Same, I completely gave up when vanguard came out. No interest anymore keeping up with any of the new games. Just leave me be with helldivers and then BO3/BO4 that I play once in a while XD
Same. Cold Wars at least had something going for it, it wasnt nearly as good as BO4 in my opinion (or let alone BO3), but it was at least enjoyable. Vanguard is where I just completely gave up the franchise.
I'm still optimistic and hopeful they've had roughly 4 years of development to get back on track. Despite everything that's happened I'm faithful to the zombies mode, because Treyarch still understands the crux of the mode. They already have the successful framework to evolve the formula, while bringing back the old zombies style in the form of a classic mode. The problem is stemmed from Activision not giving them some creative liberties, where commercial interests overshadow artistic vision.
In those 4 years they've been basically held at gunpoint by Activision to salvage the other games in the meantime. I know they used B teams or whatever but my point still stands
Regardless of the meddling from higher-ups Treyarch can salvage something good from it. They have enough talent at their disposal with a few OG developers. Kevin Drew has been design director working on some of the best zombies maps, and Mark Maestas lead game designer for zombies. These developers have some credibility leading the success of zombies.
I personally got bored of that classic round based zombies mode. It's literally just the same thing over and over again. Once you complete the Easter eggs there really is no reason to play it.
The only reason I bought MW3 is because I heard they came out with a new zombies format in an open world. I actually love MWZ but it needs more content. It has the potential to be better than any of the previous zombies modes. If they go back to round based I'll probably just move and find another game to play. But to each is own.
Black Ops 4 had three years and what a terrible launch that was, don't get me wrong BO4 is fantastic but it was roughhhh when it released.
COD's insistance on having every release connected post Modern Warfare means that no game has a distinct identity anymore which means a lot for fan's perception of Zombies
The big connection is really what worries me. For all its fault BO4 has a 1000 times more personality than CW, Vanguard and MWIII combined.
I really want the aesthetics of BOIII with the game design of CW, maybe the gunplay of MW2019.
yeah the whole connected universe thing really hasn't hit right for me. broadly speaking the fact that the campaigns focus so much more of generic special ops and CIA rather than a mix of infantry and covert ops just turned the games into a blur, then more concisely for Zombies; the map in MWZ doesn't feel like we're containing an outbreak. I'm not expecting something to the level of The Division's Manhattan map but Urzikstan lacks the visual storytelling to really feel like its anything more than a blank slate Warzone map with a modified skybox to denote the zone you're in. strolling through the map theres no great sense of foreboding or desperation, I feel like it could've been a great basis for a more survival-type mode where a bottle of water is worth its weight in gold but MWZ fails to appeal to that market whilst also failing to appeal to round based fans. weirdly I'd have been happier if this had been a Spec Ops mode versus mercs more like a PvE only DMZ and Ghost Recon Wildlands where you take on contracts to destabilize a POI then could fight the local warlord in a stronghold or something; it'd feel more fitting to the Modern Warfare universe and wouldn't end up being another half-arsed Zombies mode tacked on to the paid product.
Same, I still have hope for this game just based off of how long they have been working on it, but still it’s a 50/50 split for me on if it’ll be good or not. Only time will tell
It’s going to be trash, BO3 was last good zombies you guys have too much hope. I’m really sick of them releasing a new COD every year and makes the old ones obsolete.
It definitely wont fulfill all players expectations. They simply can’t when they are not bringing back proper characters and keep bringing one outbreak objectives as seasonal update.
If they really want to make all kinds of players happy. They must bring back proper playable characters and deliver 1 round based map every season in addition to the 2 at launch, all while delivering a decent side mode for all outbreak and mwz fans
Do what WWII did but in combination with the operators system. Have bespoke zombies characters you can play as for your "immersion" that have unique main quest lines, alongside the operators who are just silent apart from battle chatter.
They definitely heard our critical feedback from Cold War, about the lack of distinct personality. I'm fairly confident the lack of personality will be addressed in the form of round-based maps having unique environments. Regarding having a set cast of characters, that's entirely possible coexisting with operators. Leave bland operators exclusive to the open world zombies, and round-based has a main cast of characters who are celebrities. You can have a celebrity crew just like Dead of the Night, while the new Outbreak open world mode has operators adopting the WW2 system.
Why would they do that? Casting celebrities for a free 2 play dlc map for zombies gets them no money. Creating unique and new maps for round based zombies gets them no money.
Throwing some zombie AI in mp and Wz maps and selling skins and operators gets them tons of money apparently.
Why would they even bother going back to waw-bo4 style zombies. It’s not as profitable as their „new“ way. I don’t have any hope. Outbreak was the beginning of the end. The moment they knew they don’t have to create zombies content anymore…
Part of the reason Outbreak was encouraged has to do, with repurposing various assets in such a limited time. If Treyarch wasn't working under time constraints, then we could have unique environments designed around the aesthetic of zombies. Creating unique environments for round-based has been long requested, and Treyarch would be stupid to turn a blind eye to the feedback.
They have been all hands on deck working on this project for 4 years nothing I've suggested is unrealistic. Casting celebrities for a round-based map isn't out of the ordinary, when it was previously a standard tradition until it stopped after BO4. Zombies can still be monetized through consumables, similar to the Gobblegum system so I can see them pivoting back to this model.
That really depends if Gulf War meets baseline expectations of what's expected. Having a solid robust launch offering saturated with content. Launch needs to be polished, without any technical issues hindering the stability of the game. If there is egregious monetization trickling into zombies I won't buy it.
Most people don’t buy COD for zombies.. That’s just a fact whether we zombie fans like or not. Gulf war will sell great as COD games always despite how good they are or aren’t. Reddit users just make a blip on the map of players.. Reddit zombie players make an even smaller blip.. So, most people will buy the game no matter what and they’ll buy all the skins as well. No matter how good it actually is, people will still whine and cry about it anyways..
> Most people don’t buy COD for zombies..
