Even before its official launch, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is heating up. In the game's beta, one streamer has already set the world record for kills.
This open beta gives players an early chance to feel out Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and offers the opportunity to learn the game's new ins and outs while discovering bugs to report. There have been technical issues fixed, but many players are more interested in trying new features. Although the beta is wrapping up soon, players have a chance to really go all-in for its last few days.
Treyarch has not been shy about rewarding players even during the beta. Thanks to Double XP events, players are levelling up fast and gaining new weapons. The goal of this is not just to have fun, but to look for broken strategies and weapon combinations. To that end, the developers have unlocked all weapon attachments for every player. While this will almost certainly not be the case for the full release, for now players can use any attachment they choose.
This release comes in conjunction with a Double XP event that will presumably last for the rest of the beta. This will allow players to experiment with a wide variety of weapon-attachment combinations. The only way players could experiment even more is if all weapons were unlocked too. Thanks to players decoding the Pawn Takes Pawn message, all beta testers have an extra day to experiment, and no doubt it will be put to good use.
For the most part, the beta has been fruitful for everyone. The devs have seen what needs tweaking, and the players have experienced what some argue might be the best COD game in years. With the weapon attachments unlocked, players will know what they want to work towards once the game releases officially. Incentive like these typically work best once players have a concrete idea of the power they're unlocking.
Of course, there have been problems. On top of finding inappropriate imagery in the beta, it has been plagued by cheaters, which is a problem everyone hopes will not persist into the actual game. Still, aside from cheaters, it's hard to argue that this beta could have gone better for Activision. Now, the full game just has to measure up in November.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will launch November 13 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Treyarch