Call of Duty Elite Demo Shows Off Community And Stat Features

I got to sit in on a live demonstration of Activision's Call of Duty Elite online service. While all the features aren't implemented yet -- those will come when more is revealed about Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer -- what's already there is impressive. Also, despite some misgivings in the community, Activision stressed that all the content being shown at E3 this year for Elite will be totally free to all Call of Duty players.

I'm sure many of you are wondering what the Elite service's premium online service will be and how much it will cost. Sadly, the Activision reps I asked those questions to deferred, saying they would reveal more in the coming months. However, they did say that they wanted it the eventual price to be a "no brainer" when compared to buying the DLC packs for Modern Warfare 3 that you will get as a part of subscribing to Elite. Now, on to what I saw, which, again, will be available to every Call of Duty player on both Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3 (MW 3 will have extra features that will be announced later).

The four main tenants of the service are "Career, Create, Compare, Improve." Career is centered around your stats and accomplishments. Using your Xbox Gamer Tag or PSN ID, you'll see your kill/death ratio, winning percentage, level, earnings, etc. You can compare with any player in Elite or from your friends list in a myriad of categories. You can even use a level calculator to see how long it will take you to reach your next Prestige level based on how much you play per day and your general level of play. Recent matches can be analyzed extensively. You'll see all the deaths in the match, where they happened (via some cool heat maps which show the "hot" death areas on the map), which weapons were used to kill you, and who killed you.

The "Connect" features stress community. You'll be able to create custom groups based on geography, interests, sports team allegiances, or anything you can think of. If you search for a group that doesn't exist yet, you'll instantly create it and be member number one. There is no limit on how many members can be in a group, but you will be limited to joining 64 groups.Clans are more serious, you can only be a member of one clan, and each clan can have only 100 members. Keeping up with your clan and groups will be easy with a new Facebook style "feed."

With the new iPhone, iPad, and Android phone and tablet apps, you can track your group and clan and will even be able to do new custom loadouts and push them into the game.The Theater mode will give you access to all user created content that players have uploaded to YouTube, and team members of Elite will even be "tagging" players featured in videos so you can earn some deserved (or undeserved) Internet fame. Competition will be encouraged in Elite on a number of fronts. League competitions will obviously be where the hardcore reside, especially given that Activision plans on giving out real prizes like iPads to winners. However, more casual players can compete in events like "Bring the Heat" where users upload their best flamethrower screenshots and are judged by a prize jury.

To get better, you'll be able to study the competition in many ways, and even watch exclusively produced videos on each weapon which details its best loadouts and which perks to use with it. In general, the menu system of Elite was impressive, well designed, and intuitive. The free features I saw are impressive in their own right, so it will be interesting to see what Activision and the Beachhead team working on the service have concocted to tempt players to pay for the premium Elite.