Treyarch reveals what's next for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies

Treyarch has detailed what's coming to Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

Outbreak gets its first main quest with the launch of the mid-season three refresh, at 6pm UK time on Thursday 20th May - the same time Rambo and Die Hard's Die Hard's John McClane hit Black Ops Cold War and Warzone.

In a blog post, Treyarch said that from there, the studio plans to release a "record amount" of quest-driven Zombies content ahead of the next chapters of the Dark Aether story.

Outbreak main quests are upcoming in both the current season three and season four, Treyarch confirmed. The events in the Ural Mountains directly set up the story for Zombies' next round-based map.

One of the points of contention within the Zombies community is the seeming lack of brand new round-based maps, with Outbreak favoured. In its blog post, Treyarch said currently the number of Outbreak players is "virtually neck-and-neck" with round-based map players. Clearly, Treyarch considers Outbreak - a large-scale Zombies mode - to be a success.

New content set to arrive in Outbreak with next week's mid-season refresh includes the aforementioned new main quest, the Orda encounter world event, new intel documents, audio logs, radio transmissions and artifacts to discover, and fishing. Yep, fishing is coming to Zombies.

Here's the rest:

• Round-based maps: Cranked 2: No Time to Crank limited-time mode in Firebase Z and Die Maschine.
• Dead Ops Arcade 3: new Silverback Slideways bonus map.
• Onslaught (which is currently PlayStation-exclusive): Onslaught Standoff map with new intel; a new limited-time mode; and a new challenge with an exclusive weapon blueprint reward.

Other new features coming next week include custom mod support, new Outbreak map features, and Zombies-specific weapon tuning to buff the power of the Black Ops Cold War arsenal.

Treyarch also looked ahead to Black Ops Cold War's season four. Zombies' next round-based map is due out during season four, and, as mentioned, takes place after the events of Outbreak's main quests.

"The team has been working on this next map since before the release of Firebase Z," Treyarch said, "and we want to make it the best experience it can possibly be before it's finally in your hands."

Also coming in future seasons is new Perks, Wonder Weapons, Support Weapons, limited-time modes, and Dark Aether story intel.

"We appreciate everyone's patience while we continue development on our next map, and hope you have a blast with all the other Zombies content coming in the meantime," Treyarch said.

Treyarch ended its post with a note about bugs. Zombies content in Black Ops Cold War has sometimes launched in a buggy state - something the developer acknowledged and explained.

"Zombies is a complex part of an already multifaceted game, and bugs that a handful of players experience in the live environment can often be difficult to reproduce in development," Treyarch said.

Examples include a rare stability issue with Firebase Z that some console players have experienced but have yet to consistently reproduce, and discrepancies in XP bonuses that some players saw at the start of season three that others haven't encountered.

"XP levels in Zombies have been particularly tricky to tune just right, and sometimes when everything looks solid during development, that same data doesn't always translate accurately to the live game," Treyarch said.

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