After a rough stretch for Call of Duty: Warzone, the franchise has plenty riding on Warzone 2, which is scheduled for 2023. Interest in the battle royale waned over the course of 2021 and now routinely trails several of its main competitors in the market, like Fortnite and Apex Legends, in Twitch viewership.
One of the most notable players dissatisfied with Warzone over the past couple of months is Dr Disrespect. The streamer and former designer in previous CoD games rarely plays Warzone anymore and is disinterested in the current state of the game. While speaking about Warzone 2, however, the Doc had some ideas to return the once-dominant battle royale back to the top of the genre. And those ideas borrow directly from the game’s competitors.
Doc’s biggest suggestion for Warzone 2 is a ranked system, similar to the popular game mode in Apex. Several Warzone streamers have praised the Apex ranked system in the past, with a few even switching over to Respawn’s battle royale entirely, like NICKMERCS.
“Apex is in a great spot,” Dr Disrespect said on his stream. “They’re absolutely crushing right now, and that’s good. It’s fulfilling a particular niche in the battle royale genre that everyone’s really enjoying competitively… with Warzone 2, I think they have to be fine-tuned and thinking about a potential ranked system, maybe similar to Apex.”
Doc also praised the state of Fortnite and its popular Zero Build mode, a successful evolution of the game’s established formula, before questioning how Warzone could grow beyond simply adding a new map to the game.
“We saw an evolution from Blackout to Modern Warfare,” Doc continued, noting changes such as the introduction of loadouts, despite the fact that he enjoyed Blackout’s design and mechanics more. “But how does it continue to evolve, man? What is it? It feels like a lost soul right now, doesn’t it?”
Regardless of what the next evolution of the series will be, the battle royale is certainly in need of a refresh. It’s unclear if a ranked mode to satisfy the desires of competitive CoD players wanting something more to grind in Warzone or new maps and tweaks to the formula could provide the evolution in the series that Doc wants.
