Existing Modern Warfare players have a big advantage in Warzone over free-to-play newcomers
If you've been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for a while, you may not realise that you have a leg up in Warzone.
With Call of Duty: Warzone now live for everyone, a particular advantage for existing owners of the full version of Modern Warfare has started rearing its head.
In Warzone's battle royale mode, players can call in their multiplayer loadouts using cash earned from kills and found as loot scattered around the map. This same loadout menu can also be accessed through random airdrops.
The weapon, attachment and perk setups for each of those loadouts can be set prior to the start of the match. This is all available to everyone, including free-to-play players.
Unfortunately, free-to-play players who just got into Warzone will not only have access to a limited set of loadout slots at the start, they won't have any of the weapons or perks unlocked. Buying a loadout, or picking it up from an airdrop, are the only two ways that currently allow players to bring their multiplayer loadout into Warzone.
But if you don't have custom loadouts to begin with, you're going to be at a disadvantage against existing players, who more than likely already have their preferred setups ready to go.
Saving up enough cash to call in a loadout is already becoming the meta in Warzone, so expect to run into more and more players using decked out guns they fully levelled up during their time with multiplayer.
Having loadouts custom-made for Warzone is one thing, but stacking the good perks in each of them is the more concerning issue. Perks are passive, permanent advantages that apply to players as soon as they pick up any of their multiplayer loadouts. It doesn't take long to figure out some killer perk setups for Warzone, especially when you have all of them unlocked.
This problem is hard to solve, because being able to use your multiplayer loadout is one of Warzone battle royale's core mechanics. Unless the feature is removed entirely, old players will always have an advantage in situations like that. This is precisely why weapons are limited to loot items in other BR games, to level the playing field.
The good news is that double XP and double weapon XP are both currently active in Warzone, so you should power through fairly quickly. Unlocking attachments for the various weapons, however, will take much longer, especially if you don't focus on levelling a single weapon.
We've got even more helpful tips for new players in our Warzone page covering everything from parachuting tricks to weapon rarities. Give it a look.