Thirty-one days. Just one single month away from the day that Call of Duty fans have been anxiously waiting for; the release of Call of Duty®: Black Ops III on Nov. 6, 2015.
While most casual fans of Call of Duty will be excited for a new game to play, the eSports-side of Call of Duty is even more eager about the release of Black Ops III. It’s no secret that most of the competitive Call of Duty community was disappointed with Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare. This, combined with the past success of Treyarch’s last game, Call of Duty®: Black Ops II, has everyone rife with anticipation for Black Ops III. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeFbgEbFzv8 Back on Aug. 5, Treyarch developers hosted an eSports reveal at gamescom 2015 in Cologne, Germany and most of the community tuned in to see what the future of competitive Call of Duty will look like. Over the next few weeks following the eSports reveal for Black Ops III, all of us here at @eSportsNation wrote daily articles discussing a multitude of different topics about the Black Ops III beta and general expectations for the next installment in the Call of Duty franchise. To begin the eSports reveal, David Vonderhaar, the studio design director for Treyarch, introduced a lot of the new features implemented in Black Ops III. Vonderhaar reintroduced the new momentum based movement system and specialist system, while also introducing “Arena” as the ranked playlist that will be replacing League Play from Black Ops II. https://twitter.com/eSportsNation/status/628977914328023040 Vonderhaar then went into detail about the new Bans and Protect system. Similar to other major eSports, the Bans and Protect system will be a way for each player in the match to vote on either banning or protecting certain guns, equipment, perks or other in-game items prior to the start of each map. After the votes for the Bans and Protect system are completed, players will then go to the Specialist Draft, where each player gets to pick their specialist ability one-by-one, with only one player on each team being allowed to use one particular specialist ability. During the eSports reveal, it definitely seemed like this Bans and Protect system will be a good addition to competitive Call of Duty. For example, if you know that an opposing player is really good with a particular gun, your team can vote to ban it right away. On the other hand, if you know that one of your own players is very good with that same particular gun, then you can vote to protect that gun and prevent the other team from banning it. This will definitely bring a new strategic element to the pre-game of matches that has not yet existed in Call of Duty. Another new addition to Call of Duty that has been previously integrated into other major eSports is a live event viewer built directly into the game. This will allow fans to be able to watch all of the major LAN events for Black Ops III right in the actual game. In terms of the actual gameplay from the eSports reveal, fans were treated to a quick three map series of thrilling Call of Duty action. Eight of the best players from around the world got to showcase competitive gameplay in Black Ops III for the first time. We got to see Team TeePee and Team Kivi go head to head in a best-of-three series on the following maps.- Hardpoint on Combine: Team TeePee won 250-116
- Search and Destroy on Hunted: Team Kivi won 4-2
- Uplink on Evac: Team Kivi won 9-2
What are your expectations for the competitive scene in Call of Duty®: Black Ops III? Let us know by commenting below or tweeting us @eSportsNation.