News - Treyarch Officially Quit Making Warzone 2 Zombies
We have big news to talk about, as Triarch has publicly confirmed that they are no longer developing modern warfare zombies. We're going to dive into everything on this topic and what it means during a Creator call this week for season 3 of Treyarch's. Kevin Drew, associate director of design in charge of zombies, announced that Tri is no longer working on Modern Warfare zombies, and instead Sledgehammer Games will pick up the pieces, finish the story line, and develop the content for the remaining seasons.
You mentioned that Triarch and Sledgehammer Games have been working closely since the beginning on the mode, and Sledgehammer Games will finish the season out strong. The Trio's departure from the Modern Warfare Zombies mode was due to the team having to shift their focus to something on the horizon that is exciting, but they can't talk about it just yet, which quite clearly is obviously the next Black Ops game that is rumored to release at the end of the year and also heavily rumored to be the return of round-based Treyarch Call of Duty zombies.
I think this news is a long time coming, as due to the lack of live service content we've seen since season 1, it felt fairly obvious that Triarch had already moved on. If you recall back to February for season 2's launch from that Creator call, we learned that Triarch had no new enemies or perks planned for Modern Warfare Zombies, which was already quite a big sign that they had WRA development on the major content for the mode.
Now, a really important thing to consider budget-wise with every season or update for Modern Warfare Zombies is that we get a very high-quality, professional CGI-cut scene. This entire time, they probably wanted to get this all done and dusted as soon as possible so that they could continue their focus and work on Cod 2024.
And I've actually found some evidence that backs up the timeline, proving this point and actually pointing out that a fair amount of the Triarch team might have actually finished development on Modern Warfare Zombies a long time ago. I'm not necessarily saying the entire Triarch team, but at least some of them now.
This is all public information that is out there that anyone can find out, but I was a little curious about what job roles Kevin has had at Triarch up until now. I promise, I'm not stalking you here. Kevin. I promise, but on his LinkedIn profile, he has a section called projects where there's an unannounced project that he's been working on at Tryo since January 2022, until now, which is 100% Cod 2024.
Right underneath, he shows that he worked on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 between January 2022 and January 2023, showing that at least one of the main teams at Triarch for Zombies completed the development on the Modern Warfare Zombies mode all the way back at the end of last year to refocus on development for COD 2024.
Now, this might seem both extremely surprising and completely unexpected. On the other end, let me explain to us that some parts of the Tryo team were finished with this mode. 15 months ago is obviously hard to compute, but when they have their own game that they're developing, as well as these games being developed for several years, this is not surprising to see, especially considering when in the development period the Zombies mode is usually worked on.
For an upcoming Treyarch COD Zombie game, usually it's the final thing that's worked on, but it's been in development for 12 to 24 months now. Kevin's LinkedIn definitely doesn't confirm that every Treyarch member on the Zombie team finished MWZ back in 2023. But it's fair to assume a decent chunk of that team moved back to work on COD 2024.
And so with that rough time frame for Triarch to continue their focus solely on this current game, that's where the other studios come in to fill in for the rest of the seasonal content. If this timeline all plays out, then it might make sense why Treyarch has no further plans for new enemies, perks, or anything more major than what we're seeing due to the likely fact that they developed the whole mode with Sledgehammer Games and then the season 1 content, and then that's when they shifted their focus to full head-down development on this year's Call of Duty game.
Now there's definitely two different ways to look at this, both as a positive and a negative. The positive is that Triaka is likely head-down focused on round-based zombies, and that is the classic formula of zombies that everyone is dying to see return, so if I were given the option of them focusing more on round-based zombies in the future or having more Modern Warfare Zombies content, then the Round Bas zombie suffers.
I definitely would rather have more round-base focus, but that isn't to take away from the fact that the Modern Warfare Zombies mode, at a fundamental level, is genuinely a really great alternative Zombies mode from Round Bay that I want to see fleshed out further. Everything from the launch of the game as well as season 1 was, in my opinion, really strong, really fun, and fantastic.
Experience and all that I wanted and really expected from the further seasons was just more of that, and that is why I think this news is going to be disappointing to fans of the current mode that really like it because it at least feels like that was the peak of the content to expect in this mode, and we're never going to reach that height again.
Things like the red worm boss fight, which you could do with dozens of players in the lobby all at once, were great groundwork for zombies; the ACT missions were great fun as well; and overall, it was great groundwork for an expanded, open-world version of Outbreak. I have hopes that we see a similar mode like this return for this year's Call of Duty game aside from there being round-based, but again, if given the option.
I would rather focus on round-based, but I think this really did have legs, so it is a real shame to see Treyo take a step back, but with Sledgehammer Games now being the main developers on the mode. I'm hoping that there is a chance that they can listen to the feedback of the community. And actually, add substantial gameplay features and other things that they have the time to do that Treyarch and Sledgehammer have been historic in the past for doing entire overhauls.
