Rob Belk - WSOW Director of Product on London Location, Future WSOW Events and Competitive Integrity
How excited are you for the first ever World Series of Warzone LAN?
“Incredibly excited. I've been working on this product since we debuted it three years ago, when we were online and doing a slightly different format. So to be a week away from being physically in London, you know, back at the Copperbox with Warzone for the first ever global LAN. I couldn't be more excited. There's staff I've still yet to meet in real life. There's players I've never met. So seeing the entire community come together and really giving something to players and something that the Warzone community has been looking forward to is really a dream come true.”
Why did you choose London as the location for the first WSOW LAN?
“I've been to the Copper Box before in a previous role, I was working directly on CDL and helped produce that first ever CDL event in London, so lots of great memories with that venue! I think the crowd's energy and hype is just burned into my memory from that, and we wanted to go somewhere where we knew the fans and the community would bring that hype and that energy. So they deserve the first ever Warzone LAN.”
Do you face any issues with the event being in London and all of the staff being based in the US?
“Yeah, it's certainly a lot of logistics to handle and manage. The way we set up the tournament this year is we have 20 teams that are coming from Europe and 20 from North America. So if we were hosting this in the US, there would have been some trade offs from that versus being in London in the UK. But I feel really good about this. The Copperbox is set up so well. There's so much hype and history with competitive COD there that it just kind of felt right.
And, you know, we've got such a talented team that has been working so hard behind the scenes just to make sure we've got everything ready to go in London. And we've got great event partners in esports engine that do this thing all the time too.”
Is it a completely new team running this event? Or have you taken staff from CDL/OWL?
“It's a lot of familiar faces within the esports group. I started off in the Call of Duty League. I am focused full time on this now, and we've got a handful of other folks that are supporting this too, but we certainly lean on and there's some shared resources within the esports group that, you know, share their expertise and their learnings to help make it all come together.”
Cheating is a big problem in online Warzone events. What steps are you taking to protect competitive integrity on LAN?
“On LAN, we've done a lot to source PCs so that every player who’s there, they'll be playing on equipment provided by Activision. I think we've done a great job in terms of resourcing for the event, the number of referees and the comp ops staff that we've got on site. Every one of these players has been vetted through some internal security measures. So we feel good about everybody being checked and I think players know what's at stake and what's on the line. So I'm looking forward to a really smooth event.”
What are your expectations going into the event, and how successful do you think Warzone will be as an in-person, LAN product?
“We’re in year three. So we certainly have some historical data to look back on from a viewership perspective, and it's been really healthy there.
And I think being on LAN just turns up the notch in terms of the hype and the excitement. So certainly looking forward to seeing some really strong viewership numbers. We'll have all 150 players streaming their own POVs. So whether you want to watch the main broadcast, you want to get your viewership rewards there, see our incredible casters. You can do that. Or if your favorite players, Jukeyz, Fifakill, Ayden, JoeWo, well, you name it, you can pop over to their individual stream.
So I think that's a game changer for what we're doing, and hopefully that'll translate into some really healthy viewership numbers.”
Will we now be seeing a WSOW LAN every year?
“I've certainly been really impressed and appreciate Activision being behind what we're doing. There's still some work to be done and some discussions to be had. So I can't fully comment on that one yet. But I’m excited about what's in front of us and really focused on making sure this event is super successful.”
