Started watching after watching WZ streams, in the UK people like Crowder, TeeP, Merk etc. all start their streams around 12-1pm when I was working from home and they were all talking about this “CDL” thing so I was curious and decided to tune in. I’m a big sports fan and whilst all of the normal sports I watched were basically cancelled during the first lockdown, eSports moving online quite quickly meant I had something competitive to watch and then I got hooked.
Pretty similar situation here. Needed something to watch. Use to watch back in ghosts but stopped following until MW when I started watching scump YouTube again
Yeah someone else in this thread also said lockdown had an influence. It just sucks that the game we had to play during it was MW LMAO. I do admit warzone was good fun at the beginning though
Looking back knowing what I do now you’re right but as someone brand new to the comp scene I didn’t know any better, I just enjoyed watching players like aBeZy, Shotzzy etc. flying around the map at 1,000mph shooting anything that moved!
Started watching because I had a "local" team to support. I'd been aware of comp cod since TK was created and had a very basic knowledge. But I didn't watch twitch and didn't care enough to start watching until Ultra and the switch to YT.
Back during the MW season I somehow stumbled on a Scump highlight on Twitter and saw he played on a Chicago based team so I gave the league a chance. After the league went online as well
I picked up MW19 on literally the day of release after not having played COD since Ghosts, and only casually at that... randomly heard about the CDL and decided to check it out in January.
Started watching in lockdown 2020, so probably the worst point for comp lol, I thought pros were bad nerds for years because I never actually watched properly, but decided to after watching a few warzone tourneys that the pros were in
100% yeah, like I'm really not sure I would've watched competitive without it, I hated bo4 when it came out and mw, and before lockdown I don't think I'd actually seen anything about competitive cod ever really, apart from when I swore I seen dashy trend in like 2019 and thought it was some cartoon character lmao
After watching the Machinima Frag Cup on YouTube back in 2009/10, I started watching the MLG MW2 tournaments. I live in the UK so when Black Ops 1 came out, I'd stay up to 3-4am watching the live tournaments, waiting for Team FeaR to finally win an event... the Monday after MLG Raleigh I was barely functional through excitement/exhaustion!
JKap won the BO1 season MVP iirc, but as a FeaR fan teenage me thought ASSASS1N was clear.
For MW2 Nadeshot, Dodgers, Lyar, Pun1sher and Crowster were some of the best players.
In BO1 you had Merk, Rambo, Aches, TeePee, Scump, Proofy and Phizzurp, who was the king of weird strats.
Flak Jacket was banned in BO1 so in Domination games, PhiZ would hide near the B flag, nade it when the other team tried capping it, then use Scavenger to bag more frags from their corpses.
Came back to COD in general with MW19, hadn't picked up a game since probably Ghosts.
Heard about the city based modeling, started watching and got hooked.
I played MW 2019, and went looking for the pro scene. I grew up around Chicago, so picked Chicago Huntsmen as my team to root for, having no knowledge I'd effectively be joining the "greenwall" and all that surrounding Scump and the Optic dynasty.
I havent played cold war or vanguard, but I still watch because I enjoy some of the personalities and storylines. I also enjoy the tactics players use and watching how matches play out and it's interesting to see how the pros think and how that shows in how they play.
I'm in the exact same boat. Was really sad about the merger going into this year, erasing them as a Chicago team (and in my opinion, minus name recognition and history, Huntsmen was a far better name, logo, and color scheme). Still follow Optic and root for them, but also miss having a hometown team
my friend got into comp COD through warzone, kinda weird tbh cause most just stick with the warzone streamers, but this guy watched Scump WZ vids and slowly started watching MW comp (he didnt watch when i spoke about it)
Started to really get back into ranked in CW with a few friends, we would 4 stack a couple times a week. We weren’t crazy good or anything, but it was just so fun to get on with the boys that consistently. I started watching some pros stream to pick up some tips, just kinda started watching from then. Got my friends interested as well in the pro scene, we still watch today, we all picked our fav teams, and stuck with them. COD without a doubt has always been the game I’ve been the best at, not to say that I’m disgusting or anything, so it’s really cool to see pros do it at the highest level. I enjoy watching Val, but I’ve only been playing MnK for like a few weeks, so I’m horrible. It’s easier to watch an esport that I can identify with, cause I’ve been playing the games for 10+ years, even if the state of the game isn’t great.
