The Downfall of The Call Of Duty Series 

Honestly, being able to see how many players were on the game, map voting, scorestreaks, and especially, chatting with the enemy team and still being able to talk to them next match if no one left was what made it the best time

Calling games shit but advertising raid shadow legends is so ironic

2007-2011 was genuinely a highlight of my life due to the Cod4-Black ops 1 era. It was the perfect set of games at the best time. I will never forget those years

The real reason that led COD to downfall, is that Activision fired the key members that formed the original infinity ward team (Jason west, Vince Zampella). following to that, almost every member of IW resigned to support their former bosses to courts. The original IW team was responsible for cod4 and MW2 arguably the best and most innovative COD's out there, this team pushed the envelope in evey game they made ,since then COD has been in a state of recycle. no wonder the decline, lacking the masterminds that made quality their fisrt priority, . if they had these people still working for the franchise the game would be much different today.

I feel like him putting his facecam into the ad was him secretly crying for help

You left out something. After modern warfare 2 was released, there was this huge feud between Activision and the founders of infinity ward. It ended with the OG devs getting fired and making a new studio called respawn (known for apex and Titanfall). That was a huge reason as to why CoD saw a decline. The people that made the games good were no longer there. Also Activision generally doesn't treat their workers properly and there have been so many cases of harassment of workers from Activision.

I still think Zombies is the most brilliant mode ever created. Not only is it great with friends, it functions well as a training ground to sharpen the individual player. I got several friends to be COD fans just by playing Zombies with them. The gameplay loop is simple yet filled with fun features with a difficulty that isn’t to bad in the beginning and slowly gets harder.

Your 2010 intro was a huge nostalgia trip which left me with the hope that if I bust off the old 360, open up the disc tray, carefully drop in the MW2 disc and head to the MP menu that there will be teams of like-minded people still reliving the greatest era of COD.

In my opinion, the MW1-BO2 era was so good because the games were so well rounded. In almost all of those games you could pick up the game, experience a good, memorable, and captivating story, and then spend the rest of the year enjoying good multiplayer. I think once they started throwing in cookie cutter stories and streamlining multiplayer development, it was over.

I'll never forget that time I went down in Kino and my 9 year old daughter ran passed me with a horde of zombies behind her and said, "sorry dad. You're on your own." Quality, daddy/daughter time. The good old days.

what killed CoD multiplayer for me was the switch away from player-run servers. in CoD 4 and 5 you joined a clan and played on your own server that you could customise, choose every detail about how you wanted to play, which rotation of maps, how often to change them, how many players, tweak killstreaks or remove them, have different games going on for all those options so people could pick and choose

Black Ops 3's workshop is pretty much the only reason I even still play COD

There was a reason why Call of Duty: Black Ops II is considered "The Last Good Call of Duty."

“As basic as a white girl ordering Starbucks from Uber eats” dude I died

Works at War is super underrated, campaign is amazing, bolt action rifles, sun machine guns, BAR and trench gun were goated. Maps were great too. Id say the only down side was the lack of killstreaks

The skill gap was great. It meant that unless beeing on the very bottom of the skill level, everyone got their shot at beeing the dominating one. That’s why I, despite beeing average at best, willingly came back to the game. It’s annoying to be rekt by a chopper gunner, but then you are motivated to play more, to get matched with lower skilled players eventually. Getting better increases the probability of that happening.

Don’t forget about all the micro-transactions and loot boxes in Advanced Warfare and later games. Casual players who didn’t play often and didn’t put money into the games were outclassed entirely by people who dumped money into the game to get weapon variants that were objectively better. Prior games just had you level up to achieve weapons, there wasn’t an equipment gap that artificially added to the skill gap. That was one of the main reasons I stopped playing AW, was because I got stomped by weapons that I wouldn’t realistically get the chance to use

This year was honestly the resurgence of COD with warzone and mobile

I personally hate that COD Ghosts was hated on so hard. I honestly genuinely enjoyed that game and had tons of fun playing it. IMO advanced warefare was the real nail in the coffin.