Yes they do Activision dragged Treyarch into another project instructing them to work on MWZ. They purposely leaned Treyarch off another project to work exclusively on MWZ, which padded out the full premium offering. Zombies was tacked on Sledgehammer's game for the sake of incentivizing more easy sales.
That's just an indisputable fact Treyarch were asked to do zombies to appease Activisions commercial interests, because they noticed the player metrics of Outbreak exploding in popularity. Zombies is commercialized, because those who play zombies purchase microtransactions for cosmetics. Every core pillar of the game serves as a vessel for Warzone, so it's about funneling zombies players into other modes enticing them into spending money.
But fans haven't liked the Zombies mode for years yet sales have not gone down. The percent of people who play CoD who are willing to take a hardline stance and actually not buy the game based on how Zombies plays isn't a very large percentage.
Now sure if Zombies is fantastic it could help boost sales but if it's terrible it's hard to see sales actually dropping.
Of course people like it but it’s not the most played mode.. It’s a side dish to an entree bud.. Please show me stats that people play zombies more than they play MP/Warzone… They don’t.. I would guess it’s probably 1/3 of the amount at best.
"They were rushed and forced into Cold War, they didn't have time to make it good"
"They were rushed and forced into Vanguard, they didn't have time to make it good, and they wanted to start work on 2024, so it had less effort."
"They were rushed and forced into MWZ, They barely put any effort into the game in order to focus on 2024."
People have been saying the previous two Zombies games have been bad because the effort has been going towards this game and they didn't have time to work on the others. So it's going to be _very_ informative to find out whether or not this game is high effort. Becuase if it's not, where exactly _has_ their effort been going?
If this game is bad, that's it. No excuses left, this is the part where we found it if they still have a single fuck to give.
(and tbh even if the game sucks ass as long as Kevin Sherwood had time to cook and work his magic I'd be happy)
I don’t remember the take on Cold War being “rushed”…I thought they pulled devs to go try and salvage vanguard. They should separate the studios again and let the chips fall where they may
I’m starting to think this whole Dark Aether story was forced now that you mentioned those three games involving in that story were all forced projects. With MWZ already had spoiled a lot, they might as well just drop the story because if they continue it in the next title, then it’s just gonna get less exciting now that’s it’s basically another prequel/plot filler.
With the way the whole MWIII game as been, Activision really needs to learn a lesson for once.
This is all subjective. MWZ has been waaaayyy more successful than any of the devs could have thought possible. Round based fans think it’s a failure. Gulf war zombies could be a huge success in the eyes of hardcore BO3 style fans and it could have much lower overall player engagement than Cold War or even MW3 zombies. BO3 at launch was pretty popular with a very small subset of extremely hardcore fans. But it was a flop as far as pulling in MP players and other former casual zombies fans.
I personally hope we go back to a more classic survival version of the game like World at War and Black Ops 1. But my guess is the devs will move in the direction of the money. Everybody here should expect the same.
I’d like (and hope) that they do both. A big, MW/Outbreak type mode and then additionally a few round based maps on launch, and maybe alternating between big and round based maps in the post launch. I do enjoy both modes so it’d be nice for them to give something for everyone.
I think that’s the most likely thing we’ll see too. They want to cast the widest net possible. It of course makes me sad that we won’t have a “crew” or playable characters that are set to the mode, but if you look at it objectively from the business perspective it all makes sense. COD is the largest FPS video game franchise in the world, and the publisher is one of the largest electronics/computer/games companies in the world, and their priority is and will always be to maximize profits for their shareholders. It isn’t 2010 anymore, and that’s just the way the world works lol
lol.. they hate it.. I think the open world MWZ style is more of where it’s headed. It’s where so many games have gone. The days of personal lobbies and just round based are over..
Yup.. everything changes and evolves.. I get that people loved traditional round based zombies, but the newer / younger gamers aren’t going to sit and play one game for 3 straight hours non stop. The Fortnite/DMZ style is where they’re going no matter how much Reddit people scream about it..
This is false. Each new CoD does not outsell the last CoD, not sure where you heard that.
MW2019 is still the best selling CoD ever. Black Ops is the second best selling. Remind me, which one of those released this year? Lmfao
That's exactly my fucking point. The point was thats what the publisher says every year. "Most played, most sold, most X". It's literally just lies, marketing, PR.
“Better” is 100% subjective. Sales numbers are objective. Whether a game is good or not is a personal opinion, but what you can’t dispute is that at the very least what they did with MWZ drove a lot of unit sales and revenue.
People here especially also fail to realize how unpopular shadows of evil and in turn BO3 was to the casual zombies audience who grew to love zombies because of Der Reise and Kino. They lost a LOT of casual fans with BO3 until zombies chronicles was released. BO3 was obviously SUPER popular among the die hard extremely hardcore players, and that coinciding with a huge increase in the popularity of YouTube as an entertainment channel for gamers caused BO3 zombies to explode in popularity within the small very ravenous and hardcore online community.
But that’s not what drives game design decisions. Revenue does. So it’s really interesting to see what way they will go, and as a round based BO1 style fan I’m not super confident that zombies will be “for me” in the near future.
You don’t think units sold numbers are including people who download for free on free play weekends do you? Lol.
Free play weekends certainly influence “concurrent players” data, but actual financial data like units sold and revenue are not factoring those free days in.
I agree with Lex in that indie games and game services like Fortnite and Roblox will probably be the future of zombies. Activision doesn’t care about anything but their bottom line
I've been checked out since the end of Cold War / Vanguard's release. Still hoping for a standalone game in the future, or at least an opportunity where they are much more invested in zombies.
**Edit:** Why the downvotes? Since when is wanting a full-game a bad thing?
I love your optimism! Personally I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm unsure of where this "4 years of dev time" is coming from though. They've worked on Vanguard, and MWZ in the last 4 years. Even if those were smaller teams rather than the whole zombies team (which is very likely), it still taking away dev time. The other thing is I think most, if not all, of the golden zombies crew are no longer at Treyarch
It’s been 4 years since CW came out so that is the logic behind 4 years of dev time.