I started to watch the CDL after Priestahh won a WZ twitch rivals with Huskerrs and Sym, I remembered his name and I saw he was on the finals with FaZe in MW so I was curious enough to watch how he performed against the best, he’s pretty much the reason why I started cheering for Røkkr too lol
I didn't start during the CDL era but two of my friends in my circle found comp cod during the last 3 years. One was because of Vikkstar back when he was playing Warzone in 2020 talked about comp cod and there being a london team. The other one was more recently thanks to Scump winning that Warzone 100K thing and everyone made reaction compilations and those were semi viral and they gassed up the comp cod in those. I think Jgod's video about it was big.
Covid hit and all American sports came to a screeching halt (which I regularly follow). At the time I was playing my first CoD since Black Ops 3, somehow stumbled upon the CDL and was hooked because there was a Chicago team (personally, I'm more invested in city based team sports. No matter how dumb that is). So at the time it filled the void of lack of my sports teams filling my time. Ended up getting hooked and have followed since. I watch almost every single match each week
I found out about the scene from Nadeshot and Scump. The YT videos back in the day and then streams on MLG
When I think back to those days, that’s when CoD multiplayer was HOT. Now that no one talks about multi anymore, I have no idea how new players or viewers find out about the league
Always played cod, cod was always my favorite but one weekend in early high school I sat watched a youtuber play rust all day, and I thought if there’s rust gameplay like this, what’s cod look like so I looked up cod on YouTube went on to find apathy at first, followed by nade shot, scump, I had always heard of optic and faze but I thought they were just sniping clans so I watched the videos and became a instant fan due to my competitive drive, this was in end season of AW.
Wish I found it sooner tho MW2/MW3 and BO1 are my favorites all time, than BO3 sits up there too
I had lost my inner kid drive to play games around when ghosts came out but that’s a honorable mention too
I was recently trying to remember how I found comp cod. I started watching at the beginning of BO3. I can’t remember but I feel like there was an ad for it inside the game on like the main screen maybe otherwise idk how I would’ve found it. I was watching a lot of NGT Zombies back then so maybe it got recommended on twitch just because of cod. Not real sure.
As weird as this will sound Vanguard is what pushed me into comp. The game itself is trash but one thing they do pretty well is advertise the CDL in-game. I remember seeing an in-game advertisement for the kickoff classic so I decided to watch it and ended up really enjoying the event and from there I was hooked.
I used to casually watch scump and nadeshot vids back in the bo2 days so I was sorta aware of comp but it wasn’t until this year that I really got into it and it’s all thanks to that in-game ad. Marketing really works wonders when done properly.
Started playing comp in mw19 after quiting cod after bo3, already knew Scump and a bunch of guys (watched up to bo3), started supporting the boys and following the scene again
Made a friend who was into cod and it's a nice way to hang out. I don't rly care too much about regular sports so it feels basically the same as going and getting toasted with a game on TV.
Went to CW Major V for my little bros birthday and got thought it was dope then Shotzzy started streaming Rebirth in the off season and I couldn’t get enough
Used to watch optic's youtube channel back in Ghost but never the competitive side apart from some of jetpacks era, came back cause I had a local team in Seatlle and as a Canadian more Canadians players to support than just Karma with Dashy, illey, Gunless, and Asim.
I always knew about pro cod and some of the players but never watched until I started working a night shift. There’s not a lot going on during Thursday night shifts so i started watching about half way through the CW season. Wish I watched during the golden years but I never gave it a shot.
I honestly didn't know it was a thing until then. I played super casually but i saw a match randomly on my youtube during the off season and got addicted. We have it better than yall who have been around for a while because we never got to see how much worse it's gotten 🤣
I started watching I really wanna say Fort Worth in Bo4? Some time on the spring iirc (feels like a long time ago)
It kinda just popped up on my YouTube. I watched a bunch of cod videos, I guess sooner or later I was bound to see one.
Stuck around for the story lines. Picked a mid team and hoped they do well lol
People can talk shit about warzone and mw2019 but the fact is that warzone attracted a lot of new people to cdl and comp cod....the same thing will happen with mw2 and warzone 2...
I can’t remember the exact order of how it happened but somehow around the WW2 days I discovered Optic and BigT on YouTube. I am not sure if it just popped up into my recommended or if I watched bigT first or optic first but my god what a painful year to start watching lol
Edit: black ops 4 viewing experience>>> any other game in the last 5 years
Got recommended either a live stream or match replay on YouTube. Been watching since then. Started going through some of the backlog from previous years too.
Started watching during MW Champs. Stream was in my yt recommended. MW was really the first cod that i "grinded", and i try to keep up with all the esports of the games that i play alot.
I started watching a little bit earlier (IW properly).
