© 2012 Activision Publishing, Inc.

Gamescom saw the announcement of Treyarch’s multiplayer plans for "Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2", and their multiplayer presentation shows that this is perhaps the greatest change to the core online gameplay since the original Modern Warfare.

Create a class- it’s now a grid based system.youpick any ten things from it, including weapons, attachments, perks etc.

Perks themselves no longer modify weapons- instead there are more attachments, and more tuning for them, as attachments now affect each weapon differently. This means that rather than a perk, which had the same flat affect across all weapons, now have a different effect for each weapon, which is pretty cool.

Wildcards are new- and modify the grid of ten, and allow extra attachments or perks etc., but each cost a point themselves. So, whilst you may be able to have extra perks or attachments, you have to make a compromise somewhere, so you may end up with no grenades or secondary weapons.

Killstreaks have been replaced by Score streaks to help out players who prefer support roles (or noobs!)- flag pickups, captures, kill assists etc. all count towards your streaks.

Prestiging no longer resets progress- the reason for this is that there is now more equipment and unlocks than you could ever get in one playthrough.

The game now also supports more team options, which will apparently spice up the matchmaking playlists. Up to 6 teams and 18 players in team modes (up from 2 teams) is now possible.

The best feature, though, especially for someone like me, who plays every year, but not religiously, due to the time constraints on reviewing other games, is that BLOPS2 will split players into leagues, Starcraft style, according to skill.

Finally, the game also supports broadcast style production and commentary through Live streaming. If you want to ‘CODcast’, impressively, you just need a USB camera and enough bandwidth, even on the consoles. Whilst this esports setup may be only for the hardcore, it could be an interesting thing, and shows that Activision do try and continue to innovate without changing the core experience too much. I think Treyarch have realised that to keep all things the same will lead to the implosion of the series.

This year, the updates are relatively conservative, but there are so many little bits that I hope that I’ll be impressed when the game is released in November.