The Sad State of Call of Duty: Zombies in 2024

at a glance it may seem like the Call of Duty Zombies mode is in a pretty precarious position and today I'm going to use this whiteboard pen and this whiteboard to walk through a whole bunch of historical context about what's brought Call of Duty zombies to this point today combined with current circumstances to do with Microsoft and Activision and the individual Dev Studios to try and paint a picture of where we are currently and then we're going to project into the future and try and assess what comes next for Call of Duty zombies and whether or not you should be concerned I've got chapter markers in the description so you can click through to various points in the video if you want to skip ahead I don't want this video to be like 2 hours long though even though I've done whiteboard videos in the last few months and you guys have really loved those I want to keep this one fairly quick so I'm going to be trying as much as I possibly can to be rapid as I go sure Jan it will mean that some Nuance is lost here or there but please forgive me I'm doing it with the intention of conciseness at heart so in the buildup to mod Warfare 3 zombies specifically not talking about the other stuff for now I was pretty damn harsh on the marketing for the game I thought that what they were marketing of modare 3 Zombies looked very poor and specifically I didn't think that there was alignment between what they were showing and what zombies fans wanted to see or what non- zombies fans wanted to see I thought the marketing just sucked but I was willing to give the game itself a shot then I wasn't invited to codex see more monare zombies live at Call of Duty next well I won't see that at Call of Duty next cuz I won't be there so I wasn't able to talk to any trear devs I wasn't able to talk to anyone from Activision or get more of an understanding of what was going on behind the scenes what the plans were for the future Etc I was kept on the outside which sucks but for some reason Activision just doesn't like me Call of Duty probably realistically like if we're being honest with ourselves here took one look at this YouTube thumbnail and went yeah he's dead to us it's probably all it took dude like 10 years of working with this company they're probably like yep bye then the game came out and I really tried to withhold judgment as much as I possibly could initially because I needed to play the game I hadn't had the opportunity to play it early like those other YouTubers so I needed to actually get hands on and get to grips with it so initially while playing I was cautiously optimistic okay I wasn't letting my emotions get the best of me I was very much during my like 72-hour stream saying to everyone I'm not reviewing it right now I need to play it first before I can review it right and when I eventually posted my review I gave the game a 6.5 and a buy rating specifically it was a buy or skip video and I said I did think this was actually a buy I also said that I felt like through good updates in the future that 6.5 could actually rise to a seven and maybe even somewhere between a 7 and a 10 over the course of the Year dependent on good management of community expectations good communication with the community good actual updates etc etc Etc and in that video I said it's different to round based zombies but I think that there is stuff to enjoy here if you just don't assume that it needs to be the round based experience right so overall I would say that despite the fact that I raised criticisms in my review I was pretty damn nice to this game okay I was pretty positive the fact that later on about a month later when we got the red worm update I said you know what this is pretty damn cool I think it is rising to a seven now as predicted I think that that's a sign that as much as I don't think that this is the best thing since slice spread I thought that there was some pretty cool stuff here and that all really consolidates into this all important buy rating okay I take my recommendations to you my viewership very seriously and I am not going to tell you to buy a $70 game if I don't think that there is fun for you to have in that $70 game so this act of me saying yeah this might be one to purchase means a lot to me I take it very very seriously two months pass and it's a little weird because we've had that initial update with the red worm which was really cool but then we kind of had a lot of radio silence and it didn't feel like the zombies Community was really being communicated with in any meaningful way and after those two months had passed Midway through season 1 we get an update to the mode which is potentially from some people's perspectives one of the worst zombies updates we've ever had in history and I'm not being hyperbolic here I'm going to walk you through it real quick now the update removed the roof area of that one skyscraper which was previously one of the the best loot locations in the game it took away movement options for that skyscraper area so for example you couldn't repel up the Ascend cables on the nearby cranes you couldn't mantle over the top anymore like they just took away several ways for you to navigate that area in a fun way to outplay the enemies that were there they added locked doors that you couldn't open they added other doors that you couldn't open even with a key they just blocked off doorways like they made it significantly Less Fun to move around that area and this was all in the name of adding in the doabe boss which gives you terrible loot isn't really a fun experience to do and overall feels like almost something you do in one game and then you never do Again by adding doabe they also then removed Legion and not only did they remove Legion they took away all legion's troops inside the legion area so what previously was a really fun area to explore and also a really difficult area to move through as a player because it was an actual threat in your game even if you had tier three armor or whatever you still felt threat from legion's forces and his helicopter and stuff like that that all disappeared so that entire Dynamic feeling of being in a safer area of the map and then getting to that tier 2 area and being like Oh my God this is a genuine step up and a challenge and that's really cool all that reverence disappeared because Legion was gone and it was a vacuum there was also a bugged area of the map itself so it it was like there was this weird cut in the world itself like someone had been playing Minecraft and was terraforming or something and that patch introduced a lot of stuttering even on conso freezing crashing Etc and then on the non zombie side of things like the game was super busted like war zone was fully just not working you opened a Loadout crate and you would just crash like it was messed up was it literally the worst zombies update we've ever had I don't know I think that there's room for kind of interpretation and discussion on that point it was certainly very negative though from my perspective having played it and then come out of that experience going why the hell did I even download this like it was just a bad time and that left all of us thinking okay season 2 needs to absolutely kill it in order to bring the zombies Community forward into the rest of the year for whatever this game is going to offer it's long been understood that in zombies that kind of January February window of some kind of content update whether it's dir Eisen drer on what was it February 2nd in Black Ops 3 or it's a cold war and you get your 5 Bas Z but then you get outbreak straight after and it's just like back to back hitting you with really cool stuff it's really important to do that because sure the player base going to enjoy the game on launch but they're going to enjoy the launch game content and they're not necessarily going to be pulled into playing the live service aspect of the game unless you come out of the gates really kicking and screaming like showing them a good time and so player expectations for season 2 would be that seeing as season 1 felt extremely lackluster as we got through the season there must be a lot coming for the start of season 2 the road map for the season is revealed just a few days before it comes out and what a surprise the only thing in there for zombies is a ray gun buff and a scorcher buff everything else is multiplayer focused and War Zone focused and all that sort of stuff instantly the communities in uproar I post a video being like this is just comedy at this point this is silly and I I give you my thoughts and I say that I I think that just genuinely they're dropping the ball here in a really negative way and this is really bad not only do they do that though but this feeling of deceptive marketing comes back once again I talked about this a little bit pre-launch where for example Treyarch would say things on Twitter and stuff like that that would just be misrepresentations of what people would think they were meaning for example and this is one of the most egregious ones I think that this is genuinely insane that they got away with this and we haven't criticized them more for it somebody asked Treyarch will there be an Easter egg or story to this game and they responded saying story tick Easter eggs SL Secrets tick obviously if you ask Treyarch will there be an Easter egg the presumption there is that you're talking about a main quest Easter egg and at launch there was not a main quest Easter egg so why in your response are you saying Easter eggs tick as if there's a main quest Easter egg when there just isn't like it's straight up deceptive it is taking the most favorable possible interpretation of what that person said that that person was only hoping there'd be side quests and then you're like well yeah we've got side quests we don't have to tell them that we've got nothing else like it's deceptive and that feeling came back in season 2 because they started using zombies marketing techniques for the other parts of the mode making zombies fans think that there was going to be a little bit more zombie stuff coming and then they were like actually all the zombie stuff is in multiplayer in war zone and zombies guys get nothing sorry I don't think it was the same level of egregious deception that we had in that one tweet for example but I still think that it led zombies fans on in a way that stings when zombies fans then get nothing at season 2 launch other than a ray gun buff and a scorcher buff and once again okay because I know I get a lot of flack and have done over the years for being very vocal about my opinions of the game I went into the update and I played the damn thing I live streamed my thoughts on season 2 launch actually understanding what was there in the mode and what was new and what could be discovered Etc right I didn't just say it's bad and then not touch it I played it and I now can confirm it sucks ass it's great that they buffed the ray gun and it's great that they buff the scorcher they are both positive changes but why would I be playing the game like I'm not playing the game already because there's nothing to do like I'm out of content so just buffing the ray gun isn't going to really make a difference to me this is a quality of life change but I'm not looking for just quality of life right now I'm looking for content and that brings us to the layoffs situation so while the community was gearing up for all of this lack of anything in season 2 Microsoft who had just purchased Activision Blizzard acquired them for $69 billion okay they laid off or they started the layoff process because in certain states in the US and certain countries in UK and things like that different regions it takes different amounts of time but they started the process for 1,900 Activision Blizzard staff to lose their jobs to give you an idea of what that means for a company as big as Microsoft which is a trillion dollar company that's 9% of their gaming Workforce and you might be wondering well okay that's Activision Blizzard let's break that down into Activision and into blizzard because we know that blizzard don't make Call of Duty Activision do so let's get an understanding of who's being lost from where previous now blizzard boss Mike iara gone and you might think oh well I saw a thing from Mike saying that he was just like sort of hanging up his hat and he was done and that this wasn't related to layoffs or anything like that at all but in November Mike ybara told Jason shria one of the most notorious journalists in the space that and I quote directly someone will drag me out of Blizzard those are Mike's words and he said that's how long I will be here like he seemed and he gave the impression in just November just a few short months ago that he was there for the long long haul and all of a sudden these layoffs come along and he's just said someone will drag me out and he's out on top of that there is a survival game that blizzard had been working on for six years an odyssey project that has been cancelled it's just dead it's gone and imagine being a Dev at a studio an Activision Blizzard Studio working on something that you're are so proud of for six years of your life only for it to just disappear that happened let's talk about the Call of Duty and the Activision side for a moment if we look to Sledgehammer Games who are the lead developer of this year's Call of Duty uh Yep they're closing their Foster City office they're Midway through deploying a live service Title by the way and not only are they closing their Foster City office they've also lost 30 % of their staff that's an insane number it's not the only Studio that is closing though Toys for Bob support studio for Activision Blizzard they are also closing their office and they've lost 40% of their staff to give you a kind of flavor for the sort of numbers we're talking here Toys for Bob I think lost somewhere in the order of like 80 or so devs imagine your studio being 150 people right and then suddenly the next day it's 75 people like like it's just hared insane that's not all though alongside those two High Moon Studios another support Studio that directly works on Call of Duty supported Cold War for example has done a bunch of stuff over the years H mooon lost 40% of their staff and that's not to say that Treyarch and Infinity Ward got away with it either they also lost chunks of Staff in each of those Studios as well and that's just within the studio itself that's not talking about the surrounding Activision staff okay who also lost their jobs here there are folks in the UK folks that have been for example on the Call of Duty UK social teams things like that lost their jobs they're gone they're out people that I've worked with or people that I've indirectly worked with maybe I've uh talked to them on email before or maybe they've been part of that sort of chain of communication what little I have of it because again Activision just doesn't like me still good people who have been so good at what they've done and have put so much of themselves into all of this trying to make the best possible product for gamers and fans to enjoy they've disappeared it's 1,900 people in the blink of an eye but it's not just people that were kind of comfy and cushy in their jobs and they'd been there forever and that was that right in many cases these were people who over the last year had been forced to return to office just recently because they had been able to work remotely during the pandemic and companies like Sledgehammer had said you have to come back to work in the office with this return to office mandate or you lose your job and then mere months later those same people who in certain instances may have had to move across the country move States or just move house in order to be able to actually get to that office since joining the company during the pandemic or working there prior but then moving to a remote system during those people who have just uprooted their lives in the name of trying to create the best possible work for f fans that they could they have been slapped in the face by being forced back and then laid off directly afterwards it's sickening that particular aspect of this is so disgusting and I I will make a separate video talking about that in more depth from a less emotional and more journalistic perspective I think because it needs to be talked about more because it is absolutely horrendous and I think that it's important that we as players of the game understand some of the horrendous things that management chooses to do this isn't something that they uh are forced into right this is management decisions that they force upon the poor developers making the damn games and there is so much ey for developers online people saying oh the devs themselves are the problem here in so many ways so often it is the board it is the executive level it is the management level doing things like this and then laying people off it's grotesque and I think that it would serve us all better to better understand that but let's keep moving here another little addition to all of this was the Esports side of things so there was recently A CDL major Cale has several Majors through the year the Call of Duty league and there was recently the major one event that took place just a few weeks ago and 2 Days Later staff found out that they were being laid off and a significant number of those staff as well to the point that rumors started spreading that this was the end of the CDL entirely there then had to be some statements made saying actually it's a restructure and a new strategy that's being created but overall very very bad signs for the future of the Call of Duty League competitive Call of Duty in general and also just the Goodwill of the people working so tirelessly to try and not create an amazing game in this instance but to try and create amazing watchable experiences of those games games that's also in the toilet so let's start connecting just a couple Dots here we have an environment of very cautious optimism and some promising stuff in Modern Warfare 3 towards the beginning we then have stuff going in a very negative direction as time goes by and then we are hit with the news that suddenly all these people are losing their jobs and therefore there are 50% less people to actually work on the stuff that we're wanting it's not looking good right then comes along the news that Treyarch lead developers of the Duty Zombies mode in general right but also lead developers interestingly on this game which was a surprise to people because it's an Infinity Ward IP and it's a sledgehammer Call of Duty and yet Treyarch are the ones doing the zombies and we all sort of thought oh well that's pretty good because we like Treyarch zombies but Treyarch have now moved on they are no longer lead developers of the Zombies mode there's been no Fanfare about this there's been no official Declaration of this this has just happened in secret despite the fact that it was marketed when they were on it but now that they're off it they're not telling us I don't like it in their place I'd like to remind you that High Moon Studios just lost 40% of their staff and they are now lead developers of Modern Warfare Zombies yay so maybe you're asking yourself why right why is this happening it's pretty simple Treyarch over the last several years have not had really any dedicated time to make the game that they wanted to make uninterrupted because other Studios have seemingly needed fires putting out with their projects which only Treyarch was capable of doing let's break down exactly what this has meant in actual game terms so Treyarch last developed Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War in 2020 which had a weird development cycle because of the pandemic and because of various factors we were all surprised by what we got with cold war it was a lot better than expected given the conditions so credit where it's due right Treyarch made the Black Ops cold war base game in the Years leading up to that and then launched that in 2020 through 2021 they had to make the Cold War DLC season also in 2021 they had to develop Vanguard zombies because once again other Studios were not seemingly able to create a third mode for their