News - How To Prestige Warzone 2 (2023) Seasonal Progression Explained

All about prestige in mwiii [intro]

The Prestige system is finally live in Modern Warfare 3 and War Zone. In this article, we'll be reviewing everything you need to know about prestige in progression. I've discovered one questionable change made to Prestige this year, but if you've played Modern Warfare 2 or any Call of Duty title since 2019, you should be familiar with how this system works.

Base levels, unlocks & entering prestige

Before you even think about Prestige, you'll need to grind out the base levels. I'm not spending much time on this because it's pretty straightforward, but just so we're on the same page There are 55 levels to progress through in Modern Warfare 3. These 55 levels are a one-time progression where you will unlock most but not all of the weapons, kill streaks, perks, and more.

Roughly half of the core gear is unlocked through the new armory unlock system, meaning you can reach level 55, or Prestige 5, for that matter, and not have everything unlocked. Once you reach level 55, you need to fill the progress bar up one more time to reach level 56, where you will enter your first prestige.

Prestige is automatic in this game; you do not need to go into the combat record to attain it, and you do not have the option not to attain it. There's no way around prestige; there's also no reason not to prestige these days, as nothing resets and gets locked again like it did back in the day.

Seasonal prestige, rewards and more

You also can't race to max Prestige like you could back in the day. Modern Warfare 3 continues the seasonal progression model that began in Modern Warfare 2019.

Each season adds five new prestiges for you to progress through. You enter Prestige 2 at level 100, and then you gain Prestige at every 50 levels. That means in season 1, you will be soft-capped at level 250, Prestige 5, until season 2 begins, where you'll be able to work your way up to Prestige 10.

Can we take a moment to talk about these first five prestige emblems? I personally love the design. I like how each emblem builds upon the previous one up until the max seasonal prestige emblem, which is significantly different but still similar. I feel like this gives a quick idea of where a player is in their progression without having to look at their level.

A bear means they're going to be in their first five prestiges. If you see a lot of gold in the icon next to their name, that means that they are at the current maximum level. This theme is just miles better than the random icons they've put out in recent games, in my opinion. As for rewards, each Prestige will reward you with a new icon that displays next to your name in the game and lobbies, and in the UI, you also get a set of four calling card challenges and one mastering calling card challenge for multiplayer, and a set of four calling card challenges and one mastery calling card challenge for zombies.

Each max Prestige, so Prestige 5, 10, 15, and so on, will also reward you with an exclusive weapon blueprint. Season 1's blue is the MTZ, 556. If you miss out on a season or pick up Modern Warfare 3 at a later date, you will be able to catch up and earn all the previous rewards. At first. I thought this quote on the screen was saying that there's no level cap in this game and you'll be able to reach level 10,000 in season 1, but what it's actually saying is that levels won't reset each season. This was a great change they introduced under the term persistent prestige in Modern Warfare 2, as prior to that game, if you missed a season, you missed out on all the rewards that came with it.

Cross-progression change

This brings us to the one change to progression in Modern Warfare 3 that I've noticed. I can confirm that cross-progression is no longer a mechanic in Modern Warfare 3.

This may look like a big deal for those of you that own Modern Warfare 3, but this could have implications for what progression may look like in future games, now when I say cross progression I'm referring to play levels not sinking between Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3. This is a mechanic they introduced with War Zone, where players could play Modern Warfare 2019 or Black Ops Cold War, Vanguard, or War Zone to progress the current battle pass.

In the newest game today, you can only level up the battle pass in Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, zombies, and War Zone. If you boot up Modern Warfare 2, you'll notice the battle pass tab has been entirely removed, and your level will be whatever your level was at the end of Modern Warfare 2. It appears as if they're quietly abandoning cross-game progression, and we've seen them quietly abandon it.

You know about War Zone 1 and other things in the past, so I can't help but wonder what this means for progression in the future of Call of Duty games. I also find it interesting that carry-forward was a heavily advertised feature this year. You know, we have most of the Modern Warfare 2 gear available to use in Modern Warfare 3, but the two games are now entirely separate entities in terms of progression.

This does mean that if you were grinding max level to unlock the militant skin in Modern Warfare 2, you can now only do that in Modern Warfare 2. Those of you who only played War Zone and didn't own Modern Warfare 2 are now cut off from it and are completely out of luck. If this is your first time hearing about this skin, click here to learn more.

It's a cool-looking skin with some interesting history behind it.