[Update: Call of Duty: Black Ops has been officially declassified]

It looks like we may finally have some details regarding Activision and Treyarch's next installment in the Call of Duty franchise. While many of us expected it to be titled Call of Duty: World at War 2, the next installment will instead be titled Call of Duty 7: Black Ops, according to the following report.

The game, as we expected, may take place in the time between World War II and present day, touching on famous historical events like Treyarch has been doing for the franchise all along. It's being reported that game will allow the player to play as part of the Special Air Service (SAS) and that there will be a close combat oriented mission in the Iranian embassy during the 1980’s.

Here's the snippet taken from the Tek9 report on Activision (via MapModNews):

"... With a scheduled release date of November 2010 the game is still in full development but undisclosed sources over at Activision have stated that "Call of Duty 7 will be set in recent history, between WWII and present day". Besides this information the sources have also confirmed that some missions will take us to Cuba and South America, hinting again in the direction of a Cold War / Vietnam based game.

Also revealed was that in certain missions the players are able to play as a member of SAS (the Special Air Service), the principle special forces unit of the British Army. One of these SAS missions pitches you in close combat during a mission in the Iranian embassy in London during the 1980's.

It has also been confirmed that Call of Duty 7: Black Ops will feature the popular zombie mode, in which players get to shoot down hordes of zombies, a feature that could not be seen in the Infinity Ward produced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

And last but not least, dedicated servers will also be part of the new Call of Duty game, much to the delight of PC gamers across the world. After Activision fired Vince Zampella and Jason West from Infinity Ward, it seems like they are taking yet another step back from the direction they had taken with Modern Warfare 2 by re-adding dedicated servers."

Although Infinity Ward has made the more successful games of the franchise and better single player games, I'm leaning to favoring Treyarch now a little more because of what they do for the fans. Infinity Ward gets to play with the modern war theme, but Treyarch is forced to play in history which many players are tired of. Yet, they make the best of it and include very important gameplay elements that IW fails to do.

Call of Duty: World at War included co-operative gameplay in its story. Not only that, but it was 4 player! Adding to the co-op fun, a feature I deem necessary in most current generation shooters, they even included another co-op mode in Nazi Zombies, which again let players team up with three friends to defend a position.

Modern Warfare 1 and 2 however, included no co-op play in their campaigns and the spec ops mode in MW2 was limited to 2 players. Making the situation worse for PC players, IW and Activision would not allow for dedicated servers, something that was certainly not in the best interest of gamers. Treyarch is definitely bringing it all for their next CoD game and they are seemingly bringing back Nazi Zombies and dedicated servers for PC players. While there's no word yet on co-operative gameplay in the campaign, we expect it to be there like in World at War.

Nothing official has come from Activision on this yet so we'll have to wait and see how accurate all of this is.

Call of Duty 7: Black Ops is due out this November for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC (with dedicated servers!).

Source: MapModNews