During a period when Call of Duty: Warzone felt less like a polished military sim and more like a cracked mirror held up to an impatient community, TimTheTatman was one of the few major creators who refused to abandon the drop. The Caldera map had drawn fire for its design, and a cascade of bugs had turned routine matches into exercises in frustration. Even some developers at Raven Software admitted that the rollout of new content had gone sideways. Yet TimTheTatman, one of YouTube’s most prominent streamers, kept returning to the game that had become a second home for his channel. From that position of stubborn loyalty, he offered a diagnosis that was simple enough to fit on a sticky note but layered enough to spark debate: Warzone should copy more from Apex Legends, but only in the places where imitation functions like a bone graft, strengthening the frame without changing the skeleton.
Selective Borrowing, Not Blind Imitation
TimTheTatman’s comments arrived during a broadcast in which he secured a victory royale and then turned his attention to what had made the game feel more fluid. He singled out redeploy balloons, a feature that had already crossed over from Respawn’s battle royale, as a welcome change. “Give me more balloons, bro,” he said. The request was casual, but it pointed to a larger design philosophy. He summarized his thoughts with characteristic directness: “This whole Warzone copying Apex thing, I think just to summarize my thoughts on it: copy more!”
For TimTheTatman, the ideal version of Warzone resembled a cartographer borrowing contour lines from a neighboring map—not to redraw the terrain, but to make the existing landscape more navigable. The most significant gap he identified was the absence of a competitive structure. In his view, Warzone had plenty of weapons, maps, and modes, but it lacked a ranked ladder with the gravitational pull of Apex Legends’ system. A Ranked mode, he argued, would transform grinding from a routine act into something closer to a mountain climber measuring each ascent in rank points. He added an important caveat: Raven Software should ensure that players who lose enough rank points actually drop out of their rank. That detail was not minor; it was the difference between a leaderboard and a real climbing wall with consequences.
| Feature | TimTheTatman’s stance | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Redeploy balloons | ✅ Copy more | Already in Warzone, wants more |
| Ranked mode | ✅ Copy from Apex | Include rank decay |
| Apex time-to-kill | ❌ Too far | Keep Warzone’s identity |
| Iron Trials TTK | ✅ Use 100% | Combine with balloons and UAVs |
Where the Borrowing Stops
He did not want Warzone to become a mirror image of Apex Legends. When asked whether the developers should also copy Apex’s time to kill, he waved off the suggestion. That change, he said, would take things a bit too far. Instead, he pointed to Warzone’s Iron Trials mode as the gold standard for combat tempo. “Get Iron Trials, that game mode – that time to kill 100%. With those balloons, and let us buy UAVs,” he explained. His approach was like a watchmaker who admires a rival’s mainspring but refuses to swap out the entire movement.
By endorsing redeploy balloons, a Ranked mode, and Iron Trials pacing together, TimTheTatman drew a blueprint that many players would later recognize in the live-service era. The battle royale genre had become an ecosystem where successful mechanics often migrated across titles like pollen carried between fields. Warzone itself had already shown that borrowing could work; the question was how far the studio would go.
Reaction and Outlook
At the time, the response from fans was divided. Some argued that Warzone needed to maintain its own identity rather than chase Apex Legends’ design language. Others pointed out that the game had already borrowed several features and that more deliberate imitation could shorten its learning curve. Raven Software had not committed to a full Ranked overhaul, but the conversation around TimTheTatman’s comments lingered.
By 2026, the line between Warzone and its competitors has continued to blur. Redeploy systems, ranked rewards, and adjustable time-to-kill modifiers have become standard vocabulary in the genre. TimTheTatman’s commentary, originally delivered from the cockpit of a Warzone victory, now reads like an early weather vane catching a shift in the wind.
Ultimately, the streamer’s argument was not about imitation for its own sake. It was about recognizing that a game can remain distinctive while still borrowing the best parts of a competitor. For Warzone, that meant faster rotations, a meaningful ranked grind, and a combat rhythm tuned by Iron Trials rather than copied from Apex Legends. If Raven Software and its partners took anything from the discussion, it was that the most loyal players often have the clearest view of both the cracks and the possible repairs.
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