Opinion: Warzone Season 3 Is The Best Season In Its Short History

Throughout the 14-month history of Call of Duty’s second foray into the battle royale genre, Warzone as certainly taken the franchise to new heights, with over 100 million players dropping into Verdansk and Rebirth island. While the Modern Warfare era established Warzone as one of the biggest battle royale games in the genre, the game was often plagued with a number of bugs that left the often-vocal player base infuriated with the lack of communication coming from Infinity Ward.

Problems for the game continued despite the vocal outcries when Black Ops Cold War was integrated. The introduction of over 30 new weapons into the arsenal destabilised what had become a relatively solid metagame, much to the annoyance of players that had finally gotten to grips with their loadout of choice. Alongside a metagame that had minimal intervention from developers, the exploits continued to appear, with players managing to utilise the Stim in order to outlast the encroaching circle of toxic gas that shrunk the playing field down over the course of a match.

Just as it looked like all hope had been lost, Raven Software, the new developer in charge of Warzone, managed to turn a corner. It implemented significant nerfs to the AUG tactical rifle and DMR 14 that had dominated the metagame since Cold War was integrated, much to the delight of the community that had been calling for change for what felt like an eternity.

With a renewed faith in Raven Software, Season 3 has arguably been the most popular season of post-launch content in the history of the battle for a number of reasons.

Read More: Functioning Streamer Mode Arriving To Warzone

Balance Has Been Restored

The days of one or two weapons featuring in the loadouts of every single player are long gone thanks to Raven’s impressive handling of one of Warzone’s biggest issues, the weapon balance.

On May 7th, the developer revealed that it plans on increasing the time to kill across every single weapon in the arsenal in a bid to raise the already high skill ceiling. Season 3 features at least ten weapons that are considered to be viable options ranging from the CR-56 AMAX assault rifle all the way to the compact Bullfrog submachine gun.

With such a variety of weaponry on offer and with Raven Software managing to prevent a repeat of DMR-Zone, the battle royale is certainly in safe hands if it can maintain this impressive level of balance across all categories.

Read More: What Is the Best Gun In Warzone Right Now?

More Transparency

In recent weeks, Raven Software has also improved on how it interacts with the passionate community that is full of ideas that could positively impact the game. Elements such as the hugely flawed Streamer Mode setting have been problematic for content creators and professional players attempting to keep their identity concealed in order to avoid any potential cases of stream sniping but the feature still allows players to uncover their in-game username, not exactly ideal.

Thankfully, the developer has reached out to content creators in order for them to suggest how to fix Streamer Mode.

There have been a number of occasions where Warzone’s developers have remained tight-lipped on major issues with the game which ultimately led to widespread backlash.

With a seemingly open path for dialogue between players and developers, there is every chance for Raven Software to consolidate Warzone’s position as one of the major players in the genre alongside the likes of Apex Legends and Fortnite.

Minimal Bugs And Cheaters

As mentioned earlier, Warzone was once filled with numerous bugs, exploits, and players dropping into matches armed with third-party programmes that granted them inhuman abilities such as being able to see through walls and snap onto a target with cat-like reflexes.

If it wasn’t encountering players that had managed to utilise the notorious infinite stim and gas mask glitches to their advantage in order to score a win, hackers ran riot across Verdansk and Rebirth Island until a few months ago where both Activision and Raven Software started to up their efforts in the ongoing fight against cheaters in Warzone.

Much to the delight of players craving a smooth and cheat-free experience, hundreds of thousands of hackers have fallen victim to the ban hammer, with some even receiving hardware bans preventing them from playing Warzone on their system. Combined with the huge improvements to cheaters and the rapid response to any game-breaking exploits that could give players an unfair advantage, Season 3 of Warzone has been one of the most enjoyable to watch and definitely one of the most enjoyable to play.

Whether it’s a quick solo match or me and my squadron rolling into battle for a sweaty dose of Quads action, I often find myself playing Warzone over Call of Duty’s annual release, which is something I wouldn’t have even dreamed of back in Season One. If the developer can maintain this level of balance and smooth gameplay, it’s likely I and thousands of other players will continue to be entering the Warzone for many months to come.