Esports are run by humans, so there are bound to be mistakes in competitions eventually, and it looks like the Call of Duty League is no different. According to OpTic Chicago’s Envoy, it looks like there may have been a huge mistake during the recent OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match.

The Dallas Home Series this past weekend was the third and final week of group play during the third stage of the 2021 season in the Call of Duty League. This was a huge week for teams as it determined the overall brackets and matches for the upcoming Major. 

The Major will kick off this week and offer the intense tournament-style competitions that many of us love so much. As such, this past weekend had some really important matchups like the most recent OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match that saw this rivalry continue. 

Two of the top teams fighting against one another is always a sight to behold, especially with these juggernaut organizations in the esports industry. According to Envoy, who posted about this on Twitter recently, it looks like there may have been a huge issue with this match. 

Envoy was reportedly told by someone unnamed that the CDL host for the OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match selected the wrong server for the teams to duel using. This was supposedly because of a typo in an email that led to the host selecting the wrong location for the teams to use. 

This is a very complicated situation and one that the CDL has not officially commented on. You should keep in mind that there is no official confirmation of this. 

Essentially, the situation boils down to this: teams can select the server that they wish to play. OpTic Chicago wished to go for the St. Louis server that would be great for the Chicago-based team, compared to the Atlanta server that favors the FaZe. 

However, it seems that whoever’s job was to select the server for OpTic accidentally put in a typo and selected the Atlanta server for the Chicago-based team, which favored the FaZe. This meant that FaZe would have a much better ping over the other team, which is unfair. 

This is an issue that was known for about a week or so, but no changes were ever made to make the servers fair for the match. The OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match was reportedly played on the Atlanta server, which is unacceptable, if true. 

Suppose this situation is reportedly exactly this case. In that case, we agree with Envoy that this is an unacceptable situation and one that the Call of Duty League needs to prevent in the future. The server host should know these teams by now and recognize when there may be an error of some kind. 

The very least that could have been done, so long as there was enough time, should have been for the CDL officials to double-check with OpTic beforehand to ensure that the right server was chosen. At the same time, though, OpTic should make sure to have multiple people keeping an eye on these elements as human error is only natural. 

The question then remains: what does the CDL do at this point? More than likely, the organization should investigate this situation and figure out what went wrong. If necessary, it would make sense to have a rematch for this OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match if deemed correct. 

Having a 70-millisecond ping might not seem like a huge difference in the grand scheme of things than 10ms ping, but it can mean a whole lot in a competitive scene like this one. Millions of dollars are riding on this league. Even those minuscule differences can add up to massive issues.

While those are only a fraction of a second overall, they can mean the difference when it comes to spawns and bullets connecting in the way you expect them to, leading to mistakes and delayed actions that shouldn’t happen. 

This is only indicative of one of the issues that will happen when the teams are playing remotely online like this. In reality, though, while the OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match could happen again to be fair, the outcome would be largely the same. 

While the worse ping didn’t help, Chicago would have lost anyways against Atlanta, even if the correct server had been chosen. The team has been gradually decreasing in performance and quality, and Atlanta has proven to be the team that Chicago is unable to take down. 

But I do think that the three to nothing sweep that Atlanta had against OpTic Chicago might not have been that dire of a result if the right server had been selected. There would have been a chance that Chicago won maybe one of the rounds, like Hardpoint, as the respawns and kills would have been more accurate, but victory would have still gone to Atlanta. 

Fortunately, situations like this OpTic Chicago and Atlanta FaZe match shouldn’t have to happen for too much longer. The return to LAN play will happen at the end of Stage 4 with the fourth Major event next month, where teams will compete in person once more in Dallas with a fair and balanced environment.