No Smoke.

Early on the 11th of January, CAL|Jay posted a rather surprising annoucement concerning the delay of the 2nd week of COD2 season 4 preseason.

Most of the changes had been anticipated or already discussed (such as the limitation of a single scope). However, the community panicked when they found out that smoke was going to be removed from the game.

The reasoning behind this major change is that there exists a very simple glitch that allows players to remove smoke from their screen, while it still exists for others. A video coming from euro cod2 players exposed this glitch, prompting swift action from CAL.

While the forums were in uproar, a fix was being worked on, which was released at 11PM that same day (Thursday). However, it can't stop glitching 100%, and the final version of pam 2.04 might still not include smoke.

During the mayhem, a post from [20ID]Suport asking SOTF admins if they were going to keep smoke was met by the following response.
SOTF would still be removing smoke from their next tournament, SOTF9, currently announced, but without a date.

I decided to interview some members of the COD2 community to find out their opinions on this rather massive change.

I first asked a couple of people about their thoughts on a COD2 without smoke. Most seemed to agree that it would change the game significantly. Some thought it would be a positive change, some were undedicided.

According to [rS]Prank : "I think it allows for more complex strats instead of relying on the smoke, it would force teams to actually think about what they are doing, instead of getting lucky half the time." Cal-Jay prefered to use the phrase "You can't just run around like a headless chicken".

Squill, from 50.Cal would have prefered to have the smoke removed from the start, claiming it's always been glitchy, and that people have always been finding ways to exploit it, first with fx_sort 0, and now with this alt-tab glitch.

Xu^jmor and aXxium|girljeans stressed the fact that map strategies would need a total overhaul, and that we would be seeing a lot of new pushes and nades to make up for the lack of smoke.

Another issue is SOTF annoucing they would be removing smoke, regardless of wether or not CAL elected to keep it. This would mean teams would have to be alternating between CAL-matches with smoke, and SOTF ones without.

I asked Suport from the new [20ID] team what he thought about this, this is what he had to say : "Credible would be the one to make that decision for the team. I would give my input, but eventually yes I would play both."

According to xu^jmor, even if strats would have to be alternated, SOTF would still attract the excedingly high caliber teams it has been attracting as the leading cod2 tournament. Girljeans follows in the same optic : "All the leagues should be synced, but SOTF is an amazing tournament, I trust their decisions 100%."

One of the problems with SOTF's decision is that it seems to be going against the current will to unify COD2 rules in an effort to score a major lan.

However, this doesn't seem to be concerning 50.Squill all that much : "SOTF takes action always, which is why it has always been so successful. They see smoke as a burden towards the game, and are glad it is going to be removed. As a main promoter for cod24wsvg, I talk regularly with euro and cal representatives. Which is why this game has been progressing to get on the same page as a whole. Hopefully, everyone can agree like we have been and reach an agreement all together."

The decision to remove smoke seems to be accepted by most higher-tier players. The only concern is the unification of rules worldwide, which will still happen, with or without smoke. According to Suport, if the universal ruleset doesn't include smoke, euros will be left in a bind. However, as seen in Hackett's article on gotfrag, nothing is decided yet.

Regardless of what happens, the world will keep turning, with the season of CAL shaping up to be a good one with some very nice new custom maps (thanks Ramza and Nationalism), and some packed rosters. Good luck everyone, and happy fragging.