Activision caves: Black Ops 7 to no longer feature Carry Forward

Activision has announced that the Carry Forward feature, which would have seen all of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's weapons and cosmetic content come to Black Ops 7, is no longer happening. The topic of Carry Forward has been a major debate in the Call of Duty community since the reveal of Black Ops 7 at Gamescom.

Activision told the community that all of the bundles and immersion-breaking crossovers in BO6 would be coming to BO7 at the end of Season 1. With the current negative sentiment around those bundles and crossovers, it's safe to say the majority of the community was not thrilled with this decision.

Now, one week after the public outrage about Carry Forward in BO7, Activision has reversed course and will not be bringing all of BO6's content to the new game.

This change was announced via a Community Update blog post on Call of Duty's website. The blog post states that "Operators, Operator Skins, and Weapons from Black Ops 6 will no longer carry forward into Black Ops 7."

While some players might say that the success of Battlefield 6 prompted this change, the Community Update says that player feedback over the last week was the most influential factor. The post also stated that Black Ops 7 needs to feel authentic and grounded in the setting that Treyarch has crafted. Skins such as American Dad, Beavis + Butthead, and others from Black Ops 6 would immediately break the immersion of the unique setting for the game. This is what players were echoing over the last week, and Activision clearly saw and heard the feedback, as this change was made extremely quickly.

Previously, Activision announced in the Black Ops 7 reveal blog post that Carry Forward would feature all BO6 content and be introduced with the Season 1 update. Fortunately, that decision has been reversed.

Now, the only pieces of content from BO6 that will carry forward to BO7 are Zombies GobbleGums and any Double XP Tokens a player has acquired. These items will be available on day one in BO7.

However, all of these changes only apply to BO7. Warzone will still feature all of the BO6 content that was originally going to be carried forward. So, after the Warzone and BO7 integration occurs with the Season 1 update, Warzone will feature content from both BO6 and BO7. The game could also still have all of the weapons and Operators from MWII and MWIII, but we haven't heard anything about whether that content will be kept or cut when Season 1 arrives.

The integration will also introduce a new map, and we've already seen some leaks about what that map could be.

The other major update in the recent Community Update blog post is that Activision admits that recent bundles and crossovers haven't been balanced with the core Call of Duty experience.

To rectify that, BO7 will feature bundles and items that "will be crafted to fit the Black Ops identity." The blog post says that player feedback has already gone into BO7 on this front, so we can expect cosmetics from the shop and Battle Pass to be more grounded within the setting of the game.

While this doesn't mean we're going to only see military skins and blueprints, crossovers like Beavis + Butthead likely aren't a part of the plan for BO7's post-launch updates. We could see more futuristic-looking bundles, like the skins we see from the Vault Edition of BO7.

This is terrific news for the Call of Duty franchise, but BO7 still needs to deliver a great gameplay experience. We'll see and hear more about that at COD Next and during the multiplayer beta.

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