I’ve been saying this as someone who has been playing since mw2, and have spent considerable time playing CoD4, Mw2, BO, MW3 and BO2 at a competitive level. It is so simple to revive this series. People want Call of Duty to be enjoyable and want to play with their friends. Fortnite in 2017/18 proved that. To me the solution is simple - - Remove SBMM, or tone it down significantly - put fun kill streaks back in - remove the unnecessary 500 attachment options. Players want simplicity. 1-2 attachments like MW2 or Black Ops was the best - spend time developing fun maps - keep lobbies together after games - being back map voting - bring back OG game modes - Demolition, CTF, etc - Bring back Ground War - remove micro transactions and pay to win - ultimately, if CoD wants to be on the map they need to listen to their fan base and want to not take advantage of the players. It’s so simple in my mind to create a fun game again, because it’s already been done. Mw2, black ops, etc were some of the most successful because of the simplicity and fun the game was designed to be. Now it’s designed to sell you as much shit as possible

4:58 to skip ad

learning to play cod as a child back in the golden era was a grind for sure

I never was big on the COD multiplayer, but absolutely loved Zombies back in the day. I loved the arcade like nature of the game and how it was a fun cooperative experience. My friends and I spent many a night on BO2 Zombies back in 2012 and 2013. Heck, for as awful of a map as it was, Tranzit was still fun just for how much we'd troll one another on the map by leaving each other behind and watching them run after the bus. Town was definitely my favorite though. Simple and fun.

One of the best memories i got from cod was the first time i played cod black ops for the first time on a friends house and we went to zombies mode. That was One the most tense stuff a 12 years old could experience, miss those times and old cod in general

Man it’s sad to see these times will never be repeated… but I’m happy I lived and experienced the first cod4 online days. Truly legendary times. Everything was new and the community was epic.

Sunny: Modern Call of duty is soo bad 2 minutes later: THIS VIDEO IS SPONSORED BY RAID SHADOW LEGENDS. LOOK AT THIS GAMEPLAY AND GRAPHICS OF RAID SHOW LEGENDS!!!

i loved cod4, mw2, mw3, bo1 and bo2, but goddamnit bo3 was amazing, i still play bo3 zombies to this day, as this video mentioned, *religiously*

The increasingly greedy monetisation sure didn't help. It is ironic that the thing the publisher did to combat the decline was causing the decline.

Your next video should be like: The Rise and Downfall of RAID: Shadow Legends

I remember almost going insane at school having to listen to everyone go on about MW2. And that was 10 years ago?! Damn.

The older ones still have a special place in my heart and when something old is better than something new I say ‘old is gold’

I’m glad I was around during the golden era of call of duty, MW2, WAW, BO1, MW3 were awesome back when people used to speak down game chat a lot, I really do miss those times…

Lost all respect for the series when you needed to be online to Play THE CAMPAIGN

I’ll never forget the people we post boys let’s take a moment to remember the fallen souls: Ghost Roach Richthofen Dempsey Takeo Nikolai Soap mctavish Reznov Yuri The mob of the dead crew Dimitri Sgt sullivan Sandman Truck Grinch Ramirez Alex mason Miller Roebuck Gaz

As someone who grew up with the old games, it really is sad what happened to the series

For me it was COD 1 and 2 as a kid, i never forgot the sound the mg42 made

I didn’t know this was a thing i needed but I love it

I wish you mentioned that Bo3 had probably the best zombies mode for a lot of people, mostly because of Jason Blundell and Zombie Chronicles, and overall great maps and story.

I love how sonny's old commentary was. Honestly hilarious going back to this

I miss 07/08. Playing CoD 4, WaW and Halo 3 with my friends after school. It was a glorious time.

Playing MW3 as my first COD was the greatest time of my life. I have so many memories playing with my frieds…. It was years ago, yet time flies so fast. Its sad

This series will always be in our hearts, I remember the Xbox 360 days of coming back from school and 360 noscoping with my friends... To bad they made the games over monetized and futuristic

I lived the height of the Call of Duty era and I remember me and my friends connecting every day to play together.I believe the game failed to evolve and create that sense of community it had back then.For a kid in his early 10s logging into Steam and playing with other people you didn't even know felt almost like as If I connected on Facebook.Going through Prestige Ranks actually meant something and unlocking that final colour scheme was HARD. Another reason for their downfall is that Call of Duty did not experiment with different physics, play styles etc.I would love to see an installment focused on realism or on alternate history.

This video almost made me cry. Cod is my entire childhood. I'm gonna miss this.

SunnyV2: “There is no such thing as a game that lasts forever” Me: *Laughs in Minecraft*

*I mean when a series essentially releases the same game over and over it eventually will seem like a one trick pony....* _And no one likes a one trick pony for long._

Call Of Duty 4 and WaW will always have a special place in my heart. The former being when the engine changed and so did the world when it came to videogames, and the latter for introducing zombies. So many countless hours on each! Nowadays I'm not into it all that heavy anymore. Modern Warfare series still remains my favorite series of all times (new and old) but my taste for multiplayer has really dwindled down. Nowadays, as of last month i discovered DMZ (similar to Escape from Tarkov, only more forgiving) but then as of a couple of nights ago started playing Shiptment 24/7, only because i wanted to start having my own camo for my weapons and it was the quickest way to do it. I'll always love Call Of Duty, as I've been a long time loyal fan for the last two decades, but alot of things have definitely changed, some for the better, some for the worst

I'm new to this channel, I've never heard so many wild analogies in one video in my life.

