Call of Duty: Warzone: Reflecting on the Battle Royale’s Journey and Transformation

Call of Duty: Warzone is celebrating its 5-year anniversary this month. Below, we examine how it has developed over that time, and look to its plans for the future with insights from key developers.

Call of Duty: Warzone launched on March 10, 2020, delivering a streamlined, fast-paced, and arcade-style battle-royale experience. Warzone’s arrival felt perfectly timed, as it was released during the start of the pandemic with a free-to-play model that allowed everyone to squad up and socially distance. Warzone has continued to evolve (and sometimes devolve) over the years, so with the celebration of the game’s recent fifth anniversary, this feels like a great time to trot down memory lane, discuss Warzone’s current slump, and look toward the future of Call of Duty’s battle royale.

In addition to my own reminiscing, I was also able to speak with Warzone developers across Call of Duty’s various studios, including Pete Actipis–the game director for Raven Software–and Etienne Pouliot, who is the creative director for Beenox. The developers provided insight on some of Warzone’s biggest events and discussed the future of the battle royale. Mark Grigsby, the co-studio head of Infinity Ward, also shared some thoughts on the evolution of Warzone.

Where it all began

Some of Warzone’s magic was simply the timing. I’ve been dropping into Warzone since day one, and it’s one of the only memories I can look back on fondly when thinking of the COVID-19 pandemic. Warzone’s initial launch was smooth, and it was a fresh new way to play in a time when everyone was online. All of my old squadmates from past Call of Duty games were logged on and eager to try battle royale–not to mention the popular athletes, celebrities, and streamers who were also fighting for victory royales on Verdansk. Warzone was an instant hit that millions of people were playing.

Of course, to the developer’s credit, Warzone’s success wasn’t just about the timing. The battle royale felt fluid and well thought out. As someone who also played a bit of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (now PUBG: Battlegrounds) and H1Z1, Warzone’s initial gameplay felt so smooth and easy to jump into that it made its non-Fortnite competitors feel janky and no longer enticing to play.

At the time, Warzone’s launch was ambitious with 150-player matches on Verdansk. It also launched without complicated backpacks or inventory systems, and the unique 1v1 Gulag feature offered an interesting way to give you a second chance in the match. Everything about Warzone’s initial design felt like an intentional push to get you into the fight as quickly as possible, so matches were often filled with high engagements and plenty of action to keep you hooked on playing.

Of course, the battle royale mode started out simplistic and and fast, but over the years has slowly built up some cruft as it’s had to add more features in an attempt to stay fresh.

Verdansk stuck around from Modern Warfare 2019 to Black Ops Cold War, and both games added post-launch updates to the map that continued to push Warzone towards further success. Verdansk wasn’t a perfect map design, but it remains Warzone’s most beloved map. The nostalgia runs deep, and it’s not simply because Verdansk was the first, but there were also a lot of first experiences that made playing the map so special, including the major design changes and special events that took place over time.

The map’s evolution included an exciting event to blow the rooftop off the stadium, which was a welcome change that made the location accessible and less frustrating to encounter. An ’80s-action-hero-themed event added Die Hard’s Nakatomi Plaza to Downtown Verdansk, and operator bundles for Rambo and John McClane let you live out all your action-hero fantasies. Verdansk was the birthplace of the Warzone’s bunker Easter eggs, which brought the game’s community together to solve and inspired similar bunker mysteries for all the big maps that followed. The map even introduced the first Haunting event for Halloween, which is now an annual occurrence that continues to be one of Warzone’s most exciting events.

Mark Grigsby, one of the pioneers of the battle royale, shared how he felt about the evolution of Warzone overall and the impact it’s made on the Call of Duty brand, saying, “It’s wild to see on the development side how Call of Duty: Warzone has evolved since Spring 2020 and what a massive impact it’s had on the franchise.”

Warzone Pacific

Each yearly Call of Duty premium title that followed Black Ops Cold War added a brand-new era