COD 9: Project IRON WOLF? Black Ops 2?

Just as the title says. We managed to find this and thought we would share this with you. We know that some of the things listed below have been taken out of the map, so not everything will be in MOTD. Make sure to read it all carefully!

MESSAGE FROM BENN "This information is extremely out of date and much of what this employee is talking about was scrapped due to unreasonable time management at Treyarch's end. Please read this in the light that it was meant, three months ago.

Hey, ok so I'm new to this reddit thing but I heard that its a great place to talk about things (really don't know how this is different from a forum but whatever) so here it goes: I've got a bunch of info to lay off my chest. So, I'm not going to get into too much detail here but I was affiliated with Treyarch and worked on the campaign as well as the recently announced zombie map Mob of the Dead. What 3Arc did as an internal move to get high-quality DLC out fast is actually have the campaign team design and script Mob of the Dead.

So, basically the zombie team has already a rough draft of all the DLC maps they'll release (I don't know much about future ones though) and are currently working on DLC 3 and 4. So what happened with mob of the dead (or "Mobzies" as was the working title [im not f****** joking here that was actually the working title]) was that Treyarch (or more accurately Activision) was imploring for DLCs to be ready faster (I'm not to sure about the details there, I wasn't involved on the business end of things but that's what we were told).

So, right after DLC 1 dropped the zombie team started working on DLC 3 and 4. The zombie team subsequently sent us a rough draft for what they had in mind for Mob of the Dead and asked us to develop it while they worked on the last 2 DLC drops (which by the looks of things seem very big). They really only seemed concerned on the storyline aspect of the map, other than that they were pretty lenient when it came to ideas. the zombie team really just gave us their input on MotD, they really did not develop it and most of the contributions came from the campaign front (and frankly it's a radically different approach to zombies as I'll explain later).

I will confess I haven't played the map yet but know about most things it will incorporate as the final product rarely diverts too far from the original concept. The map, as you know, features a cast of Hollywood "gangsters" playing fictitious mobsters within Alcatraz island. The overall idea was similar to have these 4 actors trapped in some kind of time loop, with amnesia of who they were as actors, fighting zombies in Alcatraz. Originally we had the roles for the actors envisioned for Al Pacino (whom we imagined wouldn't decline us as he starred in that god-awful Adam Sandler movie), Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Mike Madsen, but Al and Joe were working on movies. We eventually settled on having Joe Pantoliano and Chazz Palmentiri replace those characters. But before we decided on the whole Hollywood aspect, we settled on some ideas after what seemed like endless open discussions and brainstorming.

From what I could remember these were the ten "things" I know for a fact will be on the map:

a "purgatory mode" (the team was really hyped about this one)
varied kinds of zombies
a real cool side-quest
dynamic environment
zip-lines galore
horror/thriller theme
historically correct Alcatraz
not too hard for beginners
plenty of new perks and guns
musical aspect
The first thing I want to talk about is this purgatory mode. Basically, once your character is downed and is not revived and bleeds out he access this new area called purgatory. Purgatory is actually like its own separate map (its absolutely massive) with an entirely different objective. There are no zombies in purgatory and its like this weird inter-dimensional trance space, and it may or may not have been influenced by LSD. The idea is that there's no time or space in this place. It's like this weird Pandora's box kind of place with weird ass things everywhere. It's a huge part of the side quest. And the whilst you are walking through here you are meant to get scared. You have weird voices telling you things and out of place objects everywhere. While in purgatory there are no weapons, no zombies, and no points. It's really more of a discovery kind of place. There are also buildable items located in purgatory that you can grab. Once the new round starts, though, you are pulled out of purgatory and put back into the normal map, along with any items you find there. There's a lot in purgatory and even though this is a "leak" some of its is quite awesome and I really don't want to ruin it for you guys (trust me once you play it you'll agree with me).

The next point are the "varied zombie types" within the map. The team wanted to do better than just add a zombie boss. There are actually 4 zombie type bosses throughout the entire map. The map is huge, mind you, and is divided quite liberally into 3 diverse sections and each section has a roaming "boss" (each one has their own abilities that differentiate themselves. But the idea is to f*** up trains, basically). There's also a fourth boss that comes every 4-6 rounds. Basically at the start of these rounds the entire team spawns at an inaccessible part of the map and stay there for the duration of the "mob" round. They are then swarmed by huge amounts of zombies going through everywhere (the zombies' health stays the same after round 15 though). There is, I believe, a cap at 50 zombies for that round. But the zombies spawn above you and at your sides. After the round you get a Max Ammo, a perk-bottle, and you're given about 45 seconds to Pack-a-Punch (this is the only way you can do so in the map though).

