It's a great time to be a Call of Duty fan: In a new blog post, Activision announced that the ties between "Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War" and "Call of Duty: Warzone" are deeper than you might imagine. These two games and Modern Warfare 2019 all share the same rank progression and battle path. This means that no matter which game you are playing, you are progressing in the other game as well.

To facilitate a synchronized future, Activision will reset all Modern Warfare and Warzone players' ranks to 1 at the start of Cold War's first season (scheduled for December 10). Don't worry, cosmetic and weapon unlocks will remain the same, but the actual ranks will be reset and will proceed in sync with Cold War.

Not only that, all primary and secondary weapons from Cold War will be added to Warzone (at some point) and weapon progression will be synchronized as well, which is a rather wild concept since Cold War and Warzone are completely different games. For example, the Cold War version of the MP5 is completely different from that of Warzone. If a Cold War version were added to Warzone, would it mimic the sound, ballistics, and weaponry of that game? Since we are talking about games on different engines, it would take a lot of effort to mimic that level of detail.

Maintaining one rank in all three games is undeniably cool, but it can also create strange scenarios. For example, if you play "Modern Warfare" for 6 months and then buy "Cold War," theoretically you are already over level 50 and have skipped all weapon evolutions. I see it as a bonus, but others may feel cheated out of the fun of multiplayer progression; Warzone's link to both games makes sense because they share content, but MW and Cold War have basically nothing to do with each other.

As expected, Battle Pass progress is also linked between the three games. Unfortunately, Modern Warfare is left out here. As far as I know, all future Battle Pass content is only available for Warzone and Cold War, but you can still progress through the pass by playing Modern Warfare. Activision is basically trying to finish the game without saying it.

This is quite an impressive feat considering all this shared content is compatible across all five platforms via cross-generational cross-play. Activision is really putting a lot of effort into "Warzone". If this game can maintain its popularity, it will likely outlast "Cold War" and the upcoming "CoD."