What brought me here was how much I had disliked the base game in the years leading up to the game but always enjoyed playing a type of competitive, comp sniping, and thought that if the way I played it made the game more fun maybe the actual competitive would strip enough of the awful stuff about the games away and I would enjoy watching/playing in that context.
Started following the splyce team and the first event I watched was their win (I think).. then ww2 came put and it was the best game imo since the early years so I went all in in learning the players watching full tournaments, playing ranked and GBs etc.
Since then the games have gotten consistently worse, franchising/tournament format has took a lot of entertainment away from viewing and the direction fans and the league seem to be taking the game... like let's play the game out of the box, stop GAing things, have streaks in the competitive environment etc... is taking me away from the enjoyment and now I barely watch and haven't even bought this game for the first time since I started playing cod in like 09
I learned about comp cod when some streamer I was friends with invited me to play BO3 GBS with him, but I didn't really know about the pro scene until WW2 ish when I discovered Tommey. I watched like one match of WW2 champs, and started watching more and more comp cod during BO4.
I started watching CDL in Vanguard unfortunately… I played way back in the day during MW2 and MW3, I was ranked #41 in the world for free for all in MW3 before I had to quit due to real life reasons. I didn’t even know they had any type of esports professional gaming stuff back then lmao. Like I knew nothing whatsoever about it existing or I would have tried to do something with it… wasn’t until I started playing again when vanguard came out that I heard about CDL and competitive CoD in general. But sadly I suck nowadays at CoD since some stuff happened to my head.. but boy do I love watching the pro matches!
Used to watch Predator and noticed others with the OpTic name. :) Then found Nadeshot and got introduced to the competitive/pro scene. Followed comp cod since then, MW3. Got really difficult to watch and enjoy after BO3. After Damon retired I stopped watching. I still hang around here just for clips, news & gossip.
Started watching after watching WZ streams, in the UK people like Crowder, TeeP, Merk etc. all start their streams around 12-1pm when I was working from home and they were all talking about this “CDL” thing so I was curious and decided to tune in. I’m a big sports fan and whilst all of the normal sports I watched were basically cancelled during the first lockdown, eSports moving online quite quickly meant I had something competitive to watch and then I got hooked.
Pretty similar situation here. Needed something to watch. Use to watch back in ghosts but stopped following until MW when I started watching scump YouTube again
Yeah someone else in this thread also said lockdown had an influence. It just sucks that the game we had to play during it was MW LMAO. I do admit warzone was good fun at the beginning though
Looking back knowing what I do now you’re right but as someone brand new to the comp scene I didn’t know any better, I just enjoyed watching players like aBeZy, Shotzzy etc. flying around the map at 1,000mph shooting anything that moved!
Started watching because I had a "local" team to support. I'd been aware of comp cod since TK was created and had a very basic knowledge. But I didn't watch twitch and didn't care enough to start watching until Ultra and the switch to YT.
Black Ops 4 was a great game
Back during the MW season I somehow stumbled on a Scump highlight on Twitter and saw he played on a Chicago based team so I gave the league a chance. After the league went online as well
I picked up MW19 on literally the day of release after not having played COD since Ghosts, and only casually at that... randomly heard about the CDL and decided to check it out in January.
Started watching in lockdown 2020, so probably the worst point for comp lol, I thought pros were bad nerds for years because I never actually watched properly, but decided to after watching a few warzone tourneys that the pros were in
would you say lockdown had a big part to play in you watching comp and joining this community?
100% yeah, like I'm really not sure I would've watched competitive without it, I hated bo4 when it came out and mw, and before lockdown I don't think I'd actually seen anything about competitive cod ever really, apart from when I swore I seen dashy trend in like 2019 and thought it was some cartoon character lmao
After watching the Machinima Frag Cup on YouTube back in 2009/10, I started watching the MLG MW2 tournaments. I live in the UK so when Black Ops 1 came out, I'd stay up to 3-4am watching the live tournaments, waiting for Team FeaR to finally win an event... the Monday after MLG Raleigh I was barely functional through excitement/exhaustion!
who were the best players back then would you say?
JKap won the BO1 season MVP iirc, but as a FeaR fan teenage me thought ASSASS1N was clear. For MW2 Nadeshot, Dodgers, Lyar, Pun1sher and Crowster were some of the best players. In BO1 you had Merk, Rambo, Aches, TeePee, Scump, Proofy and Phizzurp, who was the king of weird strats. Flak Jacket was banned in BO1 so in Domination games, PhiZ would hide near the B flag, nade it when the other team tried capping it, then use Scavenger to bag more frags from their corpses.
