Data miners have been the main source of information relating to Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, but their latest findings may be the best yet—at least if you're a veteran CoD player—or they could be completely wrong. Either way, it appears that the word "prestige" has been found in the code for Cold War, but some are claiming that it's leftover language from Black Ops 4.
Prior to Warzone and Modern Warfare 2019, the multi-player system for Call of Duty allowed you to reset all of your progress when you reached the maximum level in exchange for a medal in a secondary ranking system—which was your prestige. You would then need to start all over, with only the basic weapons and perks available to you. Fans were not happy when they found out that the prestige system was not making a return in either of those games. A recent Twitter poll run by Call of Duty leakers CharlieIntel showed that 88% of the nearly 140,000 respondents wanted the prestige system to come back.
This is where things get a little murky. Twitter user, @halcyo_n claims that they have found code in the alpha version of Cold War that suggest the return of the prestige system. However, a more prominent leaker—whose Twitter account is being handled by a third party—claims that the code is leftover from Black Ops 4.
It's not uncommon for annual games, like Call of Duty, to recycle assets and gameplay code from previous versions. After all, rebuilding these games from the ground up would take far longer than a year to complete and would be unnecessary. So, it's entirely possible that this is leftover code from Black Ops 4 and won't have any effect on Cold War. However, the very real desire for the return of the prestige system is undeniable.
Whether Activision and Treyarch plan to bring prestige back to the Call of Duty universe is up in the air at this point. All we have is semi-reliable, shaky evidence that they may be planning to bring it back. That being said, if they're paying attention to the fan base—and they probably are—they know that the seasonal ranking system isn't as popular as they imagined it would be. One would hope that the continual calls to bring back the old system will be heard, but we can't say for sure yet. We will have to see what happens in the next few weeks and months.
Source: Twitter