Call of Duty Rolls Out a Packed Weekly Update With a Surprise MW3 Bonus

If you're planning to spend some time in Call of Duty this week, a lot is waiting for you. The latest weekly update brings new playlists, fresh challenges, a limited-time free trial for Black Ops 7, a holiday-themed Quad Feed event packed with bonus XP, and even a surprise bonus for PlayStation players. Warzone also received a lengthy batch of gameplay changes and bug fixes shortly after the update went live.

One of the bigger announcements this week doesn't actually involve the newest game. Modern Warfare 3 (2023) has officially joined PlayStation Plus as one of July's monthly games. If you're subscribed, you can download the full game and jump back into multiplayer, Zombies, or even the campaign without any additional purchase.

As expected from a regular weekly refresh, Treyarch has also rolled out a new round of content for Black Ops 7. 

The biggest event running through the July 4 holiday weekend is the Quad Feed bonus, which activates double Player XP, Weapon XP, Battle Pass XP, and Double GobbleGums across supported modes. If you're trying to level weapons, finish the Battle Pass, or stock up on GobbleGums, this is one of the better weekends to do it.

Alongside the bonus XP event, Black Ops 7 is also hosting a free trial focused entirely on the Season 4 Reloaded update. During the trial, you can access both multiplayer and Zombies, although Ranked Play remains unavailable. The multiplayer selection includes the new Reloaded maps Zenith and Launch, while featured modes include Team Blueprint, Sharpshooter, and the brand-new Knife Fight playlist.

Knife Fight is exactly what it sounds like. Every player uses knives, making it a much easier place to work through melee challenges without constantly running into shotguns or sniper rifles. If you're still chasing melee camos or weekly objectives, this playlist removes a lot of the usual frustration.

The Zombies portion of the trial includes the new Rogue Run mode, the Kaakujo map, and the rest of the recent Season 4 Reloaded additions. If you've only been playing the free-to-play side of Call of Duty, this gives you a chance to experience much of the premium content while also making progress on weapon levels, camos, and weekly challenges.

Speaking of challenges, Week 5 is now live with two primary rewards waiting for anyone who completes six objectives across any combination of Multiplayer, Zombies, Warzone, Co-op, or Endgame. The first unlock is the DS20 Mirage Dual Fire Kit, an aftermarket conversion that changes the weapon into something much closer to a shotgun. 

The second reward is the Psych Grenade minor ability for Endgame.

Completing six challenges also earns another step toward unlocking this season's mastery camo, with only a few weeks remaining before the final reward becomes available. The Endgame and Co-op objectives include eliminating 300 enemies in Zone 3 or higher, completing Strongbox Crack or Quadcore Site activities five times, finishing a Cargo Intercept or Supply Disruption assignment, landing 150 sniper critical kills, eliminating 75 human enemies in Zone 2 or higher, and earning 30 kills with melee weapons or the Combat Axe.

Multiplayer players will need to win seven matches, land 25 sniper headshots, earn five kills using weapon scorestreaks, finish first in objective score during an objective mode victory, earn two Combat Axe kills without dying three different times, and get five melee eliminations.

The Zombies challenge list asks you to successfully exfil after Round 20, earn 15 Man's Best Friend medals by quickly eliminating zombies with the dog streak, kill 25 Ravagers using lethal equipment, earn 20 rapid critical kill medals 20 times, score two critical kills with one sniper shot 50 different times, and complete 10 rounds of the Starting Room Challenge.

Warzone's objectives include earning 20 sniper eliminations, opening 15 loot caches in a single match five separate times, getting two longshot kills, completing 10 Scavenger contracts, earning 10 shotgun eliminations, and securing three eliminations without dying on two different occasions. 

Since you only need six completed challenges in total, you can mix objectives from different modes however you like.

The multiplayer playlist rotation also received its usual refresh. Standard Mosh Pit, Team Blueprint, Sharpshooter, Season 4 Reloaded Mosh Pit, Black Ops Classic, Nuketown 24/7, and Faceoff Mosh Pit are all available. At the same time, the Party Games section now features Knife Fight, Free Run, Party Games Mosh Pit, Infected, and Prop Hunt.

Warzone's playlist selection remains mostly unchanged this week. Squad Gun Game is still available alongside Black Ops Royale Quads, Battle Royale Quads and Solos, Resurgence Quads, Duos and Solos, Casual Battle Royale, Casual Resurgence, Endgame, and the standard Ranked Play playlist.

Limited-time events continue as well. 

The Nicholas Cage Uncaged event still has two weeks left before it ends, while the Kaakujo event wraps up with this week's update. Combined with the Quad Feed XP bonuses and the free multiplayer trial, this week's schedule offers several different ways to make faster progression.

Not long after the weekly update went live, Raven Software also released a separate set of Warzone patch notes that introduced several gameplay improvements. Players can now deploy two different field upgrades instead of just one, although this change does not apply to Ranked Play.

Ground loot has also been adjusted to make matching items stack together more consistently after opening depots, Munitions Boxes, Armor Boxes, and Utility Boxes. Default parachute behavior has been updated as well, changing the default setting from Free Fall to Always for both controller and keyboard-and-mouse players.

Resurgence received a slight increase to killstreak availability, particularly on Haven's Hollow and Fortune's Keep. 

Ranked Play moves in the opposite direction, reducing the frequency of killstreaks from supply boxes by roughly 20 percent. Napalm and Smoke have been added to the available loot pool, Precision Airstrikes and Cluster Strikes now appear slightly less often, and Counter UAVs have become a little more common.

The remainder of the patch focuses on bug fixes. Raven addressed a problem that could leave players stuck in the grappling hook animation, fixed Apocalypse camo unlock issues for the Cerberus and VX Compact, corrected missing backgrounds on evolving BlackCell blueprint challenge widgets, and removed an issue that caused the Razor 9mm to appear as Black Ops Royale loot.

Several fixes target Champion's Quest. 

These include correcting problems that left quest items behind after extraction, spawned items in unreachable locations, allowed players to recover their own quest items from other squads, prevented the Isotope ability from working after elimination, failed to spawn extraction helicopters correctly, displayed quest icons improperly inside the Gulag, placed extraction helicopters in incorrect locations, mislabeled the missile transport vehicle on the Tac Map, incorrectly displayed the nuke countdown timer, and left the Isotope icon visible after the item had already been dropped.

The development team has also added a new issue to its investigation list. They're currently looking into a bug that can cause the gas circle to move faster than intended if a Champion's Quest fails during a match.

One final update remains something of a mystery. 

Modern Warfare II recently received its own update, but Activision has yet to explain what actually changed. The official Call of Duty Updates account hasn't posted any patch notes for it, and the only recent announcement is that the horse-race Easter egg on Kokujo has been temporarily disabled. For now, there are no official details on whether the MWII update introduced meaningful changes or simply handled background fixes.

Between a free Black Ops 7 trial, a weekend full of bonus XP, new challenge rewards, refreshed playlists, extensive Warzone improvements, and Modern Warfare 3 becoming available through PlayStation Plus, this week's Call of Duty update delivers one of the busiest weekly refreshes the series has seen in a while.