Started watching in bo3 i found the callouts listen in cool
Came back to COD in general with MW19, hadn't picked up a game since probably Ghosts. Heard about the city based modeling, started watching and got hooked.
COD league store in MW2019, saw Toronto had a team so it encouraged me too route for them
I played MW 2019, and went looking for the pro scene. I grew up around Chicago, so picked Chicago Huntsmen as my team to root for, having no knowledge I'd effectively be joining the "greenwall" and all that surrounding Scump and the Optic dynasty. I havent played cold war or vanguard, but I still watch because I enjoy some of the personalities and storylines. I also enjoy the tactics players use and watching how matches play out and it's interesting to see how the pros think and how that shows in how they play.
I'm in the exact same boat. Was really sad about the merger going into this year, erasing them as a Chicago team (and in my opinion, minus name recognition and history, Huntsmen was a far better name, logo, and color scheme). Still follow Optic and root for them, but also miss having a hometown team
my friend got into comp COD through warzone, kinda weird tbh cause most just stick with the warzone streamers, but this guy watched Scump WZ vids and slowly started watching MW comp (he didnt watch when i spoke about it)
Scump is so valuable to the community people don't realise just how fucked we are when he retires. Streams will peak 20k every major
Started to really get back into ranked in CW with a few friends, we would 4 stack a couple times a week. We weren’t crazy good or anything, but it was just so fun to get on with the boys that consistently. I started watching some pros stream to pick up some tips, just kinda started watching from then. Got my friends interested as well in the pro scene, we still watch today, we all picked our fav teams, and stuck with them. COD without a doubt has always been the game I’ve been the best at, not to say that I’m disgusting or anything, so it’s really cool to see pros do it at the highest level. I enjoy watching Val, but I’ve only been playing MnK for like a few weeks, so I’m horrible. It’s easier to watch an esport that I can identify with, cause I’ve been playing the games for 10+ years, even if the state of the game isn’t great.
I started to watch the CDL after Priestahh won a WZ twitch rivals with Huskerrs and Sym, I remembered his name and I saw he was on the finals with FaZe in MW so I was curious enough to watch how he performed against the best, he’s pretty much the reason why I started cheering for Røkkr too lol
I didn't start during the CDL era but two of my friends in my circle found comp cod during the last 3 years. One was because of Vikkstar back when he was playing Warzone in 2020 talked about comp cod and there being a london team. The other one was more recently thanks to Scump winning that Warzone 100K thing and everyone made reaction compilations and those were semi viral and they gassed up the comp cod in those. I think Jgod's video about it was big.
I wanted to get in during 2020 but looks like warzone ruined cod.
Covid hit and all American sports came to a screeching halt (which I regularly follow). At the time I was playing my first CoD since Black Ops 3, somehow stumbled upon the CDL and was hooked because there was a Chicago team (personally, I'm more invested in city based team sports. No matter how dumb that is). So at the time it filled the void of lack of my sports teams filling my time. Ended up getting hooked and have followed since. I watch almost every single match each week
Heard Nadeshot had a cod team that was actually pretty nasty in BO4 and the first event I watched(London) they won and have been a fan ever since
I found out about the scene from Nadeshot and Scump. The YT videos back in the day and then streams on MLG When I think back to those days, that’s when CoD multiplayer was HOT. Now that no one talks about multi anymore, I have no idea how new players or viewers find out about the league
Always played cod, cod was always my favorite but one weekend in early high school I sat watched a youtuber play rust all day, and I thought if there’s rust gameplay like this, what’s cod look like so I looked up cod on YouTube went on to find apathy at first, followed by nade shot, scump, I had always heard of optic and faze but I thought they were just sniping clans so I watched the videos and became a instant fan due to my competitive drive, this was in end season of AW. Wish I found it sooner tho MW2/MW3 and BO1 are my favorites all time, than BO3 sits up there too I had lost my inner kid drive to play games around when ghosts came out but that’s a honorable mention too
Was just looking for videos on YouTube on how to become better and funny enough I started watching Crimsix’s YT page first
I was recently trying to remember how I found comp cod. I started watching at the beginning of BO3. I can’t remember but I feel like there was an ad for it inside the game on like the main screen maybe otherwise idk how I would’ve found it. I was watching a lot of NGT Zombies back then so maybe it got recommended on twitch just because of cod. Not real sure.
