The last few years ofCall of Dutyhave been filled with some pretty monumental highs, and some pretty worrying lows. 2019’sCall of Duty: Modern Warfarebreathed new life into the franchise, delivering a pulse-pounding reboot that finally managed to capture the excitement oftheCall of Dutyseriesonce more.Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold Warwas a decent, but flawed entry, andCall of Duty: Vanguardfelt like a creep toward series stagnation once more. But withCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a new era of the franchise may have been born.
Over the last few years,Call of Dutyhas moved closer to a live-service model. Inspired by successful giants of the industry likeFortniteandApex Legends,Call of Dutyhas started to implement a seasonal approach to new content, whereby the game receives small content drops every month or so. Right now, theCall of Dutyfan-base is divided on its seasonal approach to content, and both sides have some good arguments.
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The Argument For Call of Duty’s Seasonal Approach
The biggest advantage ofCall of Duty’s seasonal approach is that players now receive a heap of new content, completely for free. While players can choose to drop real-world cash on new Battle Passes, this is completely optional, and won’t lock them out of most new content. AllCall of Dutyplayers now receive new maps, modes, and weapons for free. In previousCall of Dutyentries, these new maps and weapons would often be locked behind a paywall, usually only being added to the game with paid expansions. Now, players get way more bang for their buck.
This wealth of new content also carries over toCall of Duty: Warzone 2.0, which receives its own set of content every few months or so. In fact, recently,Warzone 2.0has been receiving much more content thanModern Warfare 2’s multiplayer mode, with the recent update bringing back the long-awaited Resurgence mode, and adding an entirely new dedicated map for the mode named Ashika Island. If fans play bothModern Warfare 2andWarzone 2, then they’ll often be swimming in new free content.
The Argument Against Call of Duty’s Seasonal Approach
One of the big downsides ofCall of Duty’s seasonal approachis a common issue across the live-service genre, and that’s players receiving an incomplete game on launch. It’s often the case now that when a game ships as a live-service title, it tries to get away with having minimal content on launch while setting expectations that missing elements will be added at a later date. WhileModern Warfare 2was certainly a complete game on launch, with a full campaign, multiplayer mode, and spec-ops mode, it was still lacking in the maps and modes department, and only with the latest update do fans feel like the game finally has the modes it should have launched with.
A seasonal approach to content also means that each content drop is a lot smaller than they were in previousCall of Dutytitles. With the developers working on multiple projects at once, it’s completely understandable that eachCall of DutySeason only brings in one or two new maps, but that is a lot less than many long-time fans are expecting. In the vast majority of cases, old paidCall of DutyDLCwould add at least four new maps to the game at a time, and for the most part, these maps were all completely new and original. Another downside of the seasonal approach is that many “new” maps are actually just remakes of old ones, and while these maps are still great, it’s not quite the same as a piece of wholly original content.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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