Thirteen years since Call of Duty: Black Ops and twelve years since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 debuted, players are flocking back to the first-person shooter classics.
A while back, older instalments in the Call of Duty franchise were made playable on Xbox One and subsequently Xbox Series X/S thanks to backwards compatibility. However, the multiplayer side of the games was essentially unplayable due to server issues. Only very recently did Activision do anything to rectify the problems and, boy, does it seem Call of Duty players have been raring to return to the classics all this time.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 seems to have 70,000 players currently online while Call of Duty: Black Ops, an even older entry in the series, holds over 100,000 players. It's a sight for sore eyes for fans of the classic games. Not to discredit the current era of Call of Duty, but these numbers dwarf the size of even the latest instalment's playerbase according to Steam.
If you've been longing to return to the likes of Summit, Hanoi, Arkaden, Hardhat, and all the other classics, but have been unable to due to the aforementioned server functionality (or rather, the lack thereof) or the simple lack of player population, then now is the time to indulge. Not to mention, thanks to a currently ongoing sale on Xbox's part, you can get the classic titles for only $10 or so.
Perhaps this level of attention and demand will convince Activision to greenlight proper remasters of these titles, a treatment which only a select few classic Call of Duty games have gotten at this point. Here's hoping.