All those rumors you’ve heard about Activision thinking about charging players a monthly fee to play their hit Call of Duty game franchise online with others? It turns out they were true, even though it was crystal clear that it would be the worst idea ever and that no self-respecting gamer would pay to play something they’ve been doing freely since online multiplayer has become so popular, the company is going to try their luck anyway.
The new service will be called Call of Duty Elite, and it will launch this fall along with the much-anticipated third installment in their ultra-popular Modern Warfare series, Modern Warfare 3.
At the moment, however, it does not sound like everyone will have to pay a fee to play online as once feared””no, you should still be able to play as you have been once you’ve purchased their game. What Activision is doing is testing the waters by offering a special “arena” of sorts where for a small monthly fee you can play online and get extra added downloadable content and special maps to use that you won’t have on the basic MW3 disc. And yes, those of you on Xbox 360 would have to pay this on top of what you pay to play on Xbox Live.
This is of course an attempt to bait you in; if the special extra maps are as awesome as one would expect them to be, you’re going to want to play in them, and thus you’ll find yourself tempted to pay the monthly fee, which is expected to be less than other fees like Netflix’s $7.99 a month service, for example.
And if you’re paying a monthly fee for some extra DLC and maps, then what happens after you get the maps and DLC? Sounds like instead of acquiring the maps as you do today with a small Marketplace or PSN purchase, you’d be paying the fee to have access to these maps. Either that or they’ll have a hell of a lot of extra maps to release each new month. Details are still a little bit cloudy at the moment.
All I do know is this is the beginning of bad things if players begin to take said bait. I enjoy the Call of Duty games as much as the next person, but this is just feels like one more step towards a monthly World of Warcraft-type fee to play in general. Oh, right, and did I mention that Activision is more officially Activision Blizzard Inc. and owns World of Warcraft as well?
The worst thing about video games today is easily the DLC. When I shell out $60 for a game, I expect to get my money’s worth. So when we find out that we have to pay even more to get or see or do something related to the game we spent $60 on, that’s when you can’t help but feel a little ripped off. It goes hand-in-hand with online multiplayer-friendly titles like the Call of Duty games. When you spend that $60 you know you’re most likely getting a really short, intense campaign (which is not worth the retail price on its own), and the ability to compete online with players around the world (which makes up for the shorter campaign) in a bunch of exciting locations. If you want to charge a little one-time fee later for even more maps, be my guest””that’s reasonable enough. But trying to get people to pay a monthly fee for these things? That doesn’t cross me as a “respect your customers” type decision.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, especially when we learn the details of this new “service.” From the sounds of the internet, one can only assume that very few want anything at all to do with this, and many Call of Duty gamers are already set to jump ship to the fantastic-looking Battlefield 3.
But until we see what exactly is being offered, how many won’t be able to resist, and how good Battlefield 3‘s online multiplayer will be, it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen.
Speak your minds; how much or how little sense does this decision make, and how does it affect how you now look at the Call of Duty franchise?
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
I hate it! The campaigns are getting shorter and shorter so at least you have multi player for free. I think it is a mistake on Activision’s part because I was planning on getting Battlefield 3 and waiting until I could snag COD MW for like $20 down the road for the campaign. This seals the deal. They should be adding stuff like this for free to compete with Battlefield which already has longer campaigns and is 10X better on the multi player end. I own a PS3 so I have free online but are X-Box people going to pay their monthly fee to Microsoft and then another monthly fee for COD? I wouldn’t.
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goodbye to activision, n good riddence to ur money grabbing head up ur own ass ways. hello to battlefield 3 and new and greener pastures. activision can nickle and dime the 500 k customers they’ll have left while EA officially leads the new number one video game in the world.
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The thing that sucks is older, more “mature” players will shell out $$$ just to get out of playing in the kiddie pool.
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shit yeah i would!! lol not too much though..
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@Frank: Yes, XBox people will pay the extra amount on top of their Live account,because a large amount of the people who play Call of Duty are kids younger than 14 years old, who will fight with their parents to get that extra $10(~) a month because thats what they do now. Also theyre the biggest fanboys of the cal of duty series, always having to have the map packs that cost $15 in themselves.
@Jones: Most likely a large amount of those mature players will be smart enough to realize that this is as big of a ripoff as Activision can pull out of their a$$. EA does a good job (it seems) at the DLC for atleast the Bad Company 2… I havent played any other battlefields however this game impresses me… a VIP code with a new purchase and you can download maps for free, with the exception of Vietnam which I havent gotten, though curious about it.
CoD lost me at BlackOps. Nearly every map favors assault rifles or SMGs, leaving the guy who likes that oversized bolt action of doom to learn how to “quickscope” or be a free kill. I never did like paying more than 800 MS points for addons, the ones for Black Ops cost 1200 ($15) for 4 multiplayer maps that suck after the first few times youve played on them and 1 zombies map (OOooooOoo fuuun, untill after you played it over and over 20 times in a row)
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Sounds like they are only charging for extra stuff
but it’s still bullshit and Activision is Evil
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yeah. this is a terrible idea… so they are going to save good maps for the monthly payers and give everyone who isnt paying them the shitty maps. also, are they not going to come out with any extra DLC for the non-monthly payers since they have to do all the extra maps for the monthly payers? wtf are they thingking?? did they absolutely reform and restructure and double staff? cuz thats what they are going to have to do to be able to keep both groups of customers happy. i still have it reserved at GameStop, but i also have battlefield 3 reserved. even though i didnt really like the feel of bad company 2. but if everyone i know is oging to play it, i might as well play too since my reservation for MW3 will most likely be recovered and put towards battlefield 3. Black Ops will most likely be my last COD game if activision keeps this shit up. i was always told, “if it aint broke, dont try and fix it.” it hasnt let me down yet… just some food for thought activision!
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at first I was like money grabbing bastards but then i thought about it. Well actually I don’t give a shit tbh cause I hate FPS games like COD but still. Look at the budget of these games. MW2 was something like $16m over double MW1 and the movie District9 for comparisons sake. The budget on these games is getting HUGE because players want better and better – and for the same price tag? Yeah it sucks giant mega donkey dick having to pay for all these subscriptions/DLC etc. etc. but as things stand currently games companies wouldn’t be making a profit on big titles on basic price alone. As far as i’m concerned this optional system is far better to pricing games according to quality..
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I have always loved COD, and yes I am 15, but I don’t see what they are trying to play at here. I realize that most of you will move on to Battlefield 3 because you are older and feel nostalgia for that franchise, but me? I have nothing, other than sequels and Call of Duty. Starting off with Modern Warfare 2, I am a new CoD player, but one that has loved the way the franchise was going. Black Ops was a bit dissapointing, but I knew that MW3 would be amazing. I was wrong. Activision are ripping everyone off, look at what happened to Starcraft 2… The game was brilliant but Battle.net 2.0 sucked penis, and we have to pay for another 2 games in 2 years time! Activision can “test the waters” all they want, they are now hated by me and probably a lot of other people aswell. Go to hell Activision!
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This is bull and I am gonna be 13 October 6…. Not all players of CoD that are below the age of 14 whine to their parents to pay for all the features. I personally think this is the biggest load of crap they can pull out of their a$$. I’m saying good bye CoD, hello Battlefield 3
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hello Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
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