Warzone 1 wasn’t perfect. Yes, having the game released right as lockdowns came gave it a huge boost, I won’t deny that. But I hate the opinion that Warzone 1 was only successful because we had nothing to do. The game plain looked and played better than anything we’ve had since, outside of arguable MW2023 WZ.
I played Warzone 1 regularly all the way up until the end of Nov 2022 before WZ2 dropped. I had a regular squad that played at least several nights a week. We all loved the game. Even when they took out Verdansk, and gave us Caldera, I still had a lot of fun after they got the bugs on the map fixed. Once WZ2 dropped and fundamentally changed the way the game played, we quit all together. The closest we’ve had to WZ1 since was MW2023 WZ which was a lot of fun and we played regularly up until the horrendous BO integration.
I would bet so much money if they simply took the look, feel, gameplay and fundamentals of WZ1 and built of that by investing in a stronger anti cheat, adding regular events, frequent updates, changes to the meta, more map options and also better playlists, the game would still be thriving to this day.
I promise you, show gameplay footage of Warzone 1 and gameplay footage of the current Warzone to someone who has never played the game before. They will guess Warzone 1 is the modern game we have today and the current Warzone was from almost 7 years ago.