With the announcement that Call of Duty Online will be shutting down in China, Call of Duty content creator Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff has given his thoughts on what this means for CoD: Mobile.
After six years of content updates, Tencent announced that the China-only title, Call of Duty Online, would be pulling the plug on its servers for good. The news comes after a steady decline in players and the release of the highly popular CoD Mobile game. Call of Duty Online was brought to China in 2015, where the free-to-play title helped introduce the market to Activision’s FPS series.
While the free-to-play title never made its way to the west, the overall success of Call of Duty Online has paved the way for other CoD titles in China – with the latest being that of CoD: Mobile. While various streamers like Dr Disrespect have been keen to praise the mobile title, NICKMERCS also believes that this transition of CoD Online’s playerbase will pave the way for more exciting content in the future.
“Basically, Tencent has taken a big step right here,” says Nick. “They’re closing their game and moving everybody over to CoD Mobile. This is a very big change in that community. I don’t play Call of Duty on the phone, to be honest, I’ve never played Call of Duty on the phone, but I know there’s a big community of you guys that do. I don’t think this [transition] is the worst thing in the world.”
To thank the Call of Duty Online players for their support, Tencent has prepared a compensation activity that will be present in CoD Mobile. Various in-game cosmetics and currencies will likely be given to those that participate, further incentivizing players to invest time into Cod Mobile.
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“We’ve seen a bunch of teasers in the BR for the phone, and I think that’s a big win for Call of Duty, ” said Nick. “The more players you have out there on Verdansk, the better it is for everybody… I can tell you flat out, right now, that having more players just incentivizes the devs to work that much harder, to get things done, and to get things right.”
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Nick then goes on to highlight that this transition could lead to improvements in Warzone’s anti-cheat system, lackluster map updates, and the addition of more perks. Of course, whether this move will help improve any of the above remains to be seen, but there’s certainly no denying that having a larger community will help with getting eyes on the current problems in both titles.