The next bullet point is the side-quest. When we were approached by the zombie team with the rough concept for the map, they were very specific about the fact that it had to be in Alcatraz and follow a very specific chain of events. We were actually given story-boards with everything that was to happen. From what I can remember from the meeting the narrative within the map starts off with these 4 actors trying to escape Alcatraz and while they're trying to they start getting fractions of their memory back (remember I said they had amnesia). But there's this voice talking to them (pretty sure it wasn't Nolan North's character). And then it's gets really crazy. This voice (which the zombie team really never gave too much detail about during their visit) instructs the 4 mobsters to help these other characters escape from space. I might've missed some stuff since the only time I hadn't explained to me was when the zombie team came over and showed us the storyboards. But that's what I understood of it (was pretty confusing though). I don't know any steps in this side-quest (wasn't my job to do that) but I do know that purgatory and this buildable weapon has a lot to do with this side-quest. Again, I'm probably not 100% on target with this as it wasn't my job to make the narrative and I was only "briefed" on it sometime about 2 weeks ago. But what I can say is that's its EXTREMELY CONFUSING.

Another cool feature we wanted to incorporate into the map was a great dynamic environment. Different parts of the map have different "auras". For example, there is plenty of fog on the outside areas of the map. And the environment changes. About every 10 minutes it starts raining in the map (with thunder). I know the environment triggers certain events but honestly I don't know the specifics.

The main method of transportation within the map are zip-lines. Now we decided to put a very intricate "network" of zip lines. The player really has to know what zip line brings you where (since there's really zip lines in almost every room). But the idea with the zip lines was that you could get from one end of the map to the other in about a minute, without really skipping "significant" areas in the middle where you would want to be able to get stuff.

Another "creative direction" we wanted to pursue was a strong horror/thriller aura to the overall map gameplay. We wanted the map to really scare you. A lot of the zombie spawns are in places you don't expect. We also made it so the behavior of the zombies isn't as scripted as in previous maps. One second the zombie can be walking and the next it can be full out sprinting at you. The map is also very scary in design. There are dead inmates everywhere and random loud scary noises.

The map is also as historically accurate to Alcatraz as we could accomplish without sacrificing gameplay factors. Lots of the places we exact replicas of the island (especially the warden's quarters). Treyarch actually hired a historian to help guide the team.

Another thing we were told to do by the zombies team was to not make the map too hard. So, what we did is make good weapons readily accessible and have a really good Sci-Fi esque weapons in the game. This one gun instantly "vaporizes" the zombies and turns them into this weird purple gas. It's almost instantly kills every single zombie within its range. We also made sure that not be too aggressive in early rounds.

We also wanted to incorporate lots of guns fitting of the prohibition-era timeframe. For example, we included the tommy gun (Thompson), the Uzi; as well as more modern guns (I don't have the names ready off the top of my head). We also have the aforementioned gas gun (I remember the name was like a bunch of numbers). As for perks I'm not so sure about "old perks coming back" (although I do know that Flopper is being revived in a kind of nerfed form) but there are 2 new perks. The first I think is called bandolier. It gives your gun more bullets after killing zombies. You pick up these little packets off of dead zombies and it gives you more bullets (albeit at a slow pace). I know for a fact that we decided to balance the perk so that it only works on bullet-based weapons. The next perk in the map is called Two Times Tequila and what it does is that on certain weapons, If you buy them again or come across them on the mystery box, the gun is essentially doubled in all respects, granting x2 raw power, x2 ammo but the gun would cost x2 the original price and I'm pretty sure the perk is very expensive as well (not sure on the exact figure though). I do know that it stacks with all other existing perks (including the upgrade machine).

And finally I know that avenged sevenfold wrote a song for the map. I'm not really into heavy metal so I can't judge whether its good or not (haven't even heard the song) but I know they were called up to record the song for the map.

So, THAT'S ALL I KNOW. Again I won't reveal what my exact job was on the development of the map (for obvious reasons) but I didn't deal too much with gameplay aspects so the vast majority of the "interesting" stuff came from our original meeting with the zombie team and the subsequent team brainstorm sessions. But I've seen the map (haven't played it though) and am pretty confident that these features will stay true once the map is released. If you guys have any questions ask me (I don't know too much about reddit but I think you can reply to the post) and ill try to answer as many questions as I can.