Since the release of the original Warzone all the way back in March of 2020, Call of Duty’s battle royale has been a phenomenon in the FPS genre.
With millions of players logging in every day to dive down onto Verdansk, Caldera, Ashika Island, and now Al Mazrah, it’s safe to say the free-to-play title has been an overwhelming success.
However, the rise of the original Warzone and now WZ2 hasn’t come without consequences, with some CoD fans claiming it has come at the cost of multiplayer.
According to them, the devs always “prioritize” Warzone and over the years, it’s slowly “ruined” the overall multiplayer experience.
CoD players flame Warzone for “ruining” multiplayer
Taking to Twitter on August 27, popular Call of Duty account ModernWarzone asked their community whether Warzone ruined the multiplayer side of CoD.
As expected, this garnered a huge response, with a lot of players arguing that yes, ever since the release of MW2019 and WZ1, multiplayer has been on a downward trend. They argue this is mainly down to both games being integrated together and the Prestige system being scrapped as a result.
“It was very evident in the beginning too with MW19 MP. How the classic prestige system was scrapped… MP felt left in the dust after WZ,” said one user, with another putting forward that “They prioritize the FTP game instead of the paid version (MP) for microtransactions, neglecting Multiplayer in the process.”
It’s clear that in the eyes of the multiplayer community, Warzone always seems to come first and that features have been ripped away from MP just so it fits into the integration system.
Others blame Infinity Ward’s “terrible” multiplayer design
Click to enlargeNot everyone blames Warzone for the downfall of multiplayer though, some lay the blame directly at the feet of devs.
“MP from Infinity Ward has just been terrible,” said one player, with another arguing “strict SBMM, removing prestige, and Infinity Ward’s core design principles have done more harm.”
Either way, it’s clear a section of the Call of Duty community would prefer if multiplayer and Warzone were completely separate entities.
With MW3 on the way, this is certainly not going to be the case anytime soon, so we’ll have to see if multiplayer delivers in November.