News - So, Where's That Big Warzone 2 Reveal We're All Waiting For
There's rarely a topic that garners as much attention in the gaming space and for us here in particular in the Cod space that has as much buzz around it as skill-based matchmaking, or it's probably more accurately retention-based matchmaking. A system that, as we know, has been in each game since Modern Warfare 2019, forever changing the landscape of how our online matches work, it's just been under 2 months, or rather 53 days to be exact, since the first time since its implementation.
It was also shared from our Q&A portion of the studio visit to Sledgehammer that the Call of Duty team's statement on said matchmaking system went as follows: We know there is a lot of interest in the matchmaking experience, especially around how skill contributes to how lobbies and matches are put together; nothing is more important to us than the experience players have with the game, and matchmaking is a big part of that.
We've been working on our matchmaking system for well over 10 years, and we continue to spend a ton of time and energy on improving the matchmaking process. This involves people working at our Call of Duty Studios and our backend service teams like Demonware. I don't think there's much to say about Sledgehammer, communication, and transparency.
This year is a night and day difference compared to what we had last year, even if that amount of communication is down from pre-launch and that launch window for Modern Warfare 3 yes there's absolutely not as much happening in terms of communication, right now but to me I still think that it's more than the entirety of the communication we've had last year from crafting a game built on feedback of the community to adding things in that seems to be based on community feedback I.
When will this matchmaking discussion happen?
When should we expect this now? This is where it turns a bit speculative in nature because, for this, there is no actual answer or anything like that. There are some pockets of time we can maybe look towards as possibilities, but nothing is guaranteed. For this, we need to set some ground rules.
We're not talking about an announcement that will be a big one, one that will get talked about in and out of the Cod scene. For better or for worse, that's going to require some marketing and some time to set aside for that to have its spotlight. Previously, if you've been on the channel, you know about our dubbed rule of two, and no, we're not talking about the rule of two where there can only be a master and an apprentice, set forth by Darth Bane, but instead the rule that Call of Duty operates in time windows or intervals of 2 weeks if you've got a marketing item, let's say a seasonal launch.
When do we see those things start to be marketed? One week before the launch, so next week is when we're going to start seeing season 2 content being marketed. For the Call of Duty space, that's one of those two weeks, but in say, busier times of the year, maybe from May to the fall periods of, like, October.
There may very well be some overlap to promote the next thing coming, so the current game and then the next game, so if they were to have something that would be close to overlapping, let's say, for a seasonal launch, you'd see at least one week of that being able to breathe on its own and having the sort of marketing focus before they shift to anything else, say.
Cod 2024. Same thing with vice versa: if there's a Cod 2024 announcement, we're going to see a promo about a week before that, and then there's going to be no content from Modern Warfare 3 that is upcoming. Until at least a week after that announcement has been made, and that's not just like a general observation; that's something that has been going on for over a decade at this point in how their marketing team works, so while I'd wager that this isn't going to be as large as a Cod 2024 announcement or a seasonal launch or anything like that, you could probably cut that in half where they just want some smaller pocket of time where nothing's really happening and they can focus on that message and let it sit, but it also doesn't necessarily need a buildup to it; they could just drop it on some random Thursday.
And then just let it sit for a couple of days to a week after that, so it gives us more opportunity to see when we could see that, but the problem currently is the timing in proximity to season 2. This week, sure, it's still possible we could see something. I don't want to write the possibility of that off at all, especially given that the big stuff is now finally out of the way for Call of Duty in a production sense, where right before the holiday they had to launch season 1 in a new war zone experience, then they all went on holiday for a couple of weeks, then they came back and then had to launch the reloaded update.
Now, while they're in their prepping for season 2 phase, sure, technically speaking, it's out of their standard schedule. Now's a bit of that front-facing air quote down period, a time when it would logically make sense to discuss something like that, but if it is not this week, well, then things get a little sketchy because that's when we have another set of the boys content coming being marketed, and that's probably a big money deal associated with that licensing, but the week leading up to the 7th next week, upcoming the 31st onward, that's likely when we start to see season 2 promo, so it'd be slightly out of character for them to end up throwing away this marketing and the way they approach putting out messages for the last decade by stepping on the toes of additional marketing I'm not saying that it's not possible, but I definitely think that we're running out of time here in the season 1 era for when this message could be happening, which absolutely can warrant some frustration.
Unfortunately, i'm not expecting much. (but i hope i'm wrong)
I totally understand if that's the case, but here's the part that I'm a little bit worried about with all of this again. It's nice to see some of this at least mentioned acknowledged in a slight peak behind the curtain, but my thing is, I'm really not expecting a whole ton, even if they are transparent.
I mean, maybe I'm just a bit jaded with all this kind of stuff at this point, but I'm skeptical that they're going to do anything beyond just saying, Yeah, it exists. I mean, the reason that we have this in the first place, the reason why it's been something that's been enacted the last 4 years at this point and nothing's been mentioned about it, is because.