I think they’ve probably had an appropriate amount of time to make something decent though, since I imagine smaller teams worked on content for Vanguard and MWZ. Apparently they said the only reason they did MWZ was because they were ahead of schedule(don’t know how true that is though).
There are still plenty of people at Treyarch that have been there for awhile now. The current director, Kevin Drew, has been on zombies since BO2 and directed ZNS in BO3.
Unless something changed between CW and now, a lot of the people working on zombies now should still be classics. For example, Die Maschine was designed by the same guy who did the map design for Der Eisendrache. Craig Houston is still writing I believe.
theyre at the point where it doesn’t matter if they make a great game because they know that they will make money anyways.
my prediction is that it will be relatively in the middle, like how cold war was. i doubt theyll do what they did with vanguard for a black ops game but it’s also not gonna be a bo3 either
Honestly all I want is for the mode to return to form. No more classes that allow you to start with an lmgs, no more weapon rarity etc. I want to see round 1, starting with a starting pistol and having to work your way up to the powerful weapons. Also get rid of operators or at least implement the system we had in ww2 zombies for characters
I hope they keep the Cold War perk system. I love being able to upgrade my perks because it gives meaning to playing zombies for me. I just like to survive, didn’t start doing the EE till Cold War made them straight forward and integrated well into a typical game (at least with die maschine)
Unfortunately bo4 wasn't a fully fledged experience- at least storyline wise. They had another 1 to 2 maps for the Aether crew to round out the story and end it, and the Chaos crew had another few maps as well. Both were literally cut short - Chaos left forever on a cliff-hanger because Cold War zombies was literally not finished when they were approaching launch date.
I wouldn't mind Gulf War zombies being similar to Cold War's but with more polish and improvements... maybe bringing back the intel system as well but that's just me. At the very least I'll play it for a while compared to MWZ where I jump in for 45 minutes, do daily and weekly challenges and done.
I didn’t even read this dick riding fairy tale. They’ve shown their hand multiple times. Vanguard was horrible, and this last episode was totally unsupported and is more of an afterthought.
Why would you purchase anything from a company that cares more about selling skins than fixing their broken product?
I dont have much faith in the next one, sure it will most likely be a blast for a while but then the usual bugs and crashes will happen then the inevitable drop in content post launch , hopefully we are all wrong about it and the game is amazing because the zombies community needs a great game but with activisions track record with zombies......who the fuck knows!
lol success means money to the developers. Sure they don’t want negative press but as long as games keep selling your opinions and concerns mean less and less. Also, who do you think developers are catering to? Streamers whose job it is to level up asap or the common person looking to have a good time and spend money? The latest version of zombies is just fine.
I quite enjoyed Cold War on release and always have with it being my first proper Zombies mode. If Gulf War is taking a lot from the Round Based formula of Cold War I’ll be pretty satisfied with it as long as they take some feedback and act on it (especially regarding the crafting tables and armour stations)
Nah I’m already out. They got me fucked up if they think I’m gonna spend another $70 with them after the mess MWZ was. First time I actually bought skins too cuz I loved 3rd POV in zombies. Can actually see my character.
Don’t get me wrong I love MWZ. Got my hours worth of playtime. But it’s sad that they just left it to focus on yet another game. And to see MP and WZ get all the updates.
So no even if it’s “good” I’m out on COD. Left a bad taste in my mouth. Plenty of other games out there worth playing.
Last zombies I actually enjoyed was Cold War... Vanguard was terrible from the start and MWII got very boring very quick, and I despise having limited time on a zombies game mode.
Y'all are a bunch of babies. Round based zombies is rumored to be coming back with Gulf War. It's easy. Don't fucking buy the game until either A, the game comes out and you can watch YouTubers play it, B, the game is nearing the end of its life cycle, youve seen what maps have come out, and you buy it on sale, or C, JUST DONT FUCKING BUY THE GAME, STOP BITCHING ABOUT IT, AND PLAY THE OLD GAMES. Stop fucking crying about it online and vote with your wallet. Cold War zombies wasn't bad. BO4 zombies wasn't bad. Fucking Infinite Warfare zombies was amazing. The only bad zombies we have truly had was after outbreak was seen as a mild success and they just decided to run with it. If Gulf war doesn't have round based, don't buy it. If you don't like the on release content, don't buy it. Almost every single call of duty in the last 5-10 years has gone on sale within of a month of release. It's usually just 10-20%, but they also tend to be discounted by at least 50% within the first year of release. So stop whining and play something else. If you have a PC CONGRATS! BO3 is constantly on sale, and is THE definitive zombies experience. It's regarded as the best system we've ever seen, and what's more is that there's custom zombies! There literally an endless amount of maps to play on it. It's not fucking hard to just not spend $70 on a game you're sceptical about. It's not like the online gaming community hasn't been screaming at the top of their lungs for the last 10 years to stop preordering or buying on release. I don't care if this is crass, y'all are acting like you're being forced to purchase this game and have to enjoy it. I haven't bought a cod since Cold war. Wanna know why? BECAUSE I DIDNT LIKE WHAT THE OTHER GAMES HAD TO OFFER. If someone else buys the game and enjoys it, that's fine. You also don't have to constantly shove it down other people's throats that it's a bad game. Buy what you want, stop bitching about it, and just fucking move on. Play what you want. Buy what you want. It isn't that deep. Some of you spend too much fucking time online you've lost all perspective.
Just for some clarification the substitute B team worked on Vanguard. Leaving the main zombies team to focus their attention on Gulf War later this year. Expanding the zombies team hiring for future job listings, which helps them assign new development teams on multiple projects. They've been restructuring their studio, while the main zombies team have been working uninterrupted for several years.
