Developer Infinity Ward has designed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with clear inspiration from its last title, Modern Warfare 2019. While the game is new in many ways, it also shares many qualities and characteristics with its predecessor. From the mini-map not showing red dots to Dead Silence being a Field Upgrade, Infinity Ward has kept several design choices in place from Modern Warfare. However, one feature that from 2019’s game that isn’t overtly distinct in Modern Warfare 2 is squad spawns.
“Squad spawns” is a community term referring to a certain spawn system that was introduced in MW2019 that spawns players near their teammates in most instances. This was a big change from any pre-2019 Call of Duty titles; those games had set spawn points around the map that were determined by where enemies were on the map at a given time. For example, the previous system would have players mainly spawn on either end of the map, depending on where the enemies were more heavily gathered when a player died.
With squad spawns, players will spawn near their teammates, no matter where their squad or any enemies are on the map. This can lead to some frustrations from players, as they might spawn directly near an enemy only because that’s where their teammate was.
In the MW2 beta, one YouTuber wanted to test if squad spawns were something that Infinity Ward brought back from MW2019. The YouTuber in question is TheXclusiveAce, who is well-known in the community for accurately testing all matter of data in Call of Duty.
In their latest video, XclusiveAce plotted where they spawned each time they died in a given match. Ace’s data can be seen below, but to sum it up, squad spawns are essentially back in Modern Warfare 2.
XclusiveAce spawned near their teammates a majority of the time. Not only this, but they spawned halfway up the map more times than they did the back of the map, at least on Farm 18. This can make trying to figure out where enemies are spawning extremely difficult, as players don’t tend to think enemies will spawn in the middle of the map.
This spawn inconsistency will likely be something that Infinity Ward addresses in the future. However, for now, players can expect to spawn near their teammates and sometimes near enemies. Just because an enemy team has pushed your base doesn’t mean you’ll stop spawning there, so keep that in mind when you’re spawning in and trying to figure out where an enemy team is located.
