Warzone Wednesdays Absent Again, Begging the Question, Will it Ever Return?
Warzone Wednesdays has been a constant feature since its conception as the first major weekly Warzone tournament. However, after not being live for two weeks in a row, could Warzone Wednesdays be suffering a quick and swift death, alike Fortnite Fridays, with other competitions replacing it?
We have seen eight weeks of Warzone Wednesdays so far, with $160,000 being distributed, and millions of fans tuning in week on week. However, Week nine was cancelled due to connection issues, and there have been no signs of it returning. With NICKMERCS’ Gauntlet last night (Tuesday 26th May), Live From Warzone: Warstream and Doritos Disrupter Series with TeePee on tomorrow (Thursday 28th May), the absence of Warzone Wednesday has been swept under the rug, with little noise about it being cancelled for a second week.
KEEMSTARS hugely popular Warzone competition follows the same format as his 2018 series Fortnite Fridays, which saw similar viewing statistics, and was ultimately replaced by Epic Games’ Summer Skirmish, leaving the question, could Warzone Wednesdays be cancelled in a similar fashion?
With a lack of communication regarding the future of Warzone Wednesdays, Fortnite Fridays could give us a key insight. After ten weeks of Fortnite Fridays, KEEMSTAR and Epic Games clashed publicly over the scheduling of the Summer Skirmish, a $500,000 tournament. The solos tournament was scheduled by the developers for Fridays, leaving fan bases and players split on which to watch/play.
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Although KEEMSTAR originally was set to rearrange his competition for Sundays instead, he ultimately cancelled the event. With the Summer Skirmish taking over, Fortnite Fridays was soon removed from everyone’s memory until it returned in 2019 after a year out. KEEMSTAR’s events have always been about filling the void between competitive esports and casual gaming, allowing streamers and content creators to compete in fun and entertaining competitions, using a gap in competitions as a key marketing strategy. The next instalment of Fortnite Fridays, a year later, was also put on the back burner after Epic announced a series of trios tournaments, proving that Fortnite Fridays was no longer needed as a way of satisfying the crave of competition.
With many competitions being set up in Warzone, the need to satisfy competitive players and fans isn’t as strong, meaning we could very well have seen the last of Warzone Wednesdays.
That being said, the viewership of Warzone Wednesdays shows that there is no reason that it couldn’t lead the way in competitive Warzone. Comparing its popularity to other competitions, Warzone Wednesdays remains a powerhouse.
Click to enlargeWarzone Wednesdays was watched on KEEMSTAR’s Twitch channel for a combined 1,561,472 hours, and peaking at 270,000 viewers at one time. This is on the sole channel that streams Warzone Wednesdays and doesn’t take into consideration viewers on each individual streamers’ channels. For instance, DrDisrespect racked up a further 29,000 viewers on his stream, and NICKMERCS having a further 24,000 on his. With 32 players competing, the viewership is almost uncountable, albeit astronomical.
When we compare that to NICKMERCS’ Gauntlet last night, the peak viewers was slightly lower, at 254,048, with 300,000 less total hours watched, showing that Warzone Wednesdays remains hugely popular.
Click to enlargeA further problem that Warzone Wednesdays have is, in a similar fashion to Fortnite Fridays, the competition is dominated by the same players week on week. The first instalment of Fortnite Fridays was ruled by Tfue and Cloakzy, who won the majority of competitions, and after eight weeks of Warzone Wednesdays, two players find themselves with a hat-trick of wins, with just a couple of weeks without them winning.
Vikkstar123 has won the previous 3 competitions as the format changed to a duo kill race, after JoshOG ran riot in the first three weeks in the old trios format. The domination of two players could be a reason why many were present when the Call of Duty League’s Warzone Weekend aired, which featured CDL teams only in a one-round-winner-takes-all format. In ground-breaking style, Warzone Weekend was the first private lobby, with all 12 CDL teams battling it out for the $10,000 prize, and was won by Paris Legion, who had sit eighth in the table, showing that there will be a large variety of winners. The lack of variety in Warzone Wednesdays and alike competitions could see the call of Duty League’s event become increasingly popular, again saturating the market in the absence of KEEMSTAR’s competition.
Warzone Wednesdays is undoubtedly a thrilling competition and would be a welcome return should it be aired again. However, for this week, it will be missed, with everyone’s eyes on Live From Warzone and Doritos Disrupter Series with TeePee tomorrow.
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Image via KEEMPARK