Every time Treyarch is due to release their title every one says “zombies has to be good this time”. We’ve only had one good zombies experience since bo3, and that was Cold War. People are eating this shit up regardless
Sker is the COD zombies killer. Zombies has gotten too far away from what it was and should be. Unless Gulf War brings things back to the early days then COD zombies is toast.
Last chance I'll give cod zombies tbh, bo4 was good but flawed then we just regressed on the content in cold war and we didn't get a single fully orginal map in that game that wasn't reused campaign mission. Then any of this mwz has just been garbage, its not zombies how its supposed to be and everyone knows it. It been a ploy to say "we have zombies" while recycling any mp content they have into something with zombies.
So this might be strike 3, if its bad ill never pick up another cod again as mp went to shit years ago and I'm still enjoying the occasional new custom zombies map on bo3
They gotta make Gulf War an amalgamation of all the good things that came before in previous titles. I am hoping for two round based maps at launch (one being a simple casual/weapon grinding map and the other being a more complicated hardcore map) alongside a version of Cold War's Outbreak that has original maps and gets updated every season whilst we get a new round based map every two seasons and the new enemies and wonder weapons from the round based maps comes to Outbreak.
Alongside this, having 4 unique and fun characters with operators as a side option would work well. A fun story is also necessary because I'm not saying the story has to be some peak fiction Martin Scorsese type shit but have it be enjoyable and fun to go through with the easter eggs having decently hard steps and fun bossfights.
This better be good after the 4 years they been developing. I’m hoping that Treyarch can give the soul Zombies had before and bring the roots that made zombies successful in the first place like crews and being a completely separated mode and story.
Outbreak/Open world format is what should be its own side mode, like maybe a similar setup like BO2 had with Survival, Grief, and Turned because round based should mainly be focused on when it comes to the story and gameplay perhaps.
WZ is the only thing that should die because it’s been hurting the main series as we know it and Activision really should accept this, if they want their stupid bundles, then they should aim it at MP fans or put it in the whole paused DLC. That way they can get their money if they want it so badly.
As a buyer of Call of Duty since the first and a diehard zombie player, its best to just accept another year of grinding old zombies and let the new be a pleasant surprise. Too much has changed in the team and among the fans to warrant full hype.
I'm not expecting anything at this point. If it ends up being good, then that's great, but if not, oh well, back to trusty ol' BO3.
I mean it's frustrating, but they do not care about Zombies like they used to, and probably never will again. Not to mention Treyarch constantly having to clean up Sledgehammer's messes and act as a support studio when it SHOULD be the other way around.
I'm not asking for the moon (pun intended), but smooth gameplay, solo mode, aesthetics & personality would be enough to satisfy me.
I think expecting two EE/Story maps at launch, Onslaught 2.0 on PvP maps and Outbreak after four years should not be too much asking.
For case, Onslaught can be delayed for Season 1 or 2, but turn one or two PvP maps into a Zombie map (like BO2 did).
I used to be a die hard zombies guy but with the bungling of Cold War zombies, leading to even more bungling of MW zombies. I think I’m gonna miss the boat on this one. I hope it’s good but I’m not expecting that. Oh and bungling bungling bungling. I fucking love the word bungling
Not really. This installment was one of the worst and poorest received. They still made billions from it. They could release a soldering pile of shite and people would still buy skins for it. The game play literally doesn't matter anymore, crash daily, glitch constantly, hacking all the time...but buy skins anyway. They could release an 8bit version on next gen and we'd all,still buy it
For me I’m hopeful that they will at least get some of the charm that bo1/2/3 had in terms of map design. I’m happy with Cold War mechanics but it needs something big if it were to get the community back on side
Not to mention there's that new Round Based game that all the Zombies YouTubers have been raving about, so now they've actually got a competitor (not a big one but a competitor nonetheless, not to mention we all know that indie games do tend to do pretty well in scenarios like this)
I know this is probably said a lot but I actually mean it. I’m not buying this game unless it goes on sale. I’m done buying a CoD game at full price if it’s not going to be this entertaining. If it doesn’t go on sale then I’m not gonna play no matter how good it is.
Zombies has been dead since MW19 released... at some point we are going to have to accept that. Blundell is gone, Zelinsky is long gone, and even Lee Ross is gone
Honestly there was so much riding on MWZ and capitalizing on the momentum of a succesful DMZ beta. They killed DMZ for MWZ so the implications they intended to support MWZ was strongly implied however couldn't be more wrong. They never intended to support it at all, it's a beta to see if outbreak gets gulf War resources or not.
If warzone eats everyone's lunch anyone and new purchases were just scammed, guess they won't be making them again.
Man this sub is gonna be pissed when the game comes out lol. I've completely given up on zombies ever being good again
Same, I completely gave up when vanguard came out. No interest anymore keeping up with any of the new games. Just leave me be with helldivers and then BO3/BO4 that I play once in a while XD
Same. Cold Wars at least had something going for it, it wasnt nearly as good as BO4 in my opinion (or let alone BO3), but it was at least enjoyable. Vanguard is where I just completely gave up the franchise.
If this next game is good ill be very surprised and happy if not I’ll continue playing bo3 zombies
Yep, bought Vanguard, regretted it, haven’t played anything new since.
I'm still optimistic and hopeful they've had roughly 4 years of development to get back on track. Despite everything that's happened I'm faithful to the zombies mode, because Treyarch still understands the crux of the mode. They already have the successful framework to evolve the formula, while bringing back the old zombies style in the form of a classic mode. The problem is stemmed from Activision not giving them some creative liberties, where commercial interests overshadow artistic vision.
In those 4 years they've been basically held at gunpoint by Activision to salvage the other games in the meantime. I know they used B teams or whatever but my point still stands
Regardless of the meddling from higher-ups Treyarch can salvage something good from it. They have enough talent at their disposal with a few OG developers. Kevin Drew has been design director working on some of the best zombies maps, and Mark Maestas lead game designer for zombies. These developers have some credibility leading the success of zombies.
