Modern Warfare 3’s “largest Zombies offering to date” has long-time fans questioning its existence

Against all odds, Modern Warfare 3 is bringing back Zombies mode, in a first for the series. But when Activision teased that it would be “the largest Zombies offering to date” everyone in the starving Zombies community suddenly was interested in the game.

Except, of course, the result is not what that initial statement would have you believe. Modern Warfare 3 has officially been revealed now, and the Zombies offering has been confirmed to be… a big map (seemingly the next Warzone map) where the experience will be a mix of Black Ops Cold War’s Outbreak mode, and Modern Warfare 2’s DMZ.

Simply dubbed Modern Warfare Zombies, the mode is developed by Treyarch, and will tell a story in the Dark Aether canon, but set in the Modern Warfare universe. Like Outbreak, missions take place across different sections, and increase in difficulty as you play.

That said, you can expect classic Zombies features like wall buys, pack-a-punch, mystery boxes and secrets to uncover. It also borrows from DMZ with its Buy Stations, and the ability to extract to reap the rewards. Modern Warfare Zombies is entirely PvE, but is be played in four-player squads. A total of six squads can be in the match.

Unsurprisingly, the response to the news has not been very positive, especially from longtime Zombies fans who were hoping for the more standard map-based approach. Zombies is often a solo or co-op with friends type of experience, so expanding it to multiplayer isn’t something those players are looking forward to.

“The good news: it’s so lazy that it won’t have taken any assets away from 2024 Zombies’ production,” reads a top-rated Reddit comment by user LordOryx.

“Yoooooo. This is gonna be fucking terrible,” reads another, also popular Reddit post.

Elsewhere on the Zombies subreddit, the general sentiment is that Modern Warfare Zombies just doesn’t sound like… Zombies, and feels more like an afterthought.

Even those hopeful that more information, and actual gameplay, will provide a clearer picture have tempered their expectations to the points that they’ve accepted their fate.

“I agree that this sub freaks out easy and loves to be negative to the point where I think most people just enjoy hating the games more than playing them, but regardless of this circumstance this definitely seems like it is going to be one of the worst Zombie[s] modes so far,” Reddit user explained.

“I feel for the devs being rushed to death and having to be pulled constantly to work on games that aren’t even theirs, but I don’t think it really gives the games a pass. I will give [it] the benefit of the doubt since all we have is a screenshot and short pieces of text to go on, but expectations aren’t high if I’m being honest.”

Zombies will be part of the Modern Warfare 3 offering at its November 10 launch, alongside 16 core multiplayer maps that are all remakes, significant changes to multiplayer mechanics that are seemingly designed to win favour with content creators, and a single-player campaign that somehow found a way to bring back Makarov.