People just couldn’t handle going from the best call of duty in history to the worst, it just made people wanna stop.

The only good thing to come from Cod WWII is the breakdown of wings of redemption.

Seeing Call of Duty go head to head with Halo was peak of the gaming market

Man what made these games fun for me ultimately was the game chat. You’d literally meet a wide range of people and could go from flaming ppl to getting flamed to being friends all in a couple games of SnD 😂 I miss Bo2 the most

Completely agree with everything that was said in this video about the decline.. BUT I do think a big point was nostalgia of us coming back from school and doing the same thing over and over and over again. You spawn, you shoot, you die, but we were happy with doing that for 2-12 hours every day online with our mates. We all miss the glory days of gaming when it’s all we looked forward to after Friday at school.

As he was promoting raid shadow legends he looked soulless and stared into the camera not feeling a single swig of emotion.

It's sad that it came to this state in the COD franchise and awesome video man :]

The reason for their downfall is the lack of community feed back the devs don’t even listen to the community. Hell they shut sm2 and xlabs down which was a fan project so that people can play the classic games without getting hacked and FUCKING DOXXED

As someone who was in a clan for Call of Duty 1, I lost hours upon hours to online multiplayer. There was a HUGE community at the time in 2004.

The last one I was really into was Modern Warfare 3... way back in 2011. Where does time go!?

Im not some fan of COD but its sad to see the downfall of COD hope you guys made memories

I will never forget crawling across the ground and watching that nuke go off. It was absolutely surreal to see the cloud coming at you and knowing there was nothing that could be done about it.

Personally, I think that a lot of the decline of COD was that it simply ran its course. As time went on, every COD started to feel just like the last. They were left with the option of taking risks that could backfire or playing it safe and watching as the audience got bored. They went with the latter.

I remember being so excited to come home after school and hop on bo2 or bo3 with the boys. Ahhh the memories

I remember getting cods 2 and 3 when I was like 7 or 8 and they were old even then but the games were cheap. Those are still some of the best gaming moments I remember

Plz make a video on SSSniperwolf how isn't she becoming irrelevant, inspite such low effort content

It goes to show, no matter what it is everything has an end

I’m 2 minutes in and this is already my favorite sunnyv2 episode.

9:48 I was playing online multiplayer back in 1999 with Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic, and later on UT and Q3A! To say it never really took off until 2007 is just PLAIN LYING!

Conclusion: The devs were absolutely genius in the beginning and fed the player base what they wanted as well as gave them things they didn't even know they wanted; but as the years passed they began to lose that aspect and the games following that point were not as ambitious or good as the previous ones.

You guys ever think about this: once we have our kids ( if not already ) we will be telling them these were the best cod games ever made. They will look at us funny and truly fully never understand how great these games were. It’s sad to think that that’s exactly what we use to do to our parents when they showed us the games they used to play in there younger age. Man I hate growing up.

I will never forget the sniper mission, best time I’ve ever had playing a game

I think that one of the reasons for the decline was also the release model. Putting out a new game every year, that is supposed to be similar anyway, was only good to sell as many copies in a short period of time. But then people like me thought „alright, I have to spend money, learn guns, killstreaks etc. just to eventually play the same game”. I would rather preferred if they kept more focus for longer on a single game. Look where valve made it with cs:go.

Playing Modern Warfare 1, 2 & 3 was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had so far. The story/missions, the team and sense of comradeship between the characters. The then sometimes shocking loss of this characters?!? To this day I hold a spot in my heart filled with hate for Shepard 😂 After that the games were still fun, but in a more simplistic shoot ‘em up way, rather than “I feel involved in this story and must invest time to find out what happens” way. Advanced Warfare was the last Call of Duty I ever played. I didn’t really care for the characters or the story that much, I just enjoyed shooting people but it didn’t feel the same.

That classic sound as the mission details run across the screen in the beginning of the mission; it gives chills.. That development team created a masterpiece.

Dude why I had to be so young had to be born in 2006 😔 and didn’t get a console till 2017 missed so much always had to rely on others missed so much

That thumbnail is actually genius. Not only is it eye catching because the line graph goes from right to left left instead of left to right but the arrow points directly to your profile picture and name.

