Activision has made the choice to set up a trial version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, letting anyone who wants to experience the situation of both multiplayer and Zombies modes entirely free of charge, up to the date of December 22. The question remains if this move is, on the one hand, a big leap and, on the other, an opportunity for doubtful players to try the hottest. But as usual, with anything related to Call of Duty, the reaction from the community is non-uniform indeed; it is all over the board.
The trial is indeed live. Right now, at this very moment. On all consoles. And you can now the download it and check for yourself if the matter is hype or hate. Communication was done through the usual methods; it is a straightforward deal: you would be allowed to play the core MP modes and the zombies experience for free for a limited time. It is a standard move by Activision during the holiday season to attract new players or to bring back some old ones. But the online conversations? They tell a different story, a story in which a player community is portrayed as being very much split over the goodness or badness of Black Ops 7.
Getting into the replies is like getting into a battlefield where the dispute is more disorganized than the most agitated Nuketown match. One of the groups is formed by players who are quite pessimistic and who express their unhappiness about the new game. A user, Nektix, put it directly, “I hope people give the game a chance. It’s really good unlike the previous COD parts.” It is a strong endorsement that suggests the new Treyarch title has been the return to form after some less-beloved entries for a few, at least. Another player, Lewis, responded to the critics saying, “Best COD in years, you haven’t played it,” hinting that much of the hatred is coming from people who haven’t even tried the latest installment.
However, it is the case that the other side of the trench is flooded with complaints. The accusations are very harsh and very varied at the same time. Some players are saying that the game had a problematic launch and that subsequently, prices were lowered. One furious gamer, uaea7mdd, cried out, “So I pay 100$ for a game that was wrongly promised to us, no ‘sbmm,’ then a month later it’s 35$ discounted, the next black ops I ain’t buying it just gonna wait for that nice 50% discount cause I know it’s gonna sell bad.” Ouch. The broken promise regarding skill-based matchmaking (SBMM), which is a recurring theme that stings for the hardcore crowd, is the source of the bitterness.
Other issues are popping up as well. Technical difficulties are one of them, and not a minor one at that. Karlo Iglesias drew attention to the huge file size and tweeted, “1K GB to download… With RAM (memory) prices sky high it’s an easy, hell no!” And the storage capacity is not the only problem-some users are saying that cheaters are already becoming a problem. Luke Staiger posted, “Bunch of cheaters in bo7 nuke town game unfair player can’t shoot no one.” Then there is Zombies mode, which has its own critics. A very short and succinct reply from Caleb simply stated, “Zombies is terrible.” So, to be blunt, there are occasions when not everybody is in the mood for the zombie theme.
The debate even got weird as gamers contradicted one another on the topic of sales and the health of the franchise. TheStrano said that big sales or free trials do not necessarily mean that a game is failing. “Bo6 was the biggest launch in franchise history no wonder,” he observed. However, another user, Scott Yendle, challenged him and said that he linked the sales of other titles to the perception of their quality-and then he mentioned BO6, Vanguard, and MW3-all going on sale as “the games that were regarded awful by cod fans.” “BO7 joins that list cheers for the confirmation,” he concluded. This is a never-ending and exhausting argument about what success actually looks like for Call of Duty these days.
And then there is just nothing but salt left. Some of the replies are so nasty that they are actually humorous. One user remarked, “You’d have to pay me to play it lmao.” Another one expressed his gratitude for the ‘warning’ about the free trial as if it were a public service announcement for a bad movie. The moods vary from defensive to aggressive, from sarcasm to hopefulness. Essentially, it is the whole range of gamers’ feelings compressed into 280 characters.
