The Call of Duty League was on a break this weekend, but from the surprising benching of a veteran player to a game-breaking bug that could threaten the Atlanta FaZe's homestand, this week has been a *thing* for the CDL and Call of Duty community alike.
Here's a look back at what's happened leading into this weekend's Atlanta tourney and the biggest rumor on the minds of general Call of Duty fans.
Enable benched
Seattle Surge SMG support Ian "Enable" Wyatt won't be starting for the Seattle Surge during their next match in Los Angeles.
"I actually got benched, for the time being," Enable said on his stream Friday.
Enable has struggled mightily through their first two homestands, with a K/D ratio in the mid-.80s, and the Surge as a whole are only 1-4.
There's been no official word yet on his replacement, although Subliners substitute Doug "Censor" Martin did tweet that he wants to see Enable bounce back and "see what Casey can do" for the Surge, referencing Casey "Pandur" Romano.
Crimsix calls out the Huntsmen
The rivalry between Dallas' Ian "Crimsix" Porter and Chicago's Seth "Scump" Abner has been extremely snippy during these first few weeks of the CoD League, coming to a head during the London homestand finals, where Scump and the Huntsmen beat Crimsix and the Empire.
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A few days later, however, Crimsix pointed out during a stream that the Huntsmen were using three stuns -- a contravention of an unofficial gentleman's agreement in the Call of Duty League that limits players to holding two stun grenades per spawn. Though no official rule was broken, if what Crimsix is saying is true, that's only going to add fuel to the two squads' spicy rivalry.
Bugs threatening the Atlanta homestand?
With another tournament weekend approaching fast, two big bugs might get in the way of the game's competitive integrity.
First, there's an issue with cross-play lobbies where it's become incredibly difficult for PC players and PS4 players to join the same game. Since the casters in CoD host lobbies on PC, there's a nightmare scenario where everything's in place for the games to start for the Atlanta homestand ... except for the players themselves. Crimsix led the charge on bringing up this issue earlier this week.
"Have they said when they're gonna fix the cross play lobby glitch?" he tweeted. "And if they haven't is ATL chalked? Pretty serious issue."
Of course, as Minnesota Røkkr head coach Brian "Saintt" Baroska pointed out, that might not matter considering LAN lobbies, which the league's games are played on, currently don't work at all.
"The cross play thing is secondary right now," he tweeted before an all-caps reminder that offline lobbies aren't available.
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It sounds like Infinity Ward is in a race against time for these issues to be fixed before the teams face off in Atlanta. The developer is expected to issue an update later today about the bugs and a timeline for correcting them.
The return of the Call of Duty battle royale?
That "Classified" tab in the game's main menu has implied an upcoming battle royale type game for a few days now, but footage posted on Reddit seemed to confirm that a new game mode called "Warzone" will be coming soon.
Details are scarce and unconfirmed by Infinity Ward as of yet, but it looks like there will be a new map and up to 200 players in a match, according to the leaked information. Players have already gotten the chance to sample CoD's take on the battle royale genre in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's "Blackout" mode, which also had a professional esports scene to it, albeit briefly.
It'll be interesting to see how much Warzone shakes up the formula of "parachute in, acquire loot, outrun circle" and if Activision-Blizzard will try to build any pro or pro-am events around the new mode.