Cod- increases skill gap with the ability to fly 20 feet above the ground Reviews- nO SkIlL gAp

Ghosts wasn't that bad. Period.

I remember being 11 in line for black ops 2 midnight release and then playing after getting home with it, it was awesome. But now that the developers / companies behind the developers have ruined cod it sucks knowing how good the game could be.

2007-2011 was the most best years in the years of COD....COD is like going down into the garbage bin.

2:10 everybody had a lobby like this

Black Ops series especially the first one is such a blast. I remember playing with college mates and we had such a great time. I think you are right when you say the nerf it for new players. But little did they know adversity is what makes us great and what makes me top scorer in some of the games. Great video analysis

ironically, im watching this 15 years later after mw 1 came out.

"sweet bubbly black poison" might be the best description for soda I've ever heard

I’m 33 years old and we definitely had broadband by 2007 (about half of us had broadband by that time according to the internet). Wasn’t really the ‘dark age’ of multiplayer as I clearly remember voice chat multiplayer in SOCOM 2 in 2003, although it was quite new at that time. Just hate when Gen Z commenters act like mid-2000s was the ‘dark age’ of the internet when it was more like the ‘wild west’ where everything wasn’t yet settled or streamlined.

Tips to making a good game: - forcus more on device compatibility and fps along with system requirements -make sure your graphics are sharp but any style is okay - listen to your audience and make updates about their conplaints - take a long time to make the second sequel and post it in a time of dissappointment

Black Ops 1- Black Ops 3 were great Very beautiful memories with the boys on origins and bo1 multiplayer

I think one thing to add to your theories is that the main player base that helped make Call of Duty so successful has also grown up. Most of us have full time jobs, and when we come home from that job we have a spouse and kids. Long gone are the days of playing games with the boys after school or during college when you have 2 hours of class a day and then nothing else to do.

The all ghillied up mission has an atmosphere unmatched by any other mission in any other game , truly heartbreaking.

The other huge downfall was the removal of mod tools/editing and dedicated/payed servers where players could make their own custom game modes/maps that kept a lot of the older games alive and made a competitive scene with promod. When they removed that they alienated another dedicated player base in favour of casual arcade style gameplay.

Please do another one that is up to date. The last two years has been... Wild.

It’s funny that you mentioned going home from school, looking toward to vanilla coke, Xbox 360, and MW2 because I was the same but with regular coke and COD4. Those were the days.

You're spot on about removing the skill gap and making the game less fulfilling. MW2 was the first one I played online. I got it months after it was released and I was terrible at it. The highest k/d ratio I had was like 0.79 but when I had a good game it felt awesome. In terms of killstreaks I think the best I did was get a chopper gunner like 4 times. I had mates who had like 100 nukes by the time the game was winding down. I got BO1 on it's release and grinded out and was good at it. Personally BO1 is my favourite simply because I was the best of my friend group at it. I had a k/d ratio of like 3.something and I was getting chopper gunners and dogs near enough every game. I had friends who were massive MW2 stans and they hated BO1 because they were better at MW2. I guess it's each to their own really, you prefer what you're better at. I personally got frustrated at MW2 for the nube-tubing and 360 no scopes, etc. I felt BO1 was a lot better for cutting that out. Again, I guess it just depends what you prefer. I felt BO1 had a better single player and it also had zombies so that tipped it for me. That being said, I think MW2 and BO1 are definitely the best CODs in terms of online gameplay. I really enjoyed the WAW campaign although I never played it online. Was it BO2 where they had the Alcatraz zombie mission? That was really fun when playing with a group of your mates but I thought the campaign and online modes were dogshit and I'm pretty sure that's the last COD I ever played.

COD4 and COD WAW felt the most pure, MW2 to BO2 were awesome, and everything after that had some sort of negativity surrounding it. (In my opinion)

Cod 4, WaW & even Black Ops were all so simple in reality, yet they had such a depth to their gameplay that made you want to keep going back time and again. I remember countless all nighters playing S&D, feeling like a boss being the last one alive with a silenced MP5 trying to get the bomb. I stopped after BO and moved onto Battlefield which too ended up removing any element of skill from the game after BF4. I miss those days.

To be honest i never felt like Bo3 was so bad

This is the first one you’ve missed the mark on. COD went through a rough patch from ghosts->WW2 but since then Warzone + Cold War broke sales records.

Not sure how old you were when the first COD game came out, but it was a massive success; praised for its well written campaign, and smart AI (in comparison to dumb AI companions in many other games at the time). Without its success, Infitnity Ward would not have gone on to achieve the heights they did.

I still play Medal of Honor to this day

If they would fucking listen to the community the game wouldn’t have fallen off