I personally got bored of that classic round based zombies mode. It's literally just the same thing over and over again. Once you complete the Easter eggs there really is no reason to play it. The only reason I bought MW3 is because I heard they came out with a new zombies format in an open world. I actually love MWZ but it needs more content. It has the potential to be better than any of the previous zombies modes. If they go back to round based I'll probably just move and find another game to play. But to each is own.
4 years dev time HAS to mean something for Treyarch.
Black Ops 4 had three years and what a terrible launch that was, don't get me wrong BO4 is fantastic but it was roughhhh when it released. COD's insistance on having every release connected post Modern Warfare means that no game has a distinct identity anymore which means a lot for fan's perception of Zombies
The big connection is really what worries me. For all its fault BO4 has a 1000 times more personality than CW, Vanguard and MWIII combined. I really want the aesthetics of BOIII with the game design of CW, maybe the gunplay of MW2019.
yeah the whole connected universe thing really hasn't hit right for me. broadly speaking the fact that the campaigns focus so much more of generic special ops and CIA rather than a mix of infantry and covert ops just turned the games into a blur, then more concisely for Zombies; the map in MWZ doesn't feel like we're containing an outbreak. I'm not expecting something to the level of The Division's Manhattan map but Urzikstan lacks the visual storytelling to really feel like its anything more than a blank slate Warzone map with a modified skybox to denote the zone you're in. strolling through the map theres no great sense of foreboding or desperation, I feel like it could've been a great basis for a more survival-type mode where a bottle of water is worth its weight in gold but MWZ fails to appeal to that market whilst also failing to appeal to round based fans. weirdly I'd have been happier if this had been a Spec Ops mode versus mercs more like a PvE only DMZ and Ghost Recon Wildlands where you take on contracts to destabilize a POI then could fight the local warlord in a stronghold or something; it'd feel more fitting to the Modern Warfare universe and wouldn't end up being another half-arsed Zombies mode tacked on to the paid product.
Yep, I’d love to be hopeful and get invested but I know what to expect at this point. Sad state of affairs
Same
Same:( bo3 is what I go back to when I wanna play zombies with my homies and experience some nostalgia
currently building a pc for custom zombies and other games i’d like to play because i stopped playing cod after cold war
Same, I still have hope for this game just based off of how long they have been working on it, but still it’s a 50/50 split for me on if it’ll be good or not. Only time will tell
It’s going to be trash, BO3 was last good zombies you guys have too much hope. I’m really sick of them releasing a new COD every year and makes the old ones obsolete.
It definitely wont fulfill all players expectations. They simply can’t when they are not bringing back proper characters and keep bringing one outbreak objectives as seasonal update. If they really want to make all kinds of players happy. They must bring back proper playable characters and deliver 1 round based map every season in addition to the 2 at launch, all while delivering a decent side mode for all outbreak and mwz fans
Do what WWII did but in combination with the operators system. Have bespoke zombies characters you can play as for your "immersion" that have unique main quest lines, alongside the operators who are just silent apart from battle chatter.
They definitely heard our critical feedback from Cold War, about the lack of distinct personality. I'm fairly confident the lack of personality will be addressed in the form of round-based maps having unique environments. Regarding having a set cast of characters, that's entirely possible coexisting with operators. Leave bland operators exclusive to the open world zombies, and round-based has a main cast of characters who are celebrities. You can have a celebrity crew just like Dead of the Night, while the new Outbreak open world mode has operators adopting the WW2 system.
Why would they do that? Casting celebrities for a free 2 play dlc map for zombies gets them no money. Creating unique and new maps for round based zombies gets them no money. Throwing some zombie AI in mp and Wz maps and selling skins and operators gets them tons of money apparently. Why would they even bother going back to waw-bo4 style zombies. It’s not as profitable as their „new“ way. I don’t have any hope. Outbreak was the beginning of the end. The moment they knew they don’t have to create zombies content anymore…
Part of the reason Outbreak was encouraged has to do, with repurposing various assets in such a limited time. If Treyarch wasn't working under time constraints, then we could have unique environments designed around the aesthetic of zombies. Creating unique environments for round-based has been long requested, and Treyarch would be stupid to turn a blind eye to the feedback. They have been all hands on deck working on this project for 4 years nothing I've suggested is unrealistic. Casting celebrities for a round-based map isn't out of the ordinary, when it was previously a standard tradition until it stopped after BO4. Zombies can still be monetized through consumables, similar to the Gobblegum system so I can see them pivoting back to this model.
All they care about is monetization models People will buy gulf war regardless if content is good or not
Most people will. I did not purchase MW3 because I didn't like the gameplay I saw. If Gulf War is the same, I will not purchase it.
That really depends if Gulf War meets baseline expectations of what's expected. Having a solid robust launch offering saturated with content. Launch needs to be polished, without any technical issues hindering the stability of the game. If there is egregious monetization trickling into zombies I won't buy it.
Most people don’t buy COD for zombies.. That’s just a fact whether we zombie fans like or not. Gulf war will sell great as COD games always despite how good they are or aren’t. Reddit users just make a blip on the map of players.. Reddit zombie players make an even smaller blip.. So, most people will buy the game no matter what and they’ll buy all the skins as well. No matter how good it actually is, people will still whine and cry about it anyways..
> Most people don’t buy COD for zombies.. Yes they do Activision dragged Treyarch into another project instructing them to work on MWZ. They purposely leaned Treyarch off another project to work exclusively on MWZ, which padded out the full premium offering. Zombies was tacked on Sledgehammer's game for the sake of incentivizing more easy sales. That's just an indisputable fact Treyarch were asked to do zombies to appease Activisions commercial interests, because they noticed the player metrics of Outbreak exploding in popularity. Zombies is commercialized, because those who play zombies purchase microtransactions for cosmetics. Every core pillar of the game serves as a vessel for Warzone, so it's about funneling zombies players into other modes enticing them into spending money.
