Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0's third season launched just over a week ago, and while players have always griped at Warzone's laggy servers, latency issues have become so bad that Infinity Ward has officially acknowledged them on Call of Duty's Twitter account.
"We are investigating reports of server-related gameplay issues and are actively working to resolve them," the Warzone developer wrote. Players noted the issue must be severe for it to be broadcast on the main Call of Duty account and not just the support account.
Laggy servers have always been a problem for Call of Duty servers, but the issue has become particularly bad after the Season 3 launch. It seems every day someone is posting a video of a Warzone game cut short after a lag spike caused them to eat a dozen bullets without warning, or to miss a dead-to-rights shot. Teleporting, rubber-banding, and outright disconnects have become the norm.
Infinity Ward has yet to provide a cause for the server issues, but the players already have a suspect: AI enemies. Warzone's servers struggled with 150-player lobbies on Al Mazrah, but they outright broke when those same servers also had to keep track of dozens of AI opponents spawning in Strongholds and Blacksites.
As noted by Warzone YouTuber Tacticalbrit in his investigative report, AI spawns cause a measurable increase in server latency, especially in the first half of the game when there are the most players and AI enemies still on the map. Warzone's servers can struggle to maintain their 20 Hz tick rate, causing lag spikes and even the odd server crash.
For example, here's one unfortunate Warzone player that got hit with a lag spike at the absolute worst time. They didn't hear or see the other player as they clambered over the fence, dropped right in front of them, and unloaded an entire clip. To them, it just looked like they were taking damage from nowhere. Their opponent might as well have been invisible.
The problems have only gotten worse as Season 3 of Warzone 2.0 doubles down on AI enemies. Coincidentally, server telemetry has also gone offline, so players don't know how bad their connection is prior to a match's start.
"Odd coincidence they add more AI in [Season 3] and break the telemetry showing server latency," wrote one Redditor. "With how incompetent the devs are not going to put my tinfoil hat on about that quite yet... I can only imagine how bad the servers would look right now with the increase in AI spawning if we could see the server latency."
Laggy servers aren't the only thing players are raging against. Warzone 2.0's extraction-themed DMZ mode will soon receive pay-to-win cosmetic bundles that will give players with money a measurable advantage over everyone else.