CoD players claim four factors ‘ruined’ Modern Warfare’s reboot

With Modern Warfare III just around the corner, the CoD community had a discussion on the reasons why the MW reboot didn’t reach the same highs as the original games. 

Redditor FunticoMike asked the CoD community what they thought happened to Modern Warfare’s rebooted series. With consistently high ratings for the original trilogy, fans wondered why IGN’s ratings for the reboots are significantly lower. The reasons given make a lot of sense.

While a lot agree that Modern Warfare (2019) was a great game, the rebooted series seemed to decline drastically after the first MW. In the r/CallofDuty subreddit, the main factor blamed for the decline is Warzone. While Fortnite, Minecraft Hunger Games, PUBG, and H1Z1 popularized the battle royale genre, many agree that Warzone “ruined” CoD. Even campaign missions which I used to get excited about entry after entry would become a disappointment for their mesh of Warzone gameplay that moved away from the classic Call of Duty games.

The reboot felt like a teaser to better CoD days but the actual finished product had Warzone written all over it. With the new open combat missions for MWIII, and Warzone mechanics that featured in Cold War’s zombies, the move to a free-to-play battle royale game made Redditors feel that CoD was an extension of Warzone, rather than being the other way around. 

The next factor is explained well by Redditor con247 who said “Skins and cosmetics ruined [CoD]. It’s no longer about selling gameplay and maps, it’s about selling a way to show off your skins.” While this ties into Warzone, it also accounts for the pay-to-win skins and bundles in CoD multiplayer. CoD has moved into a live service game with “minimal effort put into single player.”

The final two factors seem to tie hand-in-hand with one another. With corporate greed and different developers picking up the franchise to move it further and further away from what made Call of Duty great. Warzone continues to be a huge part of Modern Warfare’s reboot, with battle passes, cosmetic items, and “recycled warfare” to keep the CoD fans returning year-in, year-out.

Many like myself believe that CoD games are being made far too quickly and the recent debate on MWIII being a DLC for MWII says a lot against the hefty price tag and final product. Activision may be getting the blame for the Call of Duty decline from Redditors reminiscing about Zampella and West with Infinity Ward, but can the developer truly be blamed when popular video games all follow the same free-to-play, microtransaction formula?