This whole nuke event has been teased forever.
Aaron 2:23
So about that Activision, Blizzard’s chief revenue officer, Brandon snow just did a really interesting interview with Inverse, there’s some things that he was saying that made me think that either the nuke event is gonna happen, like in season three, or maybe some of these events are a little bit further out than we think one think he said was in the upcoming seasons, you’re gonna see some really cool new stuff that Warzone has never done before. He said seasons not season. So I don’t know, maybe he’s just really well media trade, and he’s hiding, you know what he means here. But he didn’t say this season, you’re gonna see this stuff. He said seasons, which makes me think they have stuff planned out for the next couple of seasons that they’re not ready for just yet. He then followed that up by saying something along the lines of if we were to check back with each other in about four to five weeks, we might be able to speak a little bit more specifically, four to five weeks is again, you know, mid-April when we’re expecting the Season Two Season Three changeover. So what this is saying to me, is that this is going to be a really slow roll season. I don’t know if a lot is going to happen in Season Two, it looks like they’re not even ready to talk about a lot of these events until the beginning of season three. So I’m now starting to wonder if more is gonna happen in season three in season four.
Okay, so there’s a whole other thing that we should talk about here, which is the way that this is being marketed. This nuke event is being marketed in typical Treyarch fashion. And what they like to do is they like to tease things with alternate reality games, they sent this like giant projector, I’m gonna hold it up here. They sent that giant projector to us before they rolled out Cold War and like we didn’t really know what to do with it and it was like an announcement that was gonna happen anyway. So that’s a very classic Treyarch they’ve been sending these like teasers about the Ghoul-ag to different YouTubers right now indicating like maybe the zombies are evolving. So here’s the problem with that the Modern Warfare crowd doesn’t really care about alternate reality games. Like there’s a very hardcore zombies fan base that you know Treyarch has that love this stuff, and they love all these little teases, but they seldom lead up to anything more than just like an official announcement, which is what the vast majority of Modern Warfare players care about. Also, Warzone is free-to-play. So the people who are playing Warzone aren’t really dialed in on these little ARGs. So example another example of what they did when they sent me that projector was Pawn Takes Pawn, which was this like giant sprawling, like mystery that happened across the internet that wound up showing that like Bowman’s kid was still alive, which was Ice Cubes child in the game. And then they did nothing with it.
Richie 5:06
I forgot about that era. And like, that was such a big like they fluffed up all that stuff for nothing really like I was like, what’s the bottom line here with Pawn Takes Pawn? And it’s like, oh yeah, the bottom line is Cold War’s coming out like, what are they doing with added? Oh, I totally forgot about that whole Bowman thing. And because it led to nowhere, like I thought he might be in the campaign somehow. I mean, it takes place in the 80s well after the first Bowman, you know, played by Ice Cube, but they run with that, at least as far as I know, nothing in any big capacity, but they really do like to try our gloves to play these like mind games, they kind of spawns from like, people who love to dig around for easter eggs and zombies. But that bled into like, the whole Cold War thing. And I don’t know if everyone’s buying it. And to me, it was just kind of like, behind again, I gotta go, I gotta catch up and try to put this together, through every YouTuber who got this care package like…
Aaron 6:01
And it’s just kind of another example of why the Modern Warfare audience and the Cold War audience don’t really belong together. This is not something that the Modern Warfare audience is really going to gravitate towards. So again, like, you know, we get a lot of user comments about how they’re throwing the Modern Warfare audience under the bus for the Cold War audience. It’s just another example, like the Modern Warfare audience, they just want to have fun, they just want to enjoy the Modern Warfare aspects of Warzone. And they just, you know, they just want this zombie event to be better than it already is more more along the lines of Hunting Of Verdansk, they really need to pick up the pace on the zombie event in the Warzone map. Nobody really wants this like giant slow rollout with nothing much happening until the end of the season. Except for maybe some very, very hardcore, like zombies fans who who like following these ARGs. But that’s that’s not the mass audience.
Okay, so that’s what’s going on so far. In summary, we know that the next time that a an event could happen, such as the nuke event will be mid-April. We know we’ve talked a little bit about the weird, slow rollout of zombies and the mismatch of audience. Now it’s time to talk about what we actually do know about the nuke event and all the leaks that have been coming out lately.
Richie 7:06
So for weeks now, we’ve heard a lot of data-mined audio samples from other game modes. Some include the Exfil mode that already happened, but others are kind of mysterious, and they come from people like Captain Price and all these new game modes that sound like they take place in a zombie-infested post nuclear aftermath of Verdansk. So it’s all a matter of when but these call-outs are pretty specific about plague zones. You hear Captain price in the voiceover saying things like, you know, it’s your last chance to save Verdansk and, you know, Verdansk is lost like you can either win or lose, and it’s all via a big nuclear blast. You know, it sounds like this mode. You can save Verdansk by, you know, stopping the nukes. And I don’t know, it sounds like a big a big mix of like, a Verdansk ending game mode. Also, with these audio leaks, we’re seeing some other game modes that might be kind of fun and more of a distraction. But like, we’re talking like car races or other sort of obstacle modes that require a helicopter or some sort of vehicle. They sound fun, but that’s probably all going to come also later towards the end of the season, or at least the second half. So up next, we have some comments from you guys with some constructive feedback for all things Call of Duty. Our first comment here from Dillon C on YouTube who says Warzone needs more events like the Halloween or Rebirth ones where there’s neither new weather time of day, a new map in general on top of the event where you can earn rewards. This Zombies event feels lazy compared to those events. I’m inclined to agree here because something something like time of day, it’s sort of a change. That sounds subtle, but it’s so cool. I love like nighttime or snow-covered map something to change the environment.
