Take Home COD4:MW MP and more news

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Covers Hitting Europe

Over the past two weeks, some international magazines have come out with their CoD4:MW cover stories, and in them, unveiled some hard facts about the game’s Single Player plot, game play, and even little tid-bits regarding multiplayer.

In fact, so much information is starting to hit that we’re planning a little FAQ to put all the rumors aside. The report will put all confirmed information regarding CoD4:MW in one place. With the help of your feedback, we should be posting it up in the next few weeks.

In addition to international covers, the official press release for CoD4:MW came out last week out from Activision, giving even more insight into some of the game play you can except. As Jason West put it, “…one moment you are fast-roping from your Blackhawk helicopter, after storming into the war zone with an armada of choppers, the next you are a sniper, under concealment, in a Ghillie suit miles behind enemy lines, the next you are engaging hostiles from an AC-130 gunship thousands of feet above the battlefield…”

For those of you who know what an AC-130 is, I know you’re stoked about that statement—for those of you who don’t, drop by Youtube and do a quick search for AC-130 to get a taste of what we’re talking about.

Testing some COD4:MW Multiplayer @ Home:

I’m addicted…. And hear me out, because it’s not my fault nor am I alone. Starting last week we’ve implemented something I think a lot of developers should do, if they don’t already, and that’s Take Home Multiplayer Testing.

Everyday after work, we’ve all been copying the latest Multiplayer builds of the game to our boxes, heading home for the night, and jumping on Multiplayer at home for MP scrims that last until 3am sometimes 4am. I can’t get enough of it, and I think the same goes for everyone else in the studio.

The reason it’s so great, besides the obvious of being able to play multiplayer well into the morning every night, is Take Home Testing allows us to do a type of ‘testing’ that is far more ‘gamer-fied’ (I made that up) than the testing for bugs and balancing that the QA team does everyday of the week. It allows us to play the game in the same mindset as if we were playing any other game—half naked on our couch, surrounded by pretzels from a jumbo tub from Costco, 23 half-drank Dr. Peppers……. Basically, it lets us play it like we would normally play it.

Doing this lets us run into situations and scenarios that randomly play out everyday in MP matches online. So we’re developing from a fan’s perspective—balancing, tweaking, and re-examining how Multiplayer is done. The amount of feedback we’ve been gathering thanks to these casual take home MP scrims is amazing. Its been resulting in constant weapon balancing, Multiplayer map tweaking, and general overall tweaking of all things MP.

In closing

It’s been a busy two weeks here recently, as more and more info, confirmed and unconfirmed, is coming out about the game. We’ve been working on a lot of behind the scenes videos we’ll be posting up here as they’re completed and will be archived in the new Video section that will be hitting CharlieOscarDelta.com with the over-hauling that’s coming in the near future.