‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’ Closed Beta Start-Times And How To Get Early Access - forbes.com
The second weekend is an open beta and will also feature the new Warzone map. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be part of the open beta, but not this first weekend. These rewards will not be available to earn after the Modern Warfare 4 Beta concludes.
It’s that time of year again. This year’s Call Of Duty beta weekends are about to kick off. The first weekend is a closed beta, so be sure to keep reading to find out how to get early access. The second weekend is an open beta and will also feature the new Warzone map. Let’s dive right in.
This year, the big Call Of Duty: NEXT event is being hosted virtually, so streamers and content creators and journalists will be hopping into the game at 9am PT on Friday, August 21. You can watch your favorite streamers play, listen to devs from Infinity Ward talk about the game and all that fun stuff.
The Early Access beta kicks off immediately following the NEXT event at 11 am PT / 2 pm ET. Here’s what that translates to in your timezone:
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The closed beta runs until Tuesday, August 25 at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET.
The open beta kicks off the following weekend at 10 am PT / 1pm ET on Friday, August 28 and runs through Tuesday, September 1 at 10 am.
The easiest way to get into the Early Access weekend portion of the MW4 beta is to pre-order the game. You’ll get a code delivered ahead of time. You can also watch the NEXT event as streamers will be giving away codes, and you can even head over to my YouTube channel where I’m giving away a bunch of Early Access codes as well.
This year’s game is launching on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch 2. The Xbox One and PS4 will no longer be supported in the main game or Warzone. Hopefully that translates into a better-looking – and better-playing – FPS.
The MW4 beta is not going to be part of the Call Of Duty app on any platform, so you’ll need to search for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (you might have to add “beta” to the search depending on your platform) separately whether on Steam, Battle.net, or the Xbox and PlayStation stores. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be part of the open beta, but not this first weekend. The beta will be available to pre-load on Switch 2 on August 26. Once you find the game, install it so that it pre-loads Thursday evening. That way you can get right into the action on Friday morning.
One neat thing for PC players: There will now be shader preloading, so shaders will actually compile before you launch the game. The devs are also promising fewer updates that require a restart, which is a nice touch.
While we are getting access to the new Zodiac Resurgence map in Warzone during the second beta weekend, the Early Access beta is all about Multiplayer with just a dash of the single-player campaign.
Lotus gets swapped out for Lithium in the second weekend, so only Early Access players get a chance to play on that map ahead of launch.
Modes include Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed, Inflation, Search & Destroy, Kill Block, 10v10 and 3v3 Gunfight, and the Mobility Course. There’s also a new Inflation mode that remains classified. I’m pretty stoked to see S&D in a beta.
The Campaign mission “Entrenched” is also going to be available during the beta, which I believe is a first for Call of Duty betas. I’m genuinely excited to play that and get a taste of the campaign – especially after the bad taste Black Ops 7’s campaign left in my mouth.
The large-scale Ground War mode Combat Outpost will launch with maps Imjin Farmland and Wolves Stadium in Weekend 2. The Zodiac Warzone Resurgence map also drops with the open beta. Hijack and Combat Outpost modes also come to normal multiplayer that weekend.
As always, some cosmetics and other goodies await beta players this year as you work your way up through Level 20 in the first weekend and 30 in the second.
These rewards will not be available to earn after the Modern Warfare 4 Beta concludes. All Beta Rewards that you unlock will be available in the full game when it releases on October 23.
There's even more to unlock throughout the Modern Warfare 4 Beta. Keep an eye out for additional cosmetic rewards earned through a variety of activities, including:
You can also earn rewards just for watching the Call Of Duty: NEXT event.
The minimum PC specifications needed to play the Modern Warfare 4 Beta:
The recommended PC specifications to play the Modern Warfare 4 Beta:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23, which is also looking like the first time we’ll be able to dip our toes into the DMZ extraction mode, which is sadly not part of this beta.