Call of Duty Vanguard gets ranked play in middle of the night update

What you need to know

• Treyarch Studios and Call of Duty League have collaborated to create a League approved Ranked Play mode for Call of Duty: Vanguard.
• The ranked playlist was expected to launch in beta on Feb. 17 at 9am PT but had to be delayed at the last minute due to a stat-breaking bug.
• Treyarch announced in the middle of the night on Feb. 17 that the Ranked Play was live, but other bugs persist.

Much like the announcement for its delay, the announcement that Call of Duty: Vanguard's Ranked Play beta was live came as a late night tweet from the official Treyarch Studios Twitter account. The mode was originally intended to launch earlier in the day on Feb. 17, but playtesters uncovered a stat-breaking bug that only presented itself in the game's live environment. This bug forced Treyarch to delay the release of ranked play, and at the time there was no information provided as to when players could expect it to go live.

Ranked Play for Vanguard is a collaborative effort between Treyarch Studios and Call of Duty League to introduce a skill based rank playlist to multiplayer that mirrors the official ruleset of competitive tournaments. In addition to the Call of Duty League's restrictions, Treyarch has included some of their own ranked play weapon and equipment limitations.

The list of additional restrictions includes the following:

• BAR
• Cooper Carbine
• PPSh-41
• Welgun
• KGm40
• All Magazine attachments
• Pistol Aattachments that increase Rate of Fire
• Shrouded Sniper Proficiency
• Smoke Grenade
• Gammon Bomb
• Sticky Bomb
• Mechanic Perk
• Armory Perk

Treyarch has said that any future post-launch weapons and equipment will need to be evaluated according to Call of Duty League standards to determine if they are competitively viable before they can be introduced into ranked play.

Players can expect future weapons to only be added to the mode on a case-by-case basis. Some currently restricted weapons and perks are still showing as available in ranked play, but Treyarch expects to patch this bug in a future update. Players who attempt to join a ranked game with a loadout containing restricted items will find that those items are replaced with default items when they spawn.

A similar UI glitch is also resulting in restricted map names being listed in the ranked play tutorial, and is also expected to be patched later. Ranked play is in beta, and as such the mode can be expected to change based on feedback from players, as well as the Call of Duty League.