You’re not the only one experiencing difficulties loading into a Warzone game. The battle royale game has been in terrible shape ever since the Christmas event ended and the Squid Game crossover event started.
On Monday afternoon, I attempted to play the new Limited Time Squid Game mode with two of my pals. One of my friends froze on the loading screen during the first match. He had to restart and force-close his game. We attempted to play a match on Rebirth Island, but he experienced the same scenario when we tried again. This time, I arrived at the party by myself after both of my buddies were expelled. So I pulled back.
We made another attempt. An error message stating that “our level fastfile is different from the server” appeared this time. I was expelled from the game, but not from the celebration. Despite being able to enter the match, both of my pals left so that we could play together. We all loaded up again after restarting our games. When I tried to join the party, my game froze. I tried again after force-closing it. Every single one of us were trapped on the loading screen when we loaded into a match.
It was a good forty-five minutes. An XP token was running on one of my buddies. Before trying Warzone, we had played one multiplayer Black Ops 6 match. We were very bored with the idea of playing Call of Duty at this point, and that was all we could play before ending it.
We’re not by ourselves. Over the past two days, there have been innumerable posts discussing these identical problems in the Warzone subreddit. Bugs, crashes, players being kicked, and games not loading. And that’s on top of the other issues the player base has been voicing for a very long time: Unrelenting desync problems; freezing, frame dips, glitches, and connection problems; widespread cheating, particularly in Ranked. Players are leaving, the situation is chaotic, and streamers’ Warzone and Black Ops 6 feeds are receiving fewer viewers. A month after launch, Black Ops 6’s Steam player count dropped by 50%. I’ve started to lose my initial excitement for the game, but I’ll reserve my critiques of Black Ops 6 for another post.
Warzone should first be released independently of the annual Call of Duty cycle. Stop making updates to the game to accommodate all of the multiplayer modifications. If nothing else, simply replace outdated firearms with new ones every year, though even that might not be the best course of action. There are just too many firearms in Warzone right now, and the great majority of them are no longer functional.
Make Warzone the greatest game it can be instead. Continue refining the gameplay, return to the fundamentals, and concentrate on connection problems, anti-cheat, bug fixes, and optimizing game performance. Fix the game’s issues and make it the greatest shooter available instead of continuously adding more things. The game itself is entertaining. The gunplay is excellent. However, the numerous problems players encounter put an end to that enjoyment.
The reintroduction of Verdansk and a return to more basic game mechanics are what I would truly love to see. Despite the fact that omnimovement gives controller players even more advantages over mouse-and-keyboard and that aim assist is already set to maximum, I don’t think it improves Warzone, but I do think it’s quite enjoyable in multiplayer. I believe that “vaulting” some weapons also makes sense because it is nearly impossible to balance this many weapons, and I would much rather have fewer options in a well-balanced game than having almost endless options among numerous unworkable weaponry.
Since cheating is currently completely out of control, I’m hoping that Activision’s implementation of kernel-level anticheat will be a game-changer. This is so much of an issue in Ranked that it is no longer enjoyable to play. We run into a ton of Crimson and even Iridescent players when we load into a match as a Gold-tier group (or maybe with buddies who are still Bronze or Silver). While many of these are obviously cheating, many are just extremely talented players who make games absurdly difficult. Add the desync and connection problems, and you have a Ranked mode that is just not enjoyable.
Other problems: Urzikstan is a personalityless, dull map. At debut, the game desperately needed Verdansk or a new map (Avalon). The country of Urzistan is flat, dreary, and brown. There is no interest in the points of interest. Picking up loot is challenging, because it frequently becomes lodged in walls. Though it’s an old map and all the previous Resurgence maps are gone—I mourn Vondel in especially, but also Fortune’s Keep and even Ashika Island—I won’t touch the new Area 99 Resurgence map because it’s simply too hectic and steamy. Thank goodness for Rebirth Island, though. The Gulag in BR is objectively worse than many earlier Gulags and hasn’t altered in a long time.
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The monetization is another issue that I believe many members of the Call of Duty community have grown tired of. I enjoy crossover events, and having Operator skins with seasonal themes is entertaining, but it’s gotten so out of hand now that the game is simply ridiculous to look at. Like many others, I believe it would be good to have the ability to disable skins and only display the default operators so that anyone who desires a more milsim-like experience can have it.
However, I did discover a cool trick: Disabling Gore and Dismemberment Effects in the options disables the loud, vibrant death animations and effects that give the impression that you are being vaporized or destroyed whenever you are killed by a certain weapon. That was rather annoying to me, and now that I’ve disabled it, I can definitely enjoy the game more.
Anyway, the game is a complete disaster. Playing is pretty pointless if you can’t load into matches or if you can’t get your squad into matches without someone freezing, dropping, or crashing. I hope there will be a fix soon. However, it’s similar to whack-a-mole. After one issue is resolved, another one arises. Since the game’s initial release in 2020, it’s difficult to avoid feeling as though we’ve just been going back in time. If just to play them side by side and observe, it would be great if we could load up the original Warzone.
P.S. Not to be completely critical, but the Santa’s Sleigh Resurgence mode during Christmas break was the most enjoyable time I’ve spent in Warzone in a long time. We won a ton of money playing that mode, which was fantastic. That a version of this isn’t always accessible is quite unfortunate.
P.P.S. The usage of AI in Warzone and Black Ops 6 to generate some assets, along with the situation where some voice actors were recast and replaced with uncredited voice actors because of SAG-AFTRA union problems, are also likely worthy of a separate post. A representative for Activision stated, “We respect the personal choice of these performers,” in reference to the recasting. “We will refrain from adding any further commentary regarding the ongoing discussions with SAG-AFTRA out of consideration for all parties. We anticipate a win-win solution as quickly as possible.”