Aaron 8:49
What’s more zombie than nighttime, right? You see their glowing eyes better. It really like enhances the event. It’s what the Haunting Of Verdansk did, definitely miss opportunity. And again, the only thing going on right now is a zombie challenge machine is moving a couple 100 yards every two weeks. Like, come on. That’s not enough.
Richie 9:09
It’s a little lacking. Hopefully, it’s just cooking to something bigger and better. But kind of a slow roll to start with.
Aaron 9:16
We’re at low simmer right now. There’s not enough happening right?
Richie 9:19
We need a hard boil right now. Let’s go. Our next comment over on YouTube is from Player1 who says not everyone likes Battle Royale. What the COD developers need to do is allow a large-scale TDM domination hardpoint and other respawn style games into Verdansk. How about official death races where the squads battle that out and vehicles trying to make a one lap around the entire map. Aaron, I love this idea people already do this with or without being told to and it’s not. It’s not a mode yet, but that’d be so fun. The vehicle racing is always fun. In Warzone they kind of tweak the cars a little bit with their turning radius. But even then it’s still fun to just cruise around in a car. It’s always been fun to run out. People anything with cars in Warzone is always okay by me.
Aaron 10:06
And if those audio leaks are true the first set of audio at least that Richie talked about it basically indicated we are going to get racist. So I think we’re gonna get the fun side of things besides where they may have dropped the ball is when Modern Warfare launched and they had modes like Ground War and and they had the run war map set on the same map as Warzone, I kind of thought they had a chance to knock out Battlefield for the first time in a long time, like they could have kept expanding to larger big team battles. And they have created some new areas like my least favorite map Promenade in Grand war, but they really, really could take that further if they wanted to keep developing in Modern Warfare. This is another way that they can keep the Modern Warfare audience engaged is just take Ground War and rotate it around the Verdansk map randomly, something like that would be so much fun. And like who cares if it’s balanced, it’s just fun to the battle on that map.
Richie 10:54
In game the the map can just keep pushing from one location to another like during one match.
Aaron 11:00
Yeah, and they’re already doing this with Kingslayer Trios and a couple of other ones. So they are doing some of these modes, but they really need to do them for the Modern Warfare crowd and focus back on the Modern Warfare crowd and to me that says do Ground War in more places. That’s how you compete against Battlefield this year. Our next comment here comes from Super Cooper, they could have done much more Spec-Ops I would have liked more missions to play though it felt half-assed the old Modern Warfare two and three have lots of missions compared to the new modern warfare. This ties into another comment by Feelium. Good. Hopefully, the community is a step closer to realizing the obvious Activision doesn’t give an F about their consumers, other than their yearly money injection for a half-assed Call of Duty. Both of these comments touched on half-assed modes, which does make me wonder what a full-assed mode looks like in Call of Duty. I feel like modern warfare was probably a full last game. I mean, it was like well planned out for an entire year. Everybody’s getting it.
Richie 11:55
Yeah, I would say it’s a full-ass game.
Aaron 11:57
You’re right Spec-Ops was a side mode that wasn’t as good. Another way that they could keep developing the Modern Warfare community is take things like Outbreak which they just did in Cold War, Outbreak is such a Spec-Ops kind of mode, they could have just put that into Modern Warfare also, like make zombie-infested Spec-Ops mode, or just do that on the Warzone map the way that they probably should have you know, these are ways that that if they wanted to keep the Modern Warfare audience engaged and not feeling like they got cast aside for the Cold War audience their areas where they could keep improving, and hold on to their Modern Warfare audience.
Richie 12:34
I will die on the hill for supporting Modern Warfare 2019 there’s so many ways they could do it. I don’t know if they will, but this is just another one. I feel like Spec Ops could have used some work. I mean, half-assed is a pretty common comment, like it was half-baked at first it wasn’t even ready I feel and it was over. It was crammed with overpowered enemies and like impossible objectives unless you knew exactly what we were doing. And there was fun to be had once it got fixed and I ended up doing every challenge anyway. But yeah, compared to like Modern Warfare, two or three Spec-Ops. It was pretty half-assed a really cool part was how it introduced the whole Verdansk map. That was something that we Spec-Ops players had an edge on, it’s like, oh, when when Warzone and Verdansk was launched, like I know my way around this, you know, for a few weeks I had to I had the jump on people. But overall, I would say yeah, and the whole full-ass game that is Modern Warfare. Spec-Ops was a little blemish on the butt cheek there, it wasn’t perfect.
Aaron 13:36
This is a great analogy. We’re definitely running with this in future episodes.
Richie 13:40
I’m with it. Our next comment comes from Alejandro who says, Hi, my name is Alejandro. And I’ve been COD free for three months now. I feel great. This one hurts Aaron. But you know, it’s it’s a way for people to it’s how people play the game. This person could either just walk away from Call of Duty wait for Battlefield, wait for the next Call of Duty, or do what we do sometimes just take a break, you know, walk away for a few months. So Alejandro, enjoy your time off, come back if you want and see what happens with this whole new thing because that’s we’re all waiting for. And I know you clicked on that video to check it out too. So I know you’re you’re interested.
Aaron 14:17
So speaking of the next Battlefield or the next Call of Duty, the question that we would like to throw to you out there is if the next battlefield or the next call of duty is World War Two themed or retro-themed is that enough for you? We were recently watching a video by Drift0r, who by the way is having some health concerns. So please go over to his channel and wish him the best who was talking about all the evidence that Sledgehammer might be delivering another retro game. So in that case, let us know if that changes what you’re going to do next, make sure to head on over to GameSpot.com and GameSpot YouTube page. That’s where we’ll be posting these videos and covering the rollout of this new event which will hopefully happen mid-next month. Alright, thanks for watching, everyone.