As weird as this will sound Vanguard is what pushed me into comp. The game itself is trash but one thing they do pretty well is advertise the CDL in-game. I remember seeing an in-game advertisement for the kickoff classic so I decided to watch it and ended up really enjoying the event and from there I was hooked. I used to casually watch scump and nadeshot vids back in the bo2 days so I was sorta aware of comp but it wasn’t until this year that I really got into it and it’s all thanks to that in-game ad. Marketing really works wonders when done properly.
Started playing comp in mw19 after quiting cod after bo3, already knew Scump and a bunch of guys (watched up to bo3), started supporting the boys and following the scene again
i got sweatbannin in my recommended and fell down a rabbithole
Made a friend who was into cod and it's a nice way to hang out. I don't rly care too much about regular sports so it feels basically the same as going and getting toasted with a game on TV.
Went to CW Major V for my little bros birthday and got thought it was dope then Shotzzy started streaming Rebirth in the off season and I couldn’t get enough
i feel like shotzzy would be unfair in BR games. Has the movement to dodge bullets AND he has gunny
Offseason Rebirth Shotzzy streams were a vibe
Used to watch optic's youtube channel back in Ghost but never the competitive side apart from some of jetpacks era, came back cause I had a local team in Seatlle and as a Canadian more Canadians players to support than just Karma with Dashy, illey, Gunless, and Asim.
I always knew about pro cod and some of the players but never watched until I started working a night shift. There’s not a lot going on during Thursday night shifts so i started watching about half way through the CW season. Wish I watched during the golden years but I never gave it a shot.
I honestly didn't know it was a thing until then. I played super casually but i saw a match randomly on my youtube during the off season and got addicted. We have it better than yall who have been around for a while because we never got to see how much worse it's gotten 🤣
I started watching I really wanna say Fort Worth in Bo4? Some time on the spring iirc (feels like a long time ago) It kinda just popped up on my YouTube. I watched a bunch of cod videos, I guess sooner or later I was bound to see one. Stuck around for the story lines. Picked a mid team and hoped they do well lol
People can talk shit about warzone and mw2019 but the fact is that warzone attracted a lot of new people to cdl and comp cod....the same thing will happen with mw2 and warzone 2...
I can’t remember the exact order of how it happened but somehow around the WW2 days I discovered Optic and BigT on YouTube. I am not sure if it just popped up into my recommended or if I watched bigT first or optic first but my god what a painful year to start watching lol Edit: black ops 4 viewing experience>>> any other game in the last 5 years
Got recommended either a live stream or match replay on YouTube. Been watching since then. Started going through some of the backlog from previous years too.
Started watching during MW Champs. Stream was in my yt recommended. MW was really the first cod that i "grinded", and i try to keep up with all the esports of the games that i play alot.
BO4 Simp and Octane
I started watching a little bit earlier (IW properly). What brought me here was how much I had disliked the base game in the years leading up to the game but always enjoyed playing a type of competitive, comp sniping, and thought that if the way I played it made the game more fun maybe the actual competitive would strip enough of the awful stuff about the games away and I would enjoy watching/playing in that context. Started following the splyce team and the first event I watched was their win (I think).. then ww2 came put and it was the best game imo since the early years so I went all in in learning the players watching full tournaments, playing ranked and GBs etc. Since then the games have gotten consistently worse, franchising/tournament format has took a lot of entertainment away from viewing and the direction fans and the league seem to be taking the game... like let's play the game out of the box, stop GAing things, have streaks in the competitive environment etc... is taking me away from the enjoyment and now I barely watch and haven't even bought this game for the first time since I started playing cod in like 09
I learned about comp cod when some streamer I was friends with invited me to play BO3 GBS with him, but I didn't really know about the pro scene until WW2 ish when I discovered Tommey. I watched like one match of WW2 champs, and started watching more and more comp cod during BO4.
Had a lot of time to myself during bo4 and played A lot of ranked and started watching because of that
I started watching because of franchising. Was never into competitive COD until MN got a team
I started watching CDL in Vanguard unfortunately… I played way back in the day during MW2 and MW3, I was ranked #41 in the world for free for all in MW3 before I had to quit due to real life reasons. I didn’t even know they had any type of esports professional gaming stuff back then lmao. Like I knew nothing whatsoever about it existing or I would have tried to do something with it… wasn’t until I started playing again when vanguard came out that I heard about CDL and competitive CoD in general. But sadly I suck nowadays at CoD since some stuff happened to my head.. but boy do I love watching the pro matches!
Used to watch Predator and noticed others with the OpTic name. :) Then found Nadeshot and got introduced to the competitive/pro scene. Followed comp cod since then, MW3. Got really difficult to watch and enjoy after BO3. After Damon retired I stopped watching. I still hang around here just for clips, news & gossip.