game that they should have done because it was their turn in the development cycle so Treyarch had to step in put some fires out and develop Vanguard zombie during 2021 then in 2022 they had to support Vanguard zombies and don't get me wrong Vanguard zombies didn't get a massive amount of support but there was still updates being made there was still stuff that had to be recorded and animated and created and mapped Etc in order to give us what we got that year so that was work done in 2022 then in 2023 the Modern Warfare 3 zombies experience was launched which obviously needed to be developed through 2023 then in 2024 now we've got the modern Warfare 3 Zombies DLC season currently ongoing which triarch has up until now been supporting and they've also got an entire game coming out at the end of 2024 which in 2025 is going to have its own entire DLC season and in 2025 they're launching Black Ops 2 remastered seemingly according to leagues and that is going to have its own DLC season in 2026 where on Earth do Treyarch devs take a vacation Can you spot the VAC anywhere in here I can't this is hellish this is an insane slate of projects that they've worked on that they've been forced to work on by Activision and by mismanagement at other Studios I think that that's a fair thing to say and this is It's just nuts when you actually break it down there is just no window in here where 100% of their Studio could have just been heads down focused on what they wanted to do and I know that there will be people in the comments saying but wait Milo like during the Vanguard DLC in 2022 they could easily have just only put like one Dev on that and so it would have been really easy to just have 99% of the studio focus on their stuff right but remember that Modern Warfare 3 zombies had to come out that next year so some percentage of the studio would have also been working on that as well and it would have led to this consistent fracturing of the overall Treyarch efforts to create what they're trying to create for 2024 because they've got to think about all this other stuff that's got to happen beforehand like historically in terms of the numbers of people working on zombies we've had campaigns that triarch have worked on and the campaign team has then been able to Pivot to help work on zombies and support zombies once the game has come out right but now we've had all these other things happening which haven't been happening at the same time of a Treyarch campaign team being able to Pivot to work on their other zombies projects right they just need to find people from nowhere so presumably it's the people working on zombies that are not part of that core campaign team that are then pulled off to all these other projects who does that leave working on zombies guys it's looking pretty bad and so it makes total sense that High Moon would now come in to lead development for this year because Treyarch has a blooming game that they're trying to put out and if they're trying to make the DLC season for Modern Warfare 3 zombies then obviously that's going to massively detract from their possible efforts for Black Ops golf War so that's why this is happening but the problem is Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 the 2023 game was sold as a $70 video game and it was sold at $70 with the players understanding that Treyarch were developing the Zombies mode and that there would be updates through the entire year they had things for zombies players old and new to really sink their teeth into and crucially it wasn't going to be just another Vanguard but I would contest and if you're uh my biggest hater right thank you for watching this for the video drop a like if you enjoyed it if you're my biggest hater if you're the person at Activision that doesn't like me and keeps me barred from all these Treyarch events then good on you man you're really cool but if that's you right I just want you to run this little thought experiment for me if you said to fans at launch Treyarch are developing the first season of Modern Warfare 3 zombies and will then stop touching the mode do you think that would change decisions made by the player on whether or not they actually want to buy this product right do you think that the honesty there saying that Treyarch are only developing the launch content for this and then we're going to farm it out elsewhere do you think that when you're making the promise of Treyarch's input and then Treyarch's input is actually not present for 11 of the 12 months of the season of this game's existence do you think that that might influence people's purchasing decisions right and do you think that maybe by hiding that information from them you're actually being disingenuous because I think no matter how Draconian you are no matter how much of a lizard you are at the very top of the Activision food chain right I think that there is absolutely no way in hell that if you compare what we were sold for this game the promise of this game with the result and what's actually happening there is no way you would say that it was accurately represented what we were going to get and then what we've actually received and will be receiving I just don't think that the two things line up and a big part of this comes from the very first thing I said in this video which is that here I was cautiously optimistic yes but I was slating the marketing for the game because I felt like it didn't speak to zombies fans I felt like it didn't speak to non- zombies fans so it was serving nobody and I felt like it was did I write it down somewhere he it felt deceptive and all these months later now I as someone who tried to encourage zombies players who predominantly like round based zombies that audience right I was speaking to them I was saying to them I really think you should give the game a chance here okay if you're willing to play it a little differently to round base then you're willing to approach it with open eyes I was saying give it a buy right and me saying give it a buy means a lot to me because I don't say that lightly I don't just throw that around I genuinely was under the impression we were getting a year of Treyarch development on a Zombies mode that was going to be really well supported right consistently supported and then we got all those rumors of of round based right do you remember that let's just unpack the whole round based Rumor for a moment do you remember at Call of Duty next that's the event that I wasn't invited to Treyarch seemingly told a bunch of zombies YouTubers like C name Pizza I think and Mr D JD I think and a handful of others right they told them that there'd be something for round-based fans to enjoy in 2024 or some point they they were cooking something and they made it seem really