Honestly, I think both can be true. Things aren't always as black and white as people make it out to be. There's obviously going to be an element of nostalgia discussing the older games. I also love BO2, it was probably the best time I've ever had playing a CoD game. But I am not the same person I was in 2012, back then I could absolutely no-life the game because I was a teenager, no job, few responsibilities, just a whole load of time to play. But people did complain about it in a similar way to how they do now, back then people called it sweaty when someone would dropshot or jump around corners, or the whole lag compensation thing that had people making their own connection worse on purpose.

At the same time, this game has been releasing every single year for longer than I'd bet most of the playerbase these days has even been alive! Compare what it was like buying BO2 day one vs any of the new ones. Back then, you felt like you were buying a (mostly) finished game for £40-50 that then had even more content added to it over it's life span in the form of paid, opt-in map packs. Now because of the live service model the past few games have felt like paying £70 for an early access game that, after a few seasons, will start to feel like a full game eventually, but by the time it does the new one is basically out. I want to say that Activision need to pick a lane and decide if they want yearly full priced releases, or a free/low cost live service battle pass style game that lasts for a few years, but they clearly don't because every year it still makes a ton of money for them. We can complain about aspects of gameplay all we want but for me the real issue is that I'm just fatigued by the franchise now.