Call of Duty Modern Warfare Battle Pass | Impressions

Battle passes have seemingly become a staple of live service games these days. A common creation goal for game developers, and publishers to implement for business sake. On average they'll cost you, at base level, around ten dollars. That, and commitment to grinding for each reward tier in order to be able to get the most out of what you paid for. Most battle passes are centered around experience point earnings, and will utilize the game's XP system in order to make your ascent up the tier ladder either cumbersome or quickly progressed. In the case of Fortnite's battle pass the XP earned is fast tracked via events that allow the players to capitalize on significant bonus XP for completing certain missions or feats. In Modern Warfare's battle pass though you creep along at a snail's pace on a per kill basis in multiplayer or Spec-Ops until you unlock a tier with an XP boost that can be used to amplify your experience points earnings for 30 minutes to an hour. Even with the boost though the grind in MW, per tier, can take several matches to complete, and in a battle pass that is filled with filler rewards such as XP tokens and lesser items it makes the grind to 100 all the more tedious, and demanding of your time. Once you buy into MW's battle pass for 1,100 COD tokens ($9.99), and the season begins you will have 60 days to complete the 100 tier pass, and unlock everything there is to unlock. While the grind is doable if you clear at least 2 tiers per day it is the artificial lengthening of the pass, and the filler materials that take up potential item unlocks that makes the whole thing less than desirable.

When you spend your COD tokens on the base battle pass you will immediately be awarded 4 unlocks from the 100 tiers. This includes the new operator Mara, a themed operator skin for an already available operator, a watch, and an XP token to give the player a jump start. As with any battle pass of the modern age there are items freely available to non-paying players, and battle pass buyers. The freeloaders, and buyers get two new weapons, a keychain, and an animated emblem within the first 30 tiers of the grind. The rest of the tier rewards which players have to pay for include a mixture of watches, skins, weapon blueprints, keychains, emblems, banners, stickers, and single use XP tokens of the weapon or leveling variety. The big ticket items like the blueprints come in different rarities, and for the most part in season one aren't impressive in comparison to the content of themed bundles you can buy outside of the battle pass. Nothing really flashy is given outside of one or two blueprints, and the operator skins are definitely lacking in comparison to things we've seen in Black Ops 4 or even the MW bundles. Sadly the final reward tier is not as appealing as it should be either, especially with it being Mara's legendary operator skin. I think they could have done a lot better than they did with this battle pass, and hopefully they improve as they go along.

As far as a verdict is concerned I did not like the fact that there was so much filler in the battle pass, and that what was offered paled in comparison to the other themed bundles made available outside of the battle pass. It's like battle pass owners were given leftovers. The fact that non-payers get the new guns without paying also dumbs down the incentive to buy the battle pass as well. Don't get me wrong though. I'm glad it is that way. It's just that there should have been other guns that were exclusive to the battle pass buyers. The only thing really worth getting out of the battle pass, in my opinion, was Mara, and I'm not even sure if everyone gets her or not. All things considered I'm going to have to close in saying to give this battle pass a pass unless you're dead set on playing as Mara, and only if Mara is exclusive to the paid for battle pass.