Back in January I talked about how Infinity Ward was rumored to be working on a Call of Duty MMO, which of course would likely be worked on by a different company under Activision at this point given Infinity Ward’s current less-than-functional status. Call of Duty itself, as I have said on a few occasions, has achieved near-MMO status. Starting with Modern Warfare and moving forward, the Call of Duty series has been pumping in the MMO-features, allowing players to level up, gain achievements, earn experience, unlock new weapons and customizations for their weapons, earn badges. Technically all Call of Duty is missing is having the servers run by Activision, and perhaps a subscription fee.
I also noted that, were Call of Duty to take the WW2 Online route and go for the large persistent world, that the company would likely take the World War 2 MMO genre and dominate it, given the quality of Modern Warfare and World at War. That being said, I did express concern that a Call of Duty MMO with a subscription that operates solely on instances, ala Crimecraft, would likely hit the ground running directly into a brick wall, as players quickly drop the title and return to the free alternative, or even WW2 Online.
If you believed Robert Kotick of Activision was salivating at the thought of slapping a subscription fee on Call of Duty, then you’ll be needing a replacement bucket. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Kotick stated:
“I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow”
Does the audience want a Call of Duty pro-subscription? Kotick believes so.
“I think our audiences are clamoring for it. If you look at what they’re playing on Xbox Live today, we’ve had 1.7 billion hours of multiplayer play on Live. I think we could do a lot more to really satisfy the interests of the customers.”
When asked if Activision would pursue a Call of Duty subscription model, Kotick responded “hopefully.”
Is it too early to call Godwin’s law on future comments?
MMO Fallout 