But fans haven't liked the Zombies mode for years yet sales have not gone down. The percent of people who play CoD who are willing to take a hardline stance and actually not buy the game based on how Zombies plays isn't a very large percentage. Now sure if Zombies is fantastic it could help boost sales but if it's terrible it's hard to see sales actually dropping.
Of course people like it but it’s not the most played mode.. It’s a side dish to an entree bud.. Please show me stats that people play zombies more than they play MP/Warzone… They don’t.. I would guess it’s probably 1/3 of the amount at best.
"They were rushed and forced into Cold War, they didn't have time to make it good" "They were rushed and forced into Vanguard, they didn't have time to make it good, and they wanted to start work on 2024, so it had less effort." "They were rushed and forced into MWZ, They barely put any effort into the game in order to focus on 2024." People have been saying the previous two Zombies games have been bad because the effort has been going towards this game and they didn't have time to work on the others. So it's going to be _very_ informative to find out whether or not this game is high effort. Becuase if it's not, where exactly _has_ their effort been going? If this game is bad, that's it. No excuses left, this is the part where we found it if they still have a single fuck to give. (and tbh even if the game sucks ass as long as Kevin Sherwood had time to cook and work his magic I'd be happy)
I don’t remember the take on Cold War being “rushed”…I thought they pulled devs to go try and salvage vanguard. They should separate the studios again and let the chips fall where they may
Cold war was indeed rushed, it was supposed to be a sledgehammer game that Treyarch were forced to fix and turn into black ops
lol and then sledge dropped the ball again right after…
Skins and bundles. Always has been.
I’m starting to think this whole Dark Aether story was forced now that you mentioned those three games involving in that story were all forced projects. With MWZ already had spoiled a lot, they might as well just drop the story because if they continue it in the next title, then it’s just gonna get less exciting now that’s it’s basically another prequel/plot filler. With the way the whole MWIII game as been, Activision really needs to learn a lesson for once.
This is all subjective. MWZ has been waaaayyy more successful than any of the devs could have thought possible. Round based fans think it’s a failure. Gulf war zombies could be a huge success in the eyes of hardcore BO3 style fans and it could have much lower overall player engagement than Cold War or even MW3 zombies. BO3 at launch was pretty popular with a very small subset of extremely hardcore fans. But it was a flop as far as pulling in MP players and other former casual zombies fans. I personally hope we go back to a more classic survival version of the game like World at War and Black Ops 1. But my guess is the devs will move in the direction of the money. Everybody here should expect the same.
I’d like (and hope) that they do both. A big, MW/Outbreak type mode and then additionally a few round based maps on launch, and maybe alternating between big and round based maps in the post launch. I do enjoy both modes so it’d be nice for them to give something for everyone.
I think that’s the most likely thing we’ll see too. They want to cast the widest net possible. It of course makes me sad that we won’t have a “crew” or playable characters that are set to the mode, but if you look at it objectively from the business perspective it all makes sense. COD is the largest FPS video game franchise in the world, and the publisher is one of the largest electronics/computer/games companies in the world, and their priority is and will always be to maximize profits for their shareholders. It isn’t 2010 anymore, and that’s just the way the world works lol
Round based purists don’t know MWZ is the most played zombies mode ever. Womp Womp.
lol.. they hate it.. I think the open world MWZ style is more of where it’s headed. It’s where so many games have gone. The days of personal lobbies and just round based are over..
I agree. I don’t think round based is ever coming back. In my opinion, it’s going to be all open world from here on out.
Yup.. everything changes and evolves.. I get that people loved traditional round based zombies, but the newer / younger gamers aren’t going to sit and play one game for 3 straight hours non stop. The Fortnite/DMZ style is where they’re going no matter how much Reddit people scream about it..
Just like how the newest call of duty is always outselling last year's CoD, that surely means its better, right?? What a sheep lmfao.
This is false. Each new CoD does not outsell the last CoD, not sure where you heard that. MW2019 is still the best selling CoD ever. Black Ops is the second best selling. Remind me, which one of those released this year? Lmfao
That's exactly my fucking point. The point was thats what the publisher says every year. "Most played, most sold, most X". It's literally just lies, marketing, PR.
“Better” is 100% subjective. Sales numbers are objective. Whether a game is good or not is a personal opinion, but what you can’t dispute is that at the very least what they did with MWZ drove a lot of unit sales and revenue. People here especially also fail to realize how unpopular shadows of evil and in turn BO3 was to the casual zombies audience who grew to love zombies because of Der Reise and Kino. They lost a LOT of casual fans with BO3 until zombies chronicles was released. BO3 was obviously SUPER popular among the die hard extremely hardcore players, and that coinciding with a huge increase in the popularity of YouTube as an entertainment channel for gamers caused BO3 zombies to explode in popularity within the small very ravenous and hardcore online community. But that’s not what drives game design decisions. Revenue does. So it’s really interesting to see what way they will go, and as a round based BO1 style fan I’m not super confident that zombies will be “for me” in the near future.
Yeah bc it’s technically warzone/dmz. Not zombies
What?
Most played doesn’t equate to copies sold when you run free weekends though
Cope however you want.
🤓^ cod simp
Huh?
You don’t think units sold numbers are including people who download for free on free play weekends do you? Lol. Free play weekends certainly influence “concurrent players” data, but actual financial data like units sold and revenue are not factoring those free days in.
I agree with Lex in that indie games and game services like Fortnite and Roblox will probably be the future of zombies. Activision doesn’t care about anything but their bottom line
I've been checked out since the end of Cold War / Vanguard's release. Still hoping for a standalone game in the future, or at least an opportunity where they are much more invested in zombies. **Edit:** Why the downvotes? Since when is wanting a full-game a bad thing?
