[2021] Why people are moving from Warzone to Apex from the perspective of a former avid Warzone player:

Hi everyone! I started playing Apex a little over a month ago, and I’ve mostly stopped playing warzone after over a year of playing it. Apex is an incredibly good game; I played it a few times when it first came out, but I didn’t realize how much potential it had, and how it is currently the best battle royale. Here is why I moved to apex:

One of the first things that I loved about this game is how it rewards players for getting into engagements; shields upgrading upon doing a certain amount of damage is an amazing concept to reward players for fighting. Shield swapping is another great example of rewarding players who won an engagement, as you essentially have extra health to fight off third parties. Winning an engagement can also often mean upgrades to your weapons and kit in Apex, which isn’t the case in other BRs like warzone, since the goal in warzone is to get loadout asap, which upon doing so you have everything you need for the rest of the game.

Gun skill and camping. My biggest issue with warzone was how the ttk nearly halved after the release of Cold War, and the magazine sizes are ridiculously large with little disadvantage to them. These two things make the gun play low skill. Apex is the exact opposite; it takes a full mag, or most of a mag, to down purple armor, and the ttk to do so is around a full second. There’s also actual recoil in Apex, unlike warzone where attachments reduce the recoil down to nothing even at long ranges. What always sucked in warzone is that if you get caught in a rotation, even if it’s short, one person can down you in less than half a second. This would never happen in Apex. Low ttk also promotes camping, which was a huge and annoying problem in warzone (especially with all of the dark or all-black skins they pumped out). I haven’t encountered a single camper in Apex, probably because the game promotes mobility and gun skill (and doesn’t have skins making it impossible to see the enemy), which is inherently non-camping meta.

Now let’s get to the movement. Easily one of the most fun games now that I’ve been shown the light of wall jumping, tap-strafe, and bhops. While I still haven’t incorporated all of these things into my actual gameplay, practicing it while running across the map or at the start of arenas is some of the most fun I’ve had playing a game. Movement in Apex is unmatched, and is nothing like any other game I’ve played.

Other mechanics that make this a great br is the way they balanced how much time it takes to finish shield cells/bats as well as meds heal timing. I don’t want to go into too much detail about this, but the fact they made a shield cell take less time than a syringe, and a bat less time than a med kit is a really good way to balance the healing. In comparison, one shield takes a second to pop off in warzone (3 total, so 3 second for full health) and health regenerates over time, making it really easy to heal (and this harder to push). Knockdown shields are amazing; I absolutely hate how in warzone you can get fully killed in two shots from a sniper rifle without being able to do anything about it. The fact that apex deters people from immediately thirsting is so wonderful for a br.

It baffled me how the devs directly communicate with this community. You guys have it so good in that regard; warzone devs don’t even put out patch notes half of the time, and when they do it’s always terribly formatted. I’ve never played a game where the devs communicate with their player base like respawn does with y’all. Yes, there have been balance issues, and seer is pretty bad in terms of balance, but the devs have already done an ama and plan to nerf him. Incredible.

Apex having both public matches and ranked. My squad and I were sweatlords for a while in warzone, but nowadays we’re just tryna chill and have fun, but the sbmm is still forcing us in high ranked lobbies, so it’s rough in the warzone. Apex is really nice for this because if I want to try hard I can play ranked, or if it’s more causal then I can do pubs. Warzone is essentially only ranked (unless you’re a streamer, then it’s only casual).

Cheating. I’ve only encountered a few cheaters, and it sounds like the cheating has been worse recently, but at least the devs are working on it. Unfortunately, it seems like Activision and Raven promote cheating in warzone, and the cheating has only gotten worse.

Apex is just a better game than warzone, and word is getting around about how good it is, so this is why people are moving to apex atm. We’ll see if people stick with it though, since apex has a much larger skill gap than warzone.