Starting today, interested players can check out the Warzone.
Black Ops Cold War has had a bit of a rough time these past few weeks. After its initial launch on November 13, the game’s multiplayer mode has run into several problems, ranging from cheaters to weapon balancing issues, and even strange bugs like the one that shaves and undresses players. Treyarch promised meta changes and bug fixes with the Season 1 update, even delaying it a week to further refine it. The update finally arrived yesterday, December 16, and this free event is aimed at getting players back into the game.
The “Multiplayer Free Access Week” event is going to be split into two stages, according to the official Call of Duty Blog. The first stage will run from December 17 until December 21 and allow free access to a select number of game modes, including Team Deathmatch, Domination, 2v2 Gunfight, and two featured playlists: Nuketown Holiday 24/7 and Raid the Mall. The second stage will run from December 21 to December 24 and allow free access to all the content from the first stage along with the Prop Hunt, Combined Arms: Hardpoint, and Fireteam: Dirty Bomb game modes.
Additionally, starting December 18 at 10AM PT, players will be able to earn double XP and double weapon bonuses on all operators. This runs until 10AM PT December 21, at which point it will be replaced by a double battle XP event. This double battle XP will run exclusively for Black Ops Cold War until December 25, when it will also kick in for Warzone. Double battle XP will end for both on December 28, giving players an entire 10 days to level up their operators, maybe even break in the new one at the same time.
Given that the issues that both Black Ops Cold War and Warzone players were facing likely drove away some new players, this free access event is a good move from Treyarch. It can potentially bring in a lot of newer players, who will be playing on an updated version of the game where many of these issues have been fixed. The double XP events on top of that are yet another incentive both for new players and those that have been playing since launch, so it is looking good for the time being. However, new updates often bring with them new issues (such as the recently-discovered invisibility exploit), so Treyarch will have to stay on top of things to keep those new players around.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Source: Call of Duty Blog
