Call of Duty Online will have more Chinese elements, open beta coming soon

Call of Duty Online, the designed-for-China free-to-play version of Activision’s famous Call of Duty franchise, is starting to look like it’s stuck in development hell. The game’s first closed beta began well over a year ago, but there’s still no date for an open beta, let alone the game’s actual launch.

(See: Will China embrace Call of Duty Online?)

The delays are a bit perplexing given that the game appears to be just bits and pieces of previously-released COD games, but Activision switched developers on the project a couple months ago, and it seems clear things aren’t going totally as planned.

There is some good news, though. Chinese gaming site 17173 caught up with Raven Software founder Brian Raffel and Activision VP Daniel Suarez at E3 this year, and were promised that things were moving along and that an open beta was coming ASAP. There’s still no date set for the open beta, but ASAP is a start, at least.

The execs also said that new elements, including possibly Chinese elements, will be added to the game. According to the site, Raffel said:

In bringing this content to China, we first need to think about the needs of Chinese gamers. After that, in terms of content we can adopt from Chinese culture and the Chinese style, we will gradually implement that into new modes.

So, to make a long story short: we still don’t know when COD Online will actually release, but when it does, it might actually include some China-specific content that could make it worth playing, rather than just being a tired rehash of previous COD games.

(via 17173)