It's that time of year, as publicity starts ramping up for the next Call of Duty game. The next installment is Modern Warfare 4, from Infinity Ward, and on the heels of the first demonstration of the FPS as well as the initial bout of open beta testing, the studio teased some incoming changes.
On Twitter, the official Infinity Ward account took a second to address that most omnipresent of Call of Duty subjects: leveling up. "We see the conversation around weapon progression," the post reads. "We’ve got more to share on leveling and the grind soon. We got you on this."
No other details are given, but this is a discussion that comes up every Call of Duty installment, and it's a tricky subject for studios. Players want to feel rewarded and enjoy gradually unlocking their skins and such, but they don't want it to be too easy or too much of a slog.
We see the conversation around weapon progression.We’ve got more to share on leveling and the grind soon. We got you on this.July 20, 2026
Finding that balance is a constant back-and-forth for the devs. What kind of rewards do you make available? What should the criteria be for each prize? How high should the leveling go? Black Ops 7 goes up to level 100, which seems like overkill, but then 30 or 40 is probably too low, even to start.
The Modern Warfare reboot in 2019 serves as a worthwhile benchmark for the series, at least going by community sentiment.
"[Modern Warfare 2019] progression was good imo. Not too easy, not too hard, balanced," says a commenter on Reddit. "Please no more armory unlocks. just do the same thing you did with [Modern Warfare 2019]," adds another.
Broadly speaking, the 2019 Modern Warfare offered straightforward progression for your standard guns, though there were issues in other areas. Specific challenges for camo, for instance, required you to jump through a lot of hoops in terms of kills. It was imperfect, but the foundation was there.
We'll have to wait and see what Infinity Ward has to say here for what Modern Warfare 4 will offer. People got their first chance to check it out at Fanatics Fest, with a demo of new mode Kill Block.
The open beta, then, arrives on August 21 for those who pre-order. If you'd like to get in on that, you'd best put your money down soon, otherwise you'll be waiting until October.
