If you have been sticking with the latest Call of Duty news you might have heard about a revolutionary new online system that Activision has been touting. It started out with a rumor that Call of Duty was going to have some kind of online subscription based multiplayer and while Activision denied that it was going to have a pay-to-play system they still managed to create an online subscription based service that will be launching with Modern Warfare 3 on November 8th, 2011.
Call of Duty Elite is a service that will track stats, give out rewards (real and virtual), and allow players to form social gaming groups across all Call of Duty games. There will be two levels of service, one which is for paying subscribers and another which is for non-paying subscribers. If you are paying you will be allowed to win prizes, have access to exclusive content, be granted discounts on DLC, and have first access to said DLC. The perks have yet to have been completely announced.
Elite’s social system is going to allow players to find friends, form groups, and/or clans. You can track your friends or groups stats and leaderboards. You can join groups based off of anything as well, like people from the city you live in or people who like the same sports team as you. Groups are based off of hash tags so searching for them will be fairly easy. Elite will also have various competitions and tournaments that players, groups, or clans can compete in much like a game show or sport. Elite will also allow players to upload videos and pictures straight to the web and share them with everyone. You can view, comment, or share those videos and pictures. Frankly it sounds a lot like Facebook or Bungie.net for Call of Duty.
My impressions are a bit mixed at the moment. While the concept sounds great, especially the competing for prizes, but there are still a lot of questions and concerns I have about it, like: How much it is going to cost me? Even still, the free service could offer a lot of stuff that I have been waiting for. If there was one thing that impressed me most about Halo, it was Bungie.net and this looks like it will offer a lot of the same services that Bungie has.
The beta starts this summer, but applications to join the beta starts now so check out the link below to apply. Also bellow there are screenshots of the service and a video that was created to promote Call of Duty Elite, which I found pretty amusing.
More Images:
[nggallery id=63]