This may come as a shocker to many people, but it does not bother me in the slightest. When I mean CoD franchise I mean both versions; Treyarch's and Infinity Ward's. Why? I am sick and tired of this franchise getting shoved down my throat every single year. CoD has become the new Medal of Honor. I am sick of Activision milking consumers with yearly releases of a franchise. Give the franchise a rest and come back to it at a later time. Let Infinity Ward make another franchise up and use THAT as a back and forth, every two years the new franchise, then the next set of two years can be CoD. Treyarch has been working on titles other than CoD. I'm sorry if Activision thinks the only way to stay competitive is by killing franchises to death on a yearly (or shorter) basis, then count me out.

Another reason as to why I am leaving the CoD franchise is because of the enormously naive and annoying fanbase that it has now attracted. It boggles my mind that people suddenly bash Treyarch out of existence when they made a good game in CoD 3. I never found problems or boredom with that game, the story was great (of course, I think I am one of the very few that realized the importance in history of the campaign, when everyone else can only think of D-Day and Pearl Harbor as significant battles) The multiplayer was excellent; so many battles I can remember playing (the memorable CTF matches, the last minute flag saves, daring assaults on tanks [especially more than one], holding off the other team as support class while the rest of my team fell back to score the flag) All I can remember from CoD4 is the black and white: killing the other guy before he kills you. Even in objective games, the objective part (capturing the point, for example) seemed like a secondary objective: the main one was to kill. The game still awarded the team with points for killing, rather than making the objective the only point-earner (although the points were less than in regualr deathmatch games).

Another problem was the create-a-class. Not the fact that it was a bad idea in itself, but the fact that there was no balancing, or patches that would possibly make certain perks used more often. Martyrdom and Last Stand were the two most overused perks in this game, and there were plenty of perks that were either hardly used or unnecessary. The perks for being able to hear and blocking the ability for the other team to hear I have hardly heard anyone use, and why bother with a perk to have two primary weapons when it is as easy as switching a pistol with a dead player's weapon in-game? Were there any patches to maybe fix overusage, overpoweredness, or maybe even add some new perks? No. The only DLC IW had at all was one new map pack. Just one. For me that decreases replayability because, for one, new maps every so often add some freshness to the mix, plus add more of a gaming community to the game. In comparison with a game like Halo 3, where Bungie constantly patches the game, sends out DLC on a pretty normal basis, and keeps an eye out for modders and cheaters, the replayability can last much, much longer with the developer's constant support for the game. Again, IW shouldn't be to blame, it is Activision who wants that next installment from IW ASAP. Then again, Treyarch did come out with several map packs, as well as some videos interviewing veterans of the war.

So, unless Activision can give IW and Treyarch (and all their other devs. and IPs for that matter) a break, and unless IW actually starts putting a little more time and effort into monitoring the online play and occasionally rewarding those who still play with some DLC every now and then, I personally feel that CoD (and just about every Activision IP now, for that matter) is taking a step in the wrong direction.