As Call of Duty fans eagerly wait for Warzone 2.0s servers to go live this evening, the original Warzone will see some major changes.
Alongside Warzone 2.0s launch, servers for the original Warzone will be temporarily taken offline until 28th November.
Once Warzone re-launches, however, players will no longer be able to play on two of the games most iconic maps: Rebirth Island and Fortunes Keep.
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These maps were unique in the Warzone experience in that they were much smaller than the traditional maps of Verdansk and Caldera. This made for a much faster pace of action that you might expect from a Call of Duty game.
Warzone will also be renamed to “Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera,” and, as the name implies, will only include the Caldera map.
The game will continue to operate as a separate experience from Warzone 2.0 and Modern Warfare 2, with cross-progression in Caldera only extending to Modern Warfare (2019), Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard.
The in-game store will also be removed and only the standard Battle Royale playlist will be playable.
In other words, the original Warzone will carry on under life support. Players should not expect further content updates. The preservation of Warzone appears to be a compromise for players who have spent countless hours and real-world money on skins, weapons and other player unlocks.
This is being done, I suspect, to nudge players over to Warzone 2.0, and this is suggested in the Call of Duty blog with the following statement: “For those fans of small Battle Royale maps, expect exciting developments in Warzone 2.0 during future seasons.”
Its been a messy transistion to Warzone 2.0, with players pre-loading a small update last night, only to be met with a rather larger update this morning. The complexity of the Call of Duty ecosystem is something Activision has yet to make easier to understand.