exciting right I'd just like to dig into this a moment not to put any blame on someone like pizza or Jon's shoulders here kind of actually the opposite because I think that it could be easy to assign culpability to them for saying we're going to get a certain thing and then it very much seeming like actually no we're not getting the thing because clearly Treyarch are not making a round based Zombies mode right now because they've just left the project right so I think it would be very easy to assign culpability to to those guys that were at the event but let's take a little step back and think Ah that's interesting because no matter what you think about them Shilling the game and stuff the information itself came from Activision so this means the Activision Blizzard Treyarch whoever right decided that instead of putting out their own statement saying we Treyarch have cool stuff coming for zombies fans who like round based in 2024 or in season 1 or whatever instead we are not going to comment on it publicly at all which really frustrated me that they never put out a proper statement about this they only did it through people like pizzza and John and stuff like that and at the time I was mystified as to why they might be doing that but I realized now huh if I was trying to be a wriggly little worm and I was trying to kind of get people hyped for something but then actually wiggle my way out of that promise later on I would make that promise through a source who people could easily assigned blame to as being unreliable because the source was wrong instead of the original comments from the studio being wrong do you know what I mean I feel like maybe a lawyer at Activision somewhere sat back at their desk and when I've cracked the code instead of promising stuff in our official marketing and being legally liable if we lie we can just make YouTubers lie for us and that's absolutely not to be crystal clear here because I know that people can misinterpret stuff easily that's not me saying someone like like pizza or whatever lied when they said anything about round Bas zombies I'm not saying that okay maybe pizza's going to be sent this clip and someone's going to say to Pizza Milo's calling you out I'm not I'm actually doing the opposite right I'm saying I think that if I was in that position if I'd been at codex right and I'd been told these things with the intent that they would be then like published to the world right if I was being told something by triarch and and and and I was putting my name behind it and then this 180 happened I feel used and I'm going to be honest guys irrespective of all the codn stuff just based on the fact that this happened where I was like guys I think you should buy the game because it seems like it's fun I now feel used as well I feel like I've been deceived and I've accidentally deceived you guys into thinking that this would be a certain type of game this year a certain type of live service experience a certain type of continuously updated uh uh DLC season and stuff like that I feel like the wool has been pulled over my eyes and as a result I've then helped proliferate that to you and I feel bad and it's it's it's really weird it's a difficult position to be in because with all of this stuff happening I have a huge amount of Sympathy for the devs right and the solution to uh massive layoffs at Treyarch right is not to say okay I'm never going to play a Treyarch game ever again because that if we take aam's Razer to its final kind of reduction just means that eventually Treyarch itself is all laid off like if nobody plays the games voila case closed so I can't say I'm not going to play it or I'm not going to cover it like I don't think a boycott is what's appropriate here but at the same time by promoting it and being positive and trying to be fair but then having the wool pulled over my eyes because the marketing isn't being fair to me I then feel like I'm doing a disservice to you and it sucks these round based rumors and all of the stuff Rel related to that that Treyarch was supposedly working on even if it manifested now in 3 months and we got some kind of round based experience and they sort of finagled it as saying oh yeah Treyarch actually worked on this last year before they stopped working on the moat like even if they try and pull that wool over our eyes once again I'm just going to be sitting here going I can't trust anything you say like I just can't trust a word of it and you can argue well Milo you're just being jaded and that's valid but I think that one man's jaded is another man's wise and I think that the wisdom that I've gained from all of this the lived experience that I've gained from all of this and my last 15 years by the way of covering this game on YouTube I've been here a really long time I didn't start with this facial hair believe me the outcome of all of this what I've learned from the way the Activision operates is that it's simply a bad idea and this feels awful to say as a fan of the mode but it's a bad idea to actually believe what they're saying a lot of the time they'll make a promise and there'll be some kind of of jimmied awkward way that they get out of it and I'm left sort of going oh but but but but I was a fan of that and I I and I paid for that and it it doesn't happen or it happens and it's the least possible favorable interpretation of the thing that was promised in the first place the most minimal interpretation possible and it just feels like it feels like oh don't worry because there's another Cod coming out next year so you'll forget about it I don't I haven't forgotten about any of this I've been doing this such a long time and I've made it my job and I'm in this awkward position of trying to be positive and trying to be optimistic and trying to be truthful but then feeling like I'm being deceived and feeling like I'm deceiving indirectly and it's just like I think the only thing I can possibly do is to make videos like this one trying to make absolutely abundantly clear that this is a mess and this is a mess that I don't know how best to navigate I can only try and do it truthfully and I can only try and do it with my my moral Integrity in check but as it stands it's extremely difficult to know how to find a path through here where I'm still delivering the content that you guys want while also not just blindly promoting microtransactions from a $69 billion company that treats its stuff like crap it's icky and the fact that I make videos about this game for a living is like oh it's so weird dude it's like critical Soul death right here because every time I say something positive about Cod I'm promoting it and that means that through the wonders of capitalism I am promoting this I'm greenlighting this indirectly