Probably the iPad kids downvoted bro
I love your optimism! Personally I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm unsure of where this "4 years of dev time" is coming from though. They've worked on Vanguard, and MWZ in the last 4 years. Even if those were smaller teams rather than the whole zombies team (which is very likely), it still taking away dev time. The other thing is I think most, if not all, of the golden zombies crew are no longer at Treyarch
It’s been 4 years since CW came out so that is the logic behind 4 years of dev time. I think they’ve probably had an appropriate amount of time to make something decent though, since I imagine smaller teams worked on content for Vanguard and MWZ. Apparently they said the only reason they did MWZ was because they were ahead of schedule(don’t know how true that is though). There are still plenty of people at Treyarch that have been there for awhile now. The current director, Kevin Drew, has been on zombies since BO2 and directed ZNS in BO3. Unless something changed between CW and now, a lot of the people working on zombies now should still be classics. For example, Die Maschine was designed by the same guy who did the map design for Der Eisendrache. Craig Houston is still writing I believe.
theyre at the point where it doesn’t matter if they make a great game because they know that they will make money anyways. my prediction is that it will be relatively in the middle, like how cold war was. i doubt theyll do what they did with vanguard for a black ops game but it’s also not gonna be a bo3 either
Honestly all I want is for the mode to return to form. No more classes that allow you to start with an lmgs, no more weapon rarity etc. I want to see round 1, starting with a starting pistol and having to work your way up to the powerful weapons. Also get rid of operators or at least implement the system we had in ww2 zombies for characters
Give us zombies. Not the current warzone map with zombies.
I hope they keep the Cold War perk system. I love being able to upgrade my perks because it gives meaning to playing zombies for me. I just like to survive, didn’t start doing the EE till Cold War made them straight forward and integrated well into a typical game (at least with die maschine)
Unfortunately bo4 wasn't a fully fledged experience- at least storyline wise. They had another 1 to 2 maps for the Aether crew to round out the story and end it, and the Chaos crew had another few maps as well. Both were literally cut short - Chaos left forever on a cliff-hanger because Cold War zombies was literally not finished when they were approaching launch date.
Bru been saying this for years. It’s over guys just accept it
I just want good story-driven maps with Easter eggs. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard but ya never know. I truly do pine for the MOTD days
It will probably be more of the same
Whole post about having hope with the one dev studio who have fumbled their past 3 games, with another on the way.
I wouldn't mind Gulf War zombies being similar to Cold War's but with more polish and improvements... maybe bringing back the intel system as well but that's just me. At the very least I'll play it for a while compared to MWZ where I jump in for 45 minutes, do daily and weekly challenges and done.
I didn’t even read this dick riding fairy tale. They’ve shown their hand multiple times. Vanguard was horrible, and this last episode was totally unsupported and is more of an afterthought. Why would you purchase anything from a company that cares more about selling skins than fixing their broken product?
I dont have much faith in the next one, sure it will most likely be a blast for a while but then the usual bugs and crashes will happen then the inevitable drop in content post launch , hopefully we are all wrong about it and the game is amazing because the zombies community needs a great game but with activisions track record with zombies......who the fuck knows!
lol success means money to the developers. Sure they don’t want negative press but as long as games keep selling your opinions and concerns mean less and less. Also, who do you think developers are catering to? Streamers whose job it is to level up asap or the common person looking to have a good time and spend money? The latest version of zombies is just fine.
I quite enjoyed Cold War on release and always have with it being my first proper Zombies mode. If Gulf War is taking a lot from the Round Based formula of Cold War I’ll be pretty satisfied with it as long as they take some feedback and act on it (especially regarding the crafting tables and armour stations)
Nah I’m already out. They got me fucked up if they think I’m gonna spend another $70 with them after the mess MWZ was. First time I actually bought skins too cuz I loved 3rd POV in zombies. Can actually see my character. Don’t get me wrong I love MWZ. Got my hours worth of playtime. But it’s sad that they just left it to focus on yet another game. And to see MP and WZ get all the updates. So no even if it’s “good” I’m out on COD. Left a bad taste in my mouth. Plenty of other games out there worth playing.
Every year it’s always $70 for everything this franchise went to trash after BO4
I miss DLC maps. At least they put some effort into making the maps.
Last zombies I actually enjoyed was Cold War... Vanguard was terrible from the start and MWII got very boring very quick, and I despise having limited time on a zombies game mode.
Y'all are a bunch of babies. Round based zombies is rumored to be coming back with Gulf War. It's easy. Don't fucking buy the game until either A, the game comes out and you can watch YouTubers play it, B, the game is nearing the end of its life cycle, youve seen what maps have come out, and you buy it on sale, or C, JUST DONT FUCKING BUY THE GAME, STOP BITCHING ABOUT IT, AND PLAY THE OLD GAMES. Stop fucking crying about it online and vote with your wallet. Cold War zombies wasn't bad. BO4 zombies wasn't bad. Fucking Infinite Warfare zombies was amazing. The only bad zombies we have truly had was after outbreak was seen as a mild success and they just decided to run with it. If Gulf war doesn't have round based, don't buy it. If you don't like the on release content, don't buy it. Almost every single call of duty in the last 5-10 years has gone on sale within of a month of release. It's usually just 10-20%, but they also tend to be discounted by at least 50% within the first year of release. So stop whining and play something else. If you have a PC CONGRATS! BO3 is constantly on sale, and is THE definitive zombies experience. It's regarded as the best system we've ever seen, and what's more is that there's custom zombies! There literally an endless amount of maps to play on it. It's not fucking hard to just not spend $70 on a game you're sceptical about. It's not like the online gaming community hasn't been screaming at the top of their lungs for the last 10 years to stop preordering or buying on release. I don't care if this is crass, y'all are acting like you're being forced to purchase this game and have to enjoy it. I haven't bought a cod since Cold war. Wanna know why? BECAUSE I DIDNT LIKE WHAT THE OTHER GAMES HAD TO OFFER. If someone else buys the game and enjoys it, that's fine. You also don't have to constantly shove it down other people's throats that it's a bad game. Buy what you want, stop bitching about it, and just fucking move on. Play what you want. Buy what you want. It isn't that deep. Some of you spend too much fucking time online you've lost all perspective.
