A leaker has gained access to Modern Warfare 3 ahead of its release, and they've shared screenshots that reveal the first set of MW2 maps from last year that will be returning in MW3. These five maps are all fully playable, and so we expect they will be implemented into MW3 very shortly after release.
Modern Warfare 3 is the new Call of Duty game, but for the first time in franchise-history, all the weapons and some of the maps from last year's game will carry over. We're not sure why Activision are doing this, especially since they've been denying the rumor that MW3 is just a Year-2 expansion for MW2, but they seem set on the idea.
They won't bring all the MW2 maps over, which is great news (it still blows my mind that they finished Border Crossing and thought "yeah, this is good to go"). Instead, they will only bring over the most popular maps from the last game.
The first set of old maps to be re-integrated into MW3 have just been leaked, and they're fairly unsurprising. But they seem to have forgotten about one particular map that was unquestionably the best map we had last year.
Leaker Reveals Five MW2 Maps That Are Already In MW3
A new leaker called "LeakyCod2023" has been able to access Modern Warfare 3 ahead of its official release. They were posting screenshots like a madman on November 7, but then Activision DMCA'd them. However, before all the screenshots were removed we were able to see images of five Modern Warfare 2 maps running in Modern Warfare 3:
- Shoot House
- Shipment
- Farm 18
- Mercado
- Crown Raceway
As we said, we literally saw the screenshots of these maps being played in Modern Warfare 3, so we can confirm they are at least in the game files. It might be the case the Activision decide to delay the official release of these older maps and will just leave them in the game files, but with all the controversy surrounding the size of Call of Duty these days, we would be surprised to see them waste storage.
We think it's likely that these five maps will be introduced to MW3 between the game's release and Season 1 launch, so around late November.
As we said in our review, decisions like these make it really hard as a consumer to feel like you're getting a fresh product. And it's especially annoying because they don't even need to do this; MW3 will have a great map-pool already.