Coming as the yearly pre-order bonus for Call of Duty, the multiplayer beta is set to start on August 19th for players on the PS4, and on August 26th for those of us playing on the Xbox One and PC. Three maps are set to be playable for the beta period: Hunted, a mountain retreat located in Ethiopia, Combine, a sustainable farming research facility set in a remote part of the Egyptian Sahara, and Evac, an abandoned quarantine zone in Singapore.

There's plenty of game modes on offer as well, with classics like Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Search & Destroy coming along four other modes. From what I can tell, progression is going to be gated in the beta, as Treyarch doesn't want to give away all of their content immediately. One of the major things that is going to be gated is the Specialists, which are special soldiers that have their own progression, weapons and abilities for you to use. There's going to be four available initially during the beta, and if you hit level 22 and 28, you'll gain access to four more.

As far as customization is concerned, there's a new feature for the artistically inclined: the Weapon Paintshop. Players can create custom graphics that can be applied to three sides of a gun, each with 64 layers, as a means to infinitely customize their guns however they like. Black Ops 3 releases on November 6th of this year, with the beta coming well before that.