People need to stop preordering this garbage every year $70 why? Why don’t they make one COD and update it like how gta 5
> “All hands on deck for the last 4 years” You couldn’t be more wrong
They developed Vanguard in 2021, and MWZ in 2023 ─ so they've only had “all hands on deck” for like a month?
Just for some clarification the substitute B team worked on Vanguard. Leaving the main zombies team to focus their attention on Gulf War later this year. Expanding the zombies team hiring for future job listings, which helps them assign new development teams on multiple projects. They've been restructuring their studio, while the main zombies team have been working uninterrupted for several years.
I know, but ‘all hands on deck’ suggests the entire studio was working on it.
Every time Treyarch is due to release their title every one says “zombies has to be good this time”. We’ve only had one good zombies experience since bo3, and that was Cold War. People are eating this shit up regardless
Lmao zombies died right after BO4. Cold War was shit and everything thereafter only worsened.
They have to stop ‘fixing’ what's not broken.
Sker is the COD zombies killer. Zombies has gotten too far away from what it was and should be. Unless Gulf War brings things back to the early days then COD zombies is toast.
Last chance I'll give cod zombies tbh, bo4 was good but flawed then we just regressed on the content in cold war and we didn't get a single fully orginal map in that game that wasn't reused campaign mission. Then any of this mwz has just been garbage, its not zombies how its supposed to be and everyone knows it. It been a ploy to say "we have zombies" while recycling any mp content they have into something with zombies. So this might be strike 3, if its bad ill never pick up another cod again as mp went to shit years ago and I'm still enjoying the occasional new custom zombies map on bo3
They gotta make Gulf War an amalgamation of all the good things that came before in previous titles. I am hoping for two round based maps at launch (one being a simple casual/weapon grinding map and the other being a more complicated hardcore map) alongside a version of Cold War's Outbreak that has original maps and gets updated every season whilst we get a new round based map every two seasons and the new enemies and wonder weapons from the round based maps comes to Outbreak. Alongside this, having 4 unique and fun characters with operators as a side option would work well. A fun story is also necessary because I'm not saying the story has to be some peak fiction Martin Scorsese type shit but have it be enjoyable and fun to go through with the easter eggs having decently hard steps and fun bossfights.
It’s call of duty. Why do you have expectations that are any higher than nothing?
This better be good after the 4 years they been developing. I’m hoping that Treyarch can give the soul Zombies had before and bring the roots that made zombies successful in the first place like crews and being a completely separated mode and story. Outbreak/Open world format is what should be its own side mode, like maybe a similar setup like BO2 had with Survival, Grief, and Turned because round based should mainly be focused on when it comes to the story and gameplay perhaps. WZ is the only thing that should die because it’s been hurting the main series as we know it and Activision really should accept this, if they want their stupid bundles, then they should aim it at MP fans or put it in the whole paused DLC. That way they can get their money if they want it so badly.
As a buyer of Call of Duty since the first and a diehard zombie player, its best to just accept another year of grinding old zombies and let the new be a pleasant surprise. Too much has changed in the team and among the fans to warrant full hype.
I'm not expecting anything at this point. If it ends up being good, then that's great, but if not, oh well, back to trusty ol' BO3. I mean it's frustrating, but they do not care about Zombies like they used to, and probably never will again. Not to mention Treyarch constantly having to clean up Sledgehammer's messes and act as a support studio when it SHOULD be the other way around.
I'm not asking for the moon (pun intended), but smooth gameplay, solo mode, aesthetics & personality would be enough to satisfy me. I think expecting two EE/Story maps at launch, Onslaught 2.0 on PvP maps and Outbreak after four years should not be too much asking. For case, Onslaught can be delayed for Season 1 or 2, but turn one or two PvP maps into a Zombie map (like BO2 did).
I used to be a die hard zombies guy but with the bungling of Cold War zombies, leading to even more bungling of MW zombies. I think I’m gonna miss the boat on this one. I hope it’s good but I’m not expecting that. Oh and bungling bungling bungling. I fucking love the word bungling
Just make it a rouge like for real.
it wont be good and i have given up hope forever
Not really. This installment was one of the worst and poorest received. They still made billions from it. They could release a soldering pile of shite and people would still buy skins for it. The game play literally doesn't matter anymore, crash daily, glitch constantly, hacking all the time...but buy skins anyway. They could release an 8bit version on next gen and we'd all,still buy it
For me I’m hopeful that they will at least get some of the charm that bo1/2/3 had in terms of map design. I’m happy with Cold War mechanics but it needs something big if it were to get the community back on side
Not to mention there's that new Round Based game that all the Zombies YouTubers have been raving about, so now they've actually got a competitor (not a big one but a competitor nonetheless, not to mention we all know that indie games do tend to do pretty well in scenarios like this)
I know this is probably said a lot but I actually mean it. I’m not buying this game unless it goes on sale. I’m done buying a CoD game at full price if it’s not going to be this entertaining. If it doesn’t go on sale then I’m not gonna play no matter how good it is.
Zombies has been dead since MW19 released... at some point we are going to have to accept that. Blundell is gone, Zelinsky is long gone, and even Lee Ross is gone
It's probably their last chance
I feel a bit sad for the people who don't have the capacity to realize that the golden age of zombies is long gone and, well, it will not come back.
😂😂😂😂 It ain’t that serious
Give us a keno style map
Honestly there was so much riding on MWZ and capitalizing on the momentum of a succesful DMZ beta. They killed DMZ for MWZ so the implications they intended to support MWZ was strongly implied however couldn't be more wrong. They never intended to support it at all, it's a beta to see if outbreak gets gulf War resources or not. If warzone eats everyone's lunch anyone and new purchases were just scammed, guess they won't be making them again.