Call of Duty WarzoneActivision’s battle royale and free-to-play component of the Call of Duty experience on PC and consoles, which for years has run in tandem with the annual paid releases, is getting a big change this year.
Or, rather, absence of change. Because according to Insider Gaming sources, and a rumor started by @BobNetwork on Twitter, Warzone’s next main map it will be Verdansk againinstead of a new site.
Another last-minute change is that this map will be released in 2025, instead of late 2024, with the start of Season 1 of Black Ops 6.
In its place, the current map, Urzikstanwill receive map, gameplay, and ranked play updates with Season 1 to make up for the delay.
Fortnite forced Activision to reconsider its Warzone map and draw on nostalgia
Why bring back Verdansk instead of a new map? Activision was actually working on a new map, called Avalon (at least that’s the name of the project).
In fact, that map was almost finished, but at the end of 2023, something happened: Epic Games saw record numbers of players in Fortnite thanks to the relaunch of the original map in the “Fortnite Origins” season. Nostalgia is very important, and Warzone fans asked for the same thing.
Activision responded by bringing back Rebirth Island for Warzone Mobile (which already has Verdansk as the main map), and deciding on a last-minute change: Avalon, the new map, would be delayed to the following year (to come out with Call of Duty in 2025) and in Call of Duty 2024 (Black Ops 6) they would recover Verdansk.
This change may have caused a workload that forces us to delay the return of the Verdansk map to the beginning of 2025 instead of the end of 2024 as would be logical, since even if the map were the same, it would have to be adapted to the new engine and make enough changes to make it look fresh and nostalgic at the same time.
This comes after Activision said for years that it’s impossible for the Verdansk map to return. Call of Duty Warzone…or very unlikely.
