Activision has officially revealed the highly anticipated updates for Season 2 of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone, set to launch on January 28, 2025. This season promises to bring a host of new content, gameplay improvements, and significant anti-cheat updates to enhance the overall player experience.
I guess it is fair to say that the long blog post needed to be filtered in a more summarized and understandable list and here goes:
Key Updates for Season 2
- Console-Only Crossplay for Ranked Play: Responding to community feedback, Activision will enable the ability to disable cross-play for consoles in Ranked Play modes. This aims to reduce cheating and provide a fairer competitive environment.
- New Zombies Content: Season 2 will introduce a brand-new Zombies map, along with new weapons, modes, and other exciting content to refresh the Zombies experience.
- Anti-Cheat Enhancements: The Ricochet Anti-Cheat team has been hard at work, implementing new detection models and server updates to combat aim-botting and other cheating behaviors. Over 136,000 Ranked Play account bans have already been issued since the modes launched.
- Server Improvements: Activision has addressed server issues, including rubber-banding, packet loss, and server disconnects, especially in Ranked Play and certain regions. New improvements have been made to Call of Duty’s server infrastructure to reduce malicious activities and enhance stability.
- Samurai Theme: The leaked key art for Season 2 hints at a Samurai theme, featuring a character holding a tanto (a short Japanese blade) and dressed in traditional Samurai attire. This theme is expected to bring a fresh and immersive experience to the game.
- Charity Support: Activision has donated $1 million to LA wildfire relief efforts and released a new cosmetic bundle in the in-game store, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting charities connected to wildfire relief.
Release Details
Season 2 will go live on January 28, 2025, at 10 AM PT, across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PC (Steam and Battle.net), and Xbox Series X/S. Players will need to download update files for the Call of Duty app to access the latest content additions and enhancements.
About Ranked Mode in both Black Ops 6 & Warzone
Also, Activision said it was disabling crossplay between consoles and PC in Ranked Mode for both Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 and Warzone in response to player feedback and in the spirit of improving the gameplay experience.
We’ve heard the feedback from players about wanting the choice to toggle cross-play in Ranked Play since its launch earlier this season, and in the spirit of improving the gameplay experience, we’re returning to the way we’ve traditionally handled cross-play. In Season 02, we are enabling the ability to disable cross-play for console players who want to compete only against other console players.
- This is currently in testing and is planned to go live for both Black Ops 6 Ranked Play and Warzone Ranked Play during S02. We’ll be monitoring closely and will consider further changes to prioritize the integrity of the ecosystem, and we’ll have more details to share as we get closer to the launch of this feature.
The Vote to Forfeit feature is coming at Season 02 launch, which allows players to vote with their team to end a match early if the team is getting blown out, or you’ve lost a teammate. Forfeited matches count as a standard loss and do not result in SR penalties or suspensions.
The ability to rejoin Ranked Play matches is also planned for later in Season 02, which should help to ensure fuller teams in matches if players experience a disconnect.
New S02 Ranked Play Rewards will include:
- Large Decal for 100 wins
- Camos for Gold Rank and up
- Jackal PDW Blueprint for 10 wins