Warzone at Night: Fans Theorize What Warzone Would Like at Night
By Chaz Frazer
Warzone at night - could you imagine tracking down enemy teams while also attempting to navigate a huge map measuring over 9 km2 (in actual real-world measurements) under the cover of darkness? With over 50 million unique players dropping daily into Verdansk, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Warzone has been busy keeping things fresh as far as gameplay and playlist modes go. With Battle Royale playlists for Solos, Duos, Trios, and Quads, and alongside the special playlist mode Plunder, Warzone has almost everything to keep a BR player happy while being locked inside all month.
One facet fans have been clamoring for that hasn’t been mentioned by Infinity Ward or Activision is a night mode for the city of Verdansk. A Reddit user by the name of shootballz has mocked up an illustration of what dropping into the Warzone map might look like under the dark skies of Kostovia.
The first impression of this mod is that the skies are still reasonably illuminated by moonlight. Second, to reflect the shift in lighting, buildings have lights on indoors, creating a nice contrast to the foreboding darkness outside of its constraints. It would undoubtedly be interesting what kind of dynamic sections of the map such as Downtown, East & West Promenade, as well as Airport would bring to a much darker section like Boneyard, Park, Farmland, Quarry, or God forbid - The Prison/Gulag.
Warzone at Night: Fans Theorize What Warzone Would Like at Night
Warzone at night would create some challenges for players, and in turn, developers, as they would need to balance the visibility of weapons and equipment spawned naturally on the map, as well as those dropped by dispatched enemy players. Also, as tempting as some might find it - spending the entire 25-30 minute match entirely in Night Vision Goggles mode - eternally bathing your surrounding world in green would defeat much of the purpose of creating a night world. Perhaps making NVGs a rare drop or even auto-equipping the item for all players, but as a trade-off, have some type of limited use (depletable battery) system in place. If you deplete your uses naturally, you might then be able to purchase another from a buy station on the map.
One barrier players may have regarding any type of Warzone night mode would be the prevalence of cheaters on PC being incentivized to use cheats to win and rob everyone else of the joy of playing the game. Although players using exploits such as wallhacks and aimbots is more frequent at the higher tiers of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) - as hackers tend to have inflated stats as a result of their rampant cheating - keeping them under control or even implementing better anti-cheat strategies on the developer’s end will be paramount.
Given the popularity of battle royale games changing up their map design - through seasonal and weather changes, disastrous events, or simply to make fans happy when they have been asking for something enough - it would be a safe bet to assume the same thought has gone through the devs’ heads regarding a night mode for Warzone. Time will only tell when we get to experience it in person.