Call of Duty's new Battle Royale Warzone 2.0 is "already dead" according to some community voices. Can that be true? Let's take a closer look at the criticism.
With Warzone 2.0, the popular Call of Duty Battle Royale started the second phase in November and replaced the original Warzone. As expected, Warzone 2.0 does a few things differently than its predecessor, after all it doesn't want to be a simple knock-off with just a new map... As is standard for Call of Duty, not everyone in the community likes it and the Shitstorm on Twitter and Reddit was not long in coming.
As usual, the Call of Duty content creators in particular love to yell on social media (they do every year after every new release). Some of them even say the game is "already dead" two months after release. Is Warzone 2.0 really that bad?
What's really going on with Warzone 2.0?
Warzone 2.0 got off to a real record start, but the number of players quickly fell again. On Steam alone, the number of players has fallen by almost 50 percent since the release... However, the question remains whether this is really because Warzone 2.0 is bad or simply because the original hype about the launch is flattening out again.
Content creator TrueGameData tweeted that he didn't know if streamers would have anything to do without the nukes in the game:
Imagine how extra down bad the WZ streamer community would be without nukes
— (@TrueGameData) January 10, 2023
And yes, that's right, if you look at Warzone 2.0 content on any streamer or on YouTube, this content consists almost exclusively of players trying to get a nuke and thus end the game. It's damn difficult and might be cool to watch the first few times, but of course if that's the only content it gets boring quickly.
Another big point of criticism from the creators and professionals on social media is the very fast TTK and thus the small skill gap. Warzone 2.0 plays significantly slower than Warzone 1 because various movement mechanics, such as slide canceling, have been removed from the game, but the time to kill a player has become significantly faster. As a result, casual gamers in particular usually have a better gaming experience because they can compete with better players. But that's exactly what the good players are complaining about, since there are hardly any opportunities to outplay other players with skill.
If you ask the community, or at least the part that is represented on Twitter and Reddit, there are accordingly many suggestions for improvement. The two biggest and most mentioned of these are always a slower TTK or more life and the return of some movement features from Warzone 1 :
300HP (150 health and 150 armor)3 default plates (50|50|50) and a 2 plate vest you can find that works like tempered (75|75)WZ1 looting where it vomits on the groundSprinting while plating
— Hope (@TheGhostOfHope) January 11, 2023
TheGhostOfHope sums up the wishes quite well here. Among other things, he demands an increase in HP to 300, divided between life points and armor plates, and the possibility of being able to add armor plates while sprinting. Raven Software, which took over the development of Warzone 2.0, has responded to feedback several times and, for example, brought back the loadout drops .
So is Warzone 2.0 already dead? No definitely not! Warzone 2.0 has its issues, as does every Call of Duty and most other games at launch - I mean, remember how broken Warzone 1 was at launch? The drop in player numbers can be explained by many factors, the biggest being that the initial hype is over. Even the shitstorm on social media is nothing new for someone who has been following the Call of Duty scene for a long time. It is not for nothing that the so-called Call of Duty Cycle exists:
The CoD cycle never ends pic.twitter.com/7VqrXpd9ls
— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) September 6, 2021
Year after year, the new title is hyped as the best game ever shortly before release and shortly after, then everyone hates it and claims last year's game was much better and then the hype starts again for the next game. That's how it's been in the CoD community for years... Since Warzone 2.0 is currently still in its first season and the developers have already made some concessions to the community, we'd rather not write off the game just yet. Also in Warzone 1 it was a long way until we got many desired features and Warzone 2.0 is still in the very beginning phase, so upcoming updates and seasons will bring a lot of innovations and improvements.
So stay tuned, we'll keep you up to date on innovations.
This is what makes Warzone 2.0 different: