Highlights
- The rumored Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is facing uncertainty due to conflicting reports about the game's content and potential rushed development.
- The buggy launch of Black Ops Cold War in 2020 has raised concerns about the annual release formula for Call of Duty , with some feeling that it is difficult to meet the growing scale and expectations of modern releases.
- The rumored scale of Modern Warfare 3 , including a full campaign, multiplayer, and a new Zombies mode, puts the game at risk of being unpolished, buggy, or lacking content at launch, potentially repeating the launch issues of Cold War .
While not officially confirmed, it is strongly rumored that this year will see the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, spearheaded by Sledgehammer Games. With MW2 only having released towards the end of last year, it is quite uncharacteristic for the sub-franchise to get successive titles two years in a row.
The way information has been revealed about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is also quite unique, with early reports for the release wildly conflicting in terms of what experience the game will provide. It seems that the release has been pushed through the pipeline and expanded to offer a trilogy-capping experience for Modern Warfare, potentially leading to a rushed final product that could give the launch of Cold War a run for its money.
Black Ops Cold War's Buggy Launch
2020's Black Ops Cold War was seriously marred by its launch, which suffereed from a variety of common problems that players were consistently running into. These problems were spread across a range of the game's modes, with its campaign cutscenes being unwatchable due to framerate issues, and multiplayer lobbies often disbanding or causing game crashes.
Treyarch would go on to steady the Cold War ship in the months following its launch through patches, but the legacy of the title's release lingers to this day. Cold War contributed to discourse about games across the industry being rushed for release, while also highlighting issues with Call of Duty's annual release formula. While this formula has historically been sustainable, some feel that the growing scale and expectations of modern releases makes annual installments to CoD extremely difficult.
Cold War stands close to the top of the buggiest Call of Duty releases of all time, and the franchise will of course want to move as far away from this as possible. With that being said, the rumored development process behind Modern Warfare 3 may be at risk of repeating these same mistakes.
Modern Warfare 3's Scale and Development
It was long thought that 2023 would boldly not feature a mainline CoD release, breaking a near 20-year tradition for the IP. These early reports later changed to claim 2023 would get a large-scale expansion for Modern Warfare 2, before changing once more to indicate that the 2023 release will be Modern Warfare 3 instead. This uncertainty is quite uncharacteristic for Call of Duty development rumors.
Current reports indicate that Modern Warfare 3 will feature a full campaign, multiplayer, and even a new iteration of Cold War's Outbreak Zombies mode. This is an impressive scale of content for the title, but Sledgehammer Games is already facing huge amounts of pressure in taking the helm of a Modern Warfare title as it is.
The range of content that MW3 is rumored to involve puts the release at risk of being unpolished or barebones at launch. One of the other main shortcomings of recent CoD games like Cold War is the small multiplayer map rotations that they possess, which is one potential pitfall of MW3's expansive scale. With the title being set to release only one year after its predecessor, it is equally likely that the final product could be rushed, potentially cropping up the same kind of launch glitches that Cold War faced in 2020. The premise of Modern Warfare 3 is undoubtedly exciting, but its scale and the recency of MW2 could see it sadly replicate the glitches and lack of content within Cold War's launch.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is reportedly in development.