As a live service game, Call of Duty: Warzone is constantly evolving and changing in order to keep the experience feeling fresh. Typically, this is seen through new content that is added through the seasonal model, including new operators like the recent addition of Kitsune, weapons, limited time game modes, and more. However, the game has also evolved through consistent updates and patches to not only reduce the problems with the game such as bugs and glitches, but to gear that is viewed to be not performing to expectations.
For most Call of Duty: Warzone players, a big change came about late in 2020 when the game was fully integrated with the latest game release, Black Ops Cold War. While the Warzone integration process wasn't smooth initially, the experience bridged the gap between both games and added all of the Black Ops Cold War guns to the battle royale in addition to a new Gulag experience. Up to now, the weapon meta allowed for both Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War guns to be viable options, but a recent update seems to have undermined that fact.
Following the release of the latest Call of Duty: Warzone update, fans have noticed that the Modern Warfare weapons received numerous nerfs which put them even further behind the Black Ops Cold War style weapons. The MP5, AS Val, Submachine Gun Charlie, M19, Sykov, and more all received nerfs to categories like damage and range. Naturally, this has left the community upset and frustrated as the balance now swings heavily towards the Black Ops Cold War guns. At this point, anyone using once viable loadouts based around Modern Warfare weapons are struggling to keep being at an even greater disadvantage.
Places like the Call of Duty: Warzone subReddit have lit up with frustrated posts, many of which accuse developer Raven Software of making Modern Warfare guns feel irrelevant. User o_oPeter goes as far as saying they don't enjoy Cold War and don't feel like going into Plunder matches to exclusively grind levels for those weapons. Others call for Raven to simply remove Modern Warfare guns from Warzone altogether, or perhaps making a separate playlist so they're not outclassed immediately.
What's looking more and more likely is that this cycle is set to continue the deeper into 2021 Warzone goes. Activision has already confirmed that Warzone will be getting another integration sometime later this year following the launch of Call of Duty: Vanguard. As such, most players fully expect the Vanguard weapons to eventually phase out Black Ops Cold War weapons, likely triggering the community once again.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
