Warzone - Spring ‘21 in Review

Written by Josh Klausmeier

MEQUON, Wis. - Call of Duty: Warzone has brought hundreds of thousands of gamers joy ever since its launch date in early 2020. Warzone is Call of Duty's version of a battle royale game, and the goal of the game is to be the last person or team standing. During the stay-at-home orders, Warzone provided an escape for people and provided a way for them to keep in touch with their friends and make new friends. With the casual way to play becoming so popular, the competitive side blossomed as well.

Professional gamers formed squads that competed against other squads in the game, and websites were created that hosted tournaments for Warzone where players would take their best scores in a certain number of games played and post the results. A team's score is a combination of kills and placement in the same game. The final results were determined on who had the most total points out of all the teams that participated. 

Concordia University Wisconsin Esports, run by head coach Lewis Smith, started on the popular Warzone scene and make a team of Christian "FadingGalaxy" Prohl, Jacob "ThrawnDom501" Holst, Ethan "GreenEcho51" Koch, Jen "Jbell23" Boehlke, Chase "vCourtStatus" Coots, Dylan "babySNAER" Karvala, and Joshua "SpaceMonkey" Klausmeier. The CUW Warzone team competed through the websites Crucible.gmg and Zleagues.gg for the competitive season. 

When competing through Crucible.gmg, the CUW Warzone team would compete in the battle-hardened division, the second hardest division on the website. CUW Warzone would finish in the division as a top-five team for the majority of the season, alongside some top-three placements throughout the season. When competing through Zleagues.gg, there would be multiple divisions made up of 10 teams, and CUW Warzone had finished in the top-two spots twice in their division. 

Even though the CUW Warzone team didn't play in an official season against other schools, they were still a big team for CUW esports. They were a successful team, winning cash prizes during the Spring semester. This team now has an understanding of what it is like to find competitions and know what it is like to play the game competitively. I think with a little bit of time for planning, this team could start competing in high-level, big winning tournaments and even come home with even bigger cash prizes.