Warzone: A Tale of Fun and Rage
Warzone:
A tale of fun and rage.
Over years of gaming, many triumphs were shared by a community. The transitions of consoles ushering in new features every few years, graphics updates, amazing games, etc. In 2007, a WWII gaming franchise changed the game of arcade shooters forever with one of the most important games of the last 20 years. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I remember my first play through like it was yesterday. My hands were sweating all over my Xbox 360 controller as I made my way through the campaign, enthralled in this story that was told to me. A gripping campaign, which seems a lost art now but that is a story for another day. At the time, online multiplayer gaming had not quite reached what we know now in 2025. In 2007, this game's online multiplayer was unlike anything I had seen. It was addicting. I remember coming home from school to play with my friends in a 6 man team and go against whoever match making threw at us.
That year was a moment in time I think about occasionally. What made it special was the friends I played with, the victories we shared, the hard fought games in various modes, and talking about clutch plays on the bus. The ensuing years brought us World at War, Modern Warfare 2, and Black Ops. All now looked back upon as classic games filled with content and memories for those of us who played them. After what seemed like a never ending golden age of first person shooter gaming. The franchise started to slide downhill in my opinion after Black Ops 2. Sure I played the titles, but after beating Advanced Warfare’s campaign and being uninterested in the multiplayer. For the first time in my life I returned a Call of Duty game to GameStop. Years passed as my interests in Call of Duty wanned. Then along came 2019.
After what seemed like endless disappointments in futuristic titles, Call of Duty went back to Modern Warfare and rebooted my beloved installment from 12 years past at that time. Modern Warfare was reinvigorated and back. Granted it did not quite scratch that nostalgia itch, it was on the path to a return to form and bringing back those of us that wandered off to other gaming franchises. In 2020, lockdowns, mask wearing, social distancing almost forced us back to gaming as a way to interact again with people. Warzone brought back that gaming nostalgia with interest. I remember Hayden making Mitch and I play before work one day. We won our first game and all three of us were instantly hooked.
Soon we became explorers on a map called Verdansk, checking out new places, trying new loadout weapons, watching videos of other people playing to better learn how to “GET GOOD.” Anything that could give us an edge to win games became a daily conversation topic. After about 2 weeks, we excelled, averaging 3 wins a night. If we did not win we were in either the top 5 or the top 10. After a few weeks longer, something changed. I was having so much fun playing online multiplayer games again. So many nights spent trying to snipe players out of vehicles, get a solo team wipe, defend the prison, blow up helicopters with C4 and get the funniest death comms we could. It was a brief trip back to that golden age.
A year of Warzone had almost passed, in that time we were great players. We could challenge any place on the map and although we’d fail spectacularly most of the time, we were still capable of taking on all comers. Then along came the Cold War and the hackers. Cold War introduced us to new characters, weapons, graphics and features. The integration left something to be desired in my humble opinion. The weapons from Cold War were powerhouses compared to most of the Modern Warfare weapons. Anyone who was there remembers the M-14 and the Mac-10 particularly. What also became brutally apparent was the hackers. Getting gunned down out of the sky after jumping out of the plane became commonplace occurrences for Hayden. Parachuting back from the gulag and getting one shotted from across the map by a guy with an iron sights Kar-98 happened all too much.
The luster of this game was fading quickly. What was once hours of enjoyment, competitiveness, and laughing with the boys became a never ending cycle of overpowered weapons and hackers. The downhill slide continued with Vanguard. Another WWII shooter, with a boring campaign, crappy multiplayer and more overpowered weapons but with 10 attachments. The once beloved and now hacker infested Verdansk was taken from us in exchange for Caldera. Not the best sequel map but not bad in its own right.
Rebirth Island emerged as a standout mode and even more competitive map to try and win on for us sweats. I loved to play with random players in Quads, talk to them, win games and end off with a friend request. By the time it was all said and done, I had racked up over 100 wins on Rebirth and had a long list of friends who I shared in those wins with. While Warzone was played with a degree of caution, Rebirth was reckless abandonment…and I loved it. My co-hosts detested Rebirth Island, but I thrived on it. The best game mode has been revealed at last. Battle royale style first person shooter that merged multiple spawns until the end when it got dicey. The frantic attempts to take out all the players on the squad was amazing. Lobby hoping till you got randos with mics and could coordinate then dominate the map. It was an amazing time to be a Call of Duty player.
In the years since, we have been given new maps, new games, new weapons and microtransactions. Each Warzone iteration has tried to reinvent the wheel, but as the saying goes “if it aint broke, don’t fix it.” What I play now has no soul in it, no enthusiasm or is even fun. I grinded out Dark Matter in multiplayer for something to do. The campaign I didn't even bother trying to complete. Since Black Ops 6 integration, the game has just felt off in a sense. Years ago I could flashbang a room, slide cancel in and wipe an enemy trio with relative ease if I was on it that day. Now it seems as though my character has cinder blocks for shoes. My views are obstructed by unnecessary visual recoil. Attachments that don’t seem to help at all, and of course more hackers.
The hacker issue persists after years of Ricochet antisheet banning tens of thousands accounts by now. The hackers persist like athletes' feet but worse still at the forefront of the bitching, skill based matchmaking (SBMM). You can go onto youtube and spend hours watching videos talking about SBMM and they all have proof of it happening to them in games. In the original Warzone, I came across teams that sucked to the point I wondered if they were trying to play with Guitar Hero controllers. On the flip side in the same game, I played against teams that sweated their balls off so hard they left a trail like a slug. But you did not truly know another player's skill till you started shooting at each other. Sure you could tell by movement but back it wasn't the definitive tell of a players ability.
SBMM makes every game feel like a conference championship game and sucks the life out of a gamer. Who wants to play knowing everyone is on par with you and what seems to be most cases, better somehow. Sure I can say that they’re hackers, PC players, better gaming chairs, whatever. I know I'm not as good as I was all those years ago after school. I’m in my early 30’s now and I don’t play like I used to but surely the drop off couldn’t be this severe. Don’t even get me started on skill based damage either. I ramble incoherently to make this point. We have become so focused on a game that is broken, infested with hackers, not fun or arcade, monetized and just some bullshit. What makes it worse is that we got to play with lightning in a bottle and sadly for us all the bottle broke.
I will always remember the fun I’ve had playing great games. Warzone was a great game I got to play with my best friends and made new ones along the way just because we liked playing. Every so often I come across clip videos we made and am reminded of a part of time I can only reminisce about. If you have listened to our show, you’ve heard us tell the stories to the point of nausea. In the meantime, I will look back fondly on those moments hoping Call of Duty can take us back to that golden age again.
-Tom.