and so are you every time you buy a skin every time you buy another couple of cod points or whatever right and that it feels gross and so with all of this in mind now now that we've got a lot of context as to what the the situation is that's led us up to this specific point I want to turn our lens to the future of Call of Duty zombies well that that means is that all of this is past stuff here and these four green blobs are our future it starts off with Mod Warfare 3's DLC season for zombies this year my current again attempted Fair take which is intended not to be overly pessimistic despite the fact that I think a lot of this is very negative I'm trying to return to a more neutral position here to deliver a prediction okay because there's no point predicting something negative or positive I might as well predict something that I think is accurate right I think that over the next month we will basically have nothing happen in the Zombies mode worth talking about right I will be posting probably other videos on other games because I need to make a living and I need to put food on the table and pay my team and I'm uh terrified of the fact that there's significantly less zombies content this year than I signed up for so I'll be posting some other bits and pieces and I don't think this month there's going to be a lot to do then in season 2 reloaded we are going to get what I think is going to be about a day's worth of play time and I don't mean 24 hours was I mean playing the game on that day I think that's what the update is going to contain it's going to contain a new Rift which will have a new little Easter eggy type Quest like we had with the first Rift and that will probably follow a reused structure to the original one I don't think it's going to be a whole load of brand new stuff I think it's going to be reused stuff based on foundations that triarch laid that High Moon are now going to be attempting to work with and learn from and reimplement and there'll be a couple of other bits and pieces in there and I think that the highlight of season to reloaded in the DLC season is going to be the Cinematic cut scene that we get for the story Mission and it's going to be the continuation of the zombie story that's going to be the peak of season 2 reloaded in my opinion and then I think what's likely at this point is that there's just not going to be enough time between season 2 reloaded and season 3 launch for them to develop content enough for season 3 launch to feel really spectacular and especially because High Moon are down 40% of their staff and especially because overall morale is going to be in the absolute toilet I can't imagine people at High Moon are going to be able to just jump in with this and develop a whole crazy amount of content overnight in fact I think that High Moon losing their staff combined with some Treyarch staff also being let go is a critical loss because in game development and just in general right when you're writing code you're meant to comment your code you're meant to as you go explain what things do and what they are and how it all works so that in the future someone else could read that code and go okay I understand this function does this and this does that and okay I get it right the problem is Game Dev is Scrappy as you can see from all this stuff there's a lot of Game Dev happening in a very short window of time and so sometimes your Cod comments aren't perfect and sometimes they're not there at all and so it wouldn't shock me whatsoever if the remaining 60% of the high moon staff jump in with the work that Treyarch have done which is not on their engine by the way so they're scrappily trying to put together a Zombies mode in the IW engine they're going to have messy code I'm guaranteeing it I'm sure but High Moon are then going to have to jump in and figure out hieroglyphic C what their own colleagues might have known that got laid off or what the Treyarch devs that wrote that code might have known who are no longer working on the mode or who have also been let go it doesn't sound ideal right combined with the fact that some of those staff have had their best mates at the studios or the other Studios the other Activision Studios forced to return to office and then laid off immediately after morale is going to be so bad right now I simply cannot believe that between season 2 reload and season 3 we get anything meaningfully good nothing I think that season 3 is going to be a total dud and then season 3 Reloaded might have a little sprinkle of bits and pieces similar to season 2 reloaded and there'll probably be another cut scene and the cut scene will be sick because remember those cut scenes take like two freaking years to make like they are extremely intensive they cost a lot of money and so that stuff that I imagine is going to be really spectacular because it's Treyarch's story I don't think H mooon are going to take over story development right although I did just see that Treyarch have lost some of their writing staff I think a a junior writer maybe at Treyarch was Leto I saw someone on Twitter something like that so I mean it's not looking good however you slice it but I think in general the gameplay side of things is going to feel a bit lackluster and I think that that's going to kind of repeat and dwindle towards the end of the year because I mean DMZ right had a really really Rocky year where it felt like there were little things added towards the beginning but then as time went by it was a little frustrating that more wasn't being added and more of the potential wasn't being realized and I think that mod Warfare 3 zombies are going to experience a similar fate where there is genuinely so much potential for this sandbox of this mode I just think that it's not the choice of what they're going to work on which sucks because we paid for it with the assumption that they would choose to work on it because we gave them our freaking money but that's apparently not good enough right so I think that the DLC season for this game is chalked maybe we get a cool thing maybe we get a round based like mini experience within the mode I don't think we're getting a round based map because Trio's not working on the mode so like who's going to do it but I think that there might be some little bits here and there that they'll drum up as like oh yeah this is cool but realistically we know it's not cool because we were promised a year and we've gotten a day every 2 months of that year of content and it's just it's just going to be less than it could have been right so that's what I think the DLC season more or less is going to be and if I was asked now about my original buy status for the game I would say Skip and that wounds me because I want people to love zombies and I want new people to come into zombies but I don't feel like I personally can recommend a Buy on a product that feels like it has baited and switched us to the degree that it has I personally morally don't think I can do that if you want to play the game by all means please do 100% get into it have fun like use my guides to do all the stuff obviously haha but like amazing I'm not trying to dissuade you from playing it I'm just saying that from my recommendation because I've got a lot of responsibility on my shoulders to be honest with you guys I would now say skip which I I hate I hate that they've done this to me moving on Black Ops golf War 2024 I think the game's going to slap at launch I think it's going to be sick I think it's going to be an absolutely amazing experience and I'm not being sarcastic here I genuinely think that the game is going to be really freaking cool at launch and in all of November we are going to be partying we're going to be having a good ass time I think that everyone in the zombies Community is going to be punching the air like yes this is it and then realistically across the DLC season for the game I think that there are going to be moments where we're like G this isn't really it guys like it's a bit stale and the awful marketing is still there and the really frustrating communication and the not understanding of what the zombies Community actually wants at any given time and the deceptive statements and all that sort of stuff is just going to be back and we're going to be like G that's stings but I think that generally it's going to be more like the DLC season for Cold War than it is the DLC season for Modern Warfare 3 or the DLC season for Vanguard right with that said I just caught myself saying something positive about zombies and that terrifies me because of this freaking experience is it jaded or is it wisdom I don't know it sucks either way it's sucks I have to second guess myself being optimistic at any time like and then going forwards Black Ops 2 remastered I think there's going to be a lot of hype for because like right now everyone's like oh imagine like if we got Chronicles in Cold War or something like sick yeah woo it would be a great way for Activision to sell you a $70 game sort of like Modern Warfare 3 and so I think that no matter how you slice the Black Ops 2 remastered stuff as much as people's Nostalgia will be kicking in Ming included and as much as the promise of oh yeah more zombies maps and stuff is amazing I also think that I'm starting to get into a position in general with zombies now where the business management feels so vampiric that I don't feel like I can truly unabashedly be excited about future zombies maps when I feel like it's wrapped in this layer of of distaste I I'm just really struggling with it like from a core moral standpoint it sounds ridiculous but that's where I'm at that's genuinely where I'm at so what does that mean for like my love of the story and stuff like that again I think that the story line has some really cool stuff going for it this year but it's shrouded it's wrapped up in this how as a fan can I just close my eyes and pretend this doesn't exist so that I can enjoy the story I don't know if I can and not only that it's not just because I I can't ignore this stuff but it's also because the way the story is told is very emblematic of all of these problems it's very very clear that the current Business Development and business practices of Activision and of the studios themselves right those dictate the way the story is told to us I still rais the complaint of renov in those launch radios saying uh I've got some really interesting stories to tell but I'm not going to tell my teammates yet because they're not ready it's a slap in the face seeing that sort of stuff in the game because it is a literal translation of Activision board memb speak saying well we can just give them story content in season 4 right we don't need to do anything for the gaml we can just drop some new radios right no that is not how you create the organic frenzied zombies community that you built so expertly and masterfully but seemingly by accident from World War through to Black Ops 1 2 and three and some would argue four that original ether story was brilliant for a reason and it was not brilliant because it existed in a vacuum of gameplay content that is not why it was brilliant okay so the the seasonal release model and the battle passes and the microtransactions and the skins and the black cell and the Cod points didn't infect that previous method of Storytelling and nowadays they do and I'm not that guy that's like big Duma anti- microtransactions ever Etc until stuff like all of this happens and until stuff like I see with my very own eyes that the story itself is being drip fed to me in a way that it otherwise wouldn't be told because of the fact that the business unit has made decisions outside of the writer's control and the devs control and everyone like on the on the boots on the ground ground floor of trar I just I see the business decision more and more and as a gamer I don't want to be thinking about business when I'm like oh yeah this is a fun story The Artistry is less and less there and granted to some extent it's a business you got to make money but there's a limit where you start to feel that you're being milked and I'm just having a tough time with it so through all of this I think that some of you probably think oh no Milo's on his Black Ops 4 kick again just hitting on everything right I really don't want it to seem that way and I've tried to present this in such a way that it comes off as me having considered all of these factors and coming to a rational conclusion because that's what I feel like I've done I've talked to devs behind the scenes off the Record I've spoken to people at Activision behind the scenes off the Record I've spoken to millions of zombies community members over the last 15 years of doing this I've read hundreds of thousands of comments over 15 years of doing this and I also recognize right that it is significantly against my interests to be negative about zombies because I'm what the like third biggest zombies Channel or something something like that maybe top five I don't know I don't know the numbers but I'm up there and influence comes with that it would be much more in my interests to say this is great and for everyone to be loving it and for the views to go up and for the Play account to go up and for the interest in the mode to go up because then everybody wins right we get more zombie stuff because it's more popular I get to make more content about the content in the game that's there because it's more popular and I get to keep doing what I love best which is playing this game that I love so much and talking about it with you guys so I first of all want to push back on the idea that just being negative for the sake of clicks or something is in my interest here quite the opposite and I also want to extend that thinking to Activision themselves for a moment over the last couple of years there have been a few individual moments where zombies community members such as YouTubers have been invited in to Zoom calls with Treyarch or what have you in order to discuss the state of the mode discuss what's coming in the next season Etc in the next game whether it's a zoom call that happened just a week ago to talk about season 2 whether it's a Call of Duty next Etc right and I was invited to all of those between let's see 20134 or so more so 2014 and roughly about 202 I went on my break in 2020 so it's like before my break right now what's crazy is if you're watching this and you're 10 years old uh I started getting invited to those calls when you were zero like it was a long time ago and uh in the last couple of years it just stopped and I don't know if there's some kind of opinion or attitude inside Treyarch that I'm not going to be rational in those conversations or that I'm not going to contribute in some way but I I just feel like if you're a Dev at the studio you probably don't have the decision making power here sadly but if you're a Dev at the studio right and you watch me break down the pros and cons of the mode for an hour and a half and you leave a comment or you privately leave a comment or something saying oh you know what that was actually like a really good breakdown I feel like that was really fair but then you host an internal discussion event with YouTubers talking about exactly these sorts of issues and you don't invite me do you not think that there's at least a differing opinion to a lot of the other guys in the room that is missing in that conversation like if you're trying to make the the best game possible yes I am critical right I'm critical because I love it for the record like I love zombies I want it to be better but what is it about putting me in the room that is seen as a bad idea like why not I just don't get it and I I I think that it would be worth you guys having a think about because egotistically maybe I think that I can add to the conversation that's literally it it's not because I'm like oh I want to feel important I don't care that side of it is is not the important thing the important thing is feeling like I've got a very clear grasp of where things are at and what a lot of these different parties think about stuff and wanting to be able to share that and just feeling like a bit shut out and I don't know why so in lie of the invites to the zoom calls and all that sort of stuff um for the time being at least taking matters into my own hands if you're a Dev that would like to reach out and just chat on or off the Record probably off the record you can reach me at reach Milo at protonmail.com I've already spoken to devs who have been laid off who have helped give me more of an understanding and a human empathy for this Dreadful situation it's been extremely useful and it will help inform some of my coverage over the next several months and I would love to continue those conversations but for now what's my final verdict on the future of Call of Duty zombies it's quite simple zombies itself as an idea has more promise than nearly any video game I've ever played it is glorious in its concept and in its it's its founding principle okay all the way back from World War right but zombies in implementation increasingly over the years has felt less and less aligned with that founding principle and that's not to say that I don't enjoy it or that it's not fun or that you should never play it or anything along those lines okay it's that as it drifts from that founding principle and becomes something new it feels like the executive level of Activision has more and more steer into what that means for the mode and consistently with a 100% hit rate those Activision executive level decisions are bad for zombies so can Gulf War still be a fantastic zombies experience in light of that absolutely because the devs on the ground are working tirelessly have they as they have done for 15 years to try and create something that is good in spite of Activision's medling not because of it and I think that there is a very strong chance that they succeed because the Treyarch deev themselves are incredibly talented people who are doing their absolute best what who are left of them at least working on the games here they are trying their absolute best to make something great and I think that we will see some greatness in Gulf War I really do and I look forward to covering it on my YouTube channel but I will not and I I'm really trying to make sure of this I will not let myself be deceived like this again I just won't and so all my coverage going forward here may seem like it's got a a sort of dogged critical nature to it but it's because of the fact that I feel like I've been made to look like a bit of an idiot and a a bit deceptive to my viewers over these past 12 months based on all this sort of stuff and that's not something that I can morally repeat indefinitely I just can't do it so I'll be covering everything and I'll be promoting things and I'll be positive but you better believe that review that comes out is going to be a lot harder to land on a buy recommendation when I have to factor in the fact that as much as the promise of Gulf War seems amazing in November it might be that in February it all turns 180 and we actually only get a third of the experience that we were promised like that kind of feeling is going to haunt me forever going forwards here and it happened in Vanguard and in Vanguard I was like you know what benefit of the doubt it won't happen again and I promoted the hell out of that game before launch in my content because I was so excited for it and then it it slapped me around the face and I was like never again fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me right that's what this feels like this feels like the point where I I cannot be fooled a third time I need to put some barriers in place to that happening so zombies is in a bit of a state right now I don't think that means that we're doomed in the future I think Gulf War has promise and potential but as time passes I more and more grow weary of Activision's mismanagement of this franchise that I love so much

Channel: MrRoflWaffles

Views: 518,358

Keywords: mrroflwaffles, mr rofl waffles, mr rolf waffles, rolf, woffle, roffle, milo, zombies, mr roffle woffles, roffle waffle

Id: 0yr7vWYEQvc

Length: 52min 5sec (3125 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2024