Dr Disrespect claims Warzone needs “total rebuild” to save battle royale
Raven Software / YouTube: Dr DisrespectDr Disrespect claims Warzone needs to pull off a “total engine rebuild” if the popular Call of Duty battle royale wants to keep duking it out with rivals Fortnite and Apex Legends — especially in terms of live events — long into the future.
To call Dr Disrespect’s relationship with Warzone ‘hot and cold’ over the last few months would probably be an understatement.
The streamer — who himself was a renowned Call of Duty map designer in a past life — clearly loves the battle royale; the YouTuber hosted a $20k tourney just last month. In true Doc fashion, however, he’s also publicly dubbed the popular title “disappointing,” downright “unplayable” at times, and even dramatically quit the game for a week in early May.
Now he’s back plotting ways to keep the game going strong.
The two-time got thinking about Warzone’s long-term future during a recent May 20 stream, and in particular the battle royale’s “pretty terrible” Season 2 finale.
All the game’s issues, Dr Disrespect suggested, have stemmed from a bigger problem simmering under the surface. It’s one that doesn’t have a “clear solution,” at least in his eyes — how “poor” the title’s ‘IW 8.0’ game engine is.
Activision“Everything bad in Warzone, everything that [went wrong] in season one, two, three, the whole narrative and buildup, the live event, it’s all got something to do with how limiting the engine is… what it can’t do,” the two-time proclaimed.
“The Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest gaming IPs in the world,” he continued. “How limiting this Warzone engine is has to be addressed.”
“There’s a lot they can’t do with it. How to fix it… I’m not sure.”
YouTube: Dr Disrespect / ActivisionThe Doc pointed to rivals like Apex Legends (run on Valve’s iconic Source engine) as well as PUBG and Fortnite (both built on the 23-year-old Unreal Engine) as high watermarks for battle royales that Raven Software should “emulate.”
“The other engines out there, how they’re designed, how efficient they are, there’s so many benefits. They make the whole process — matches, live events, lobbies — much easier, much more streamlined,” he explained.
“Maybe they’re already addressing it. They started in Blackout, then built Warzone. Could they go back to that? They did a really good job on [Blackout].”
Blackout ran on the “Black Ops 4” engine during its 2018 heyday. Standard battle royale lobbies in the Treyarch-led title hosted 100 players at a time.
There were rumors back in March that Raven Software was eyeing a Warzone engine swap that would have shifted the battle royale onto Black Ops Cold War’s engine — a unique software build — but were soon shot down.
Whether Doc is right that ‘IW 8.0’ is at the heart of Warzone’s issues remains to be seen. It’s unlikely, however, that Raven ditches the software any time soon.