David Vonderhaar appears to confirm Black Ops Cold War ranked play

Treyarch studio design director David Vonderhaar has dropped a major hint about ranked play in the upcoming Black Ops Cold War, and it could be great news for competitive players.

Throughout the Modern Warfare season, one of the main gripes for players was the non-existence of ranked play, where players could compete against equal opponents to try and grind their way to the top rankings and have the chance to prove their mettle against top opponents.

Instead, Infinity Ward introduced the CDL playlist, which featured a CDL ruleset and maps but without the ELO or MMR tiers commonly associated with ranked systems.

Without some kind of level, emblem or something else to grind for, a lot of players felt like the CDL playlist didn’t provide the competitive edge they were looking for, but the story could be completely different when Black Ops Cold War drops.

The game is currently in beta testing, but fans are already looking forward to the full game dropping and getting involved, and one of the main questions competitive players have asked about is ranked play — with Vonderhaar providing a very promising answer.

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After the question was posed to him, Vahn didn’t give a straight answer, but the hint was enough to get fans excited.

“Let me give you this,” he started, after explaining that it won’t be in the beta. “Do you know a Black Ops game without a hardcore competitive agenda? Can you think of one? I can not. There’s your answer, without telling you anything.”

There is some accuracy to Vonderhaar’s statement, too. While Black Ops 1 lacked a ranked system when it released back in 2010, each game since has had an iteration of competitive play in some way, be it League Play in Black Ops 2 and 4, or Arena in Black Ops 3, all of which were used to serve the esports community.

It will be interesting to see what ranked play looks like in Black Ops Cold War, assuming there will be one, as a feature of Call of Duty titles that players are always asking for more from. Needless to say, competitive players should be a little more excited now than they were before.