Season 3 of Warzone Has Been a Disaster So Far
Where do I even start? The past few weeks for Call of Duty have been disappointing, to say the least. Between stupid metas, server queues, lacklustre events and friends list glitches (not to mention cheaters, which I won’t touch on here) Warzone fans have found themselves longing for a return to the days of season 2.
The New Meta
I have seen a ton of stupid metas in my day. Remember when everybody was running around with the 725, downing people in one shot from like 50 yards away? The snakeshots? The DMR (which, to its credit, created an incredible string of TikToks)? The Doof-Doof firebreath shotgun? Anybody who has been around Warzone for any amount of time could rattle off a pretty long list of ridiculous, broken metas. Personally, I have broken many controllers after dying to a 12-year old with an R9-0.
For all of the ridiculously frustrating moments that these broken weapons brought, season 3’s (early) meta takes the cake. You’re telling me nobody at Activision put their hand up in a meeting and said “maybe full-auto akimbo pistols with two 80-round mags would be a little bit broken”? It was absolutely insane. The Sykovs had the ability to wipe entire squads in a fraction of a second without reloading. Some of the guys in my squad, including up and coming Twitch streamer LuekTTV, could often be heard screaming into their microphones after being absolutely greased by a kid running around with akimbo Sykov pistols. The worst part is that I’m not sure there anything we could have done about it. These things were literally unbeatable.
To their credit, the Warzone team tried to rectify this pretty quickly, and it seems as though the Sykovs are a little more balanced now. This would be great if the same update didn’t bring another issue; Streetsweepers. So many Streetsweepers. This full-auto shotgun can now be found everywhere as ground loot. Ever tried landing in with a pistol to a squad full of Streetsweepers? Not fun.
The Server Queue and The Destruction of Verdansk
As many fans did on the 21st, I was excitedly waiting to log into Warzone to see the Destruction of Verdansk event. Unfortunately, I was met with a message that told me that I was in a server queue. I had to restart my game about 100 times to even get into my Warzone home screen.
When I finally did get in, I was fired up. The event turned out to be a massive flop. It was basically a Warzone game where you’d turn into a zombie when you died, followed by a small cutscene with a nuke flying through Verdansk after a time limit. The game then prompts you to go and play at Rebirth Island, where they added a night mode. The Roze skins were probably ecstatic (seriously, please go take a shower). The next day we were thrown into a 1980s version of Verdansk. This was kind of cool, but the few changes lost their shine after a few playthroughs.
Throughout all of this, there were constant issues with the friends list, people insisting that they were online despite nothing showing up. This made is very difficult to play with friends and enjoy the new(ish) map.
For a multi-billion dollar company, Activision doesn’t seem to be very good at their job. After all, you never hear about any issues with Fortnite (yeah, I said it).
Conclusions
Look, I love Warzone. I think that for many people it represents something very important. After an incredibly difficult year with the Covid-19 pandemic, Warzone got a lot of us through it, myself included. Being able to stay in contact with friends despite the lockdowns while we run around the Dansk was something that will hold a special place in heart for a very long time. Make no mistake, I am not saying this is a bad game, it’s just that Activision seems to be doing an awful job making sure the game evolves.
Who knows what will come in the last two parts of this big event. This article may very well age quite poorly and I’ll own it. As of right now, though, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people are ridiculously frustrated with the state of the game right now.
