Another Gentleman’s Agreement Made Between Professional Call of Duty Players Over New Burst Weapon
As the Call of Duty: WWII CWL season continues with the CWL Pro League Stage Two this week, it looks like a major change has come into play at the professional level.
In April, the new burst Assault Rifle (AR) in CoD: WWII was made available in the competitive ruleset, with developers seemingly keen that it be used in CWL play.
They were aware that adding a new weapon – and one so powerful – could well cause issues to the balance of the game competitively, and se were open to feedback.
And it didn’t take long before a large majority of pro players were vocally against the weapon being used, claiming it was too powerful and gave a significant advantage to AR players.
Regardless, many continued to practice and scrim while using the weapon, and so it was expected that it would still be in play come May 15th, the start of Stage Two of the Pro League, with Division A.
However, the rumor now, and judging from the recent streamed practice of pro players, is that the weapon has become subject to a gentleman’s agreement – where all Pro League teams agree upon not using it between themselves.
In a recent stream including OpTic Gaming’s Sam “Octane” Larew – who is a main AR player – he was seen using only alternatives. Further, the chat command response to ‘!itra’ is now “The ITRA has been GA’d” – so make of that what you will.
We will of course need to wait until matches begin on Tuesday May 15th, to know for sure if the gentleman’s agreement has been enforced across all teams.
It is possible that the agreement has been put in place only for Division B teams (whose matches begin on May 29th), but it is more likely that it has been agreed by all teams.