Public Service Announcement: How Call of Duty Elite Affects You
"'BRAAAIINNSSS', he says. It's always brains. Why can't he ask for meatloaf for once?"
So you've heard about Call of Duty Elite, and you wonder how any of this is going to impact your game. After all, you're a co-op player, primarily, and wouldn't give two scoops of bantha fodder for competitive stat tracking.
Okay...maybe we're not all that hardcore. Maybe some of us do like to play competitive games in between our cooperative bouts. Whether you're a straight arrow for co-op or a fan of all types, it seems that Call of Duty Elite is going to try to appeal to you.
So far, no pricing has been announced, so it's moot to weigh in on the overall value of this web-based tool set. Undoubtedly the conversation will turn into a debate about what Infinity Ward and Beachhead should be working on instead of Call of Duty Elite...but the fact of the matter is that this will draw a vast number of people and will have a margin of participation for everyone, even those without a penny to spend. Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling has gone on record to say that the majority of Elite will be free content.
Elite focuses on four corners of the gamer's experience: Career, Compete, Connect, and the black sheep of the C brothers - Improve. All signs point to the liklihood that Elite will provide the same amount of data for co-op game types as it does for competitive. What this would mean for Co-Optimers is that your soldier career, your zombie slaying, your Spec Ops missions, etc, would all feed into your data pool (on top of Spec Ops' progressive ranking structure). Furthermore, periodic challenges and contests will be available for cooperative gameplay modes as well, as you can see by the undead-themed header image in this post.
If you recall, Spec Ops is getting matchmaking for Modern Warfare 3; Elite is aiming to make getting together with like-minded players even easier, by using hashtags and a system similar to our "Gamers Like Me" function. You'll be able to get as detailed as you want, from favorite sports all the way down to favorite players and brands. In fact, it looks like you'll be able to create your own tags - GamerDNA style - so the sky's the limit.
The beta test for Call of Duty Elite begins this summer, and open access will be available alongside the release of Modern Warfare 3 on November 08th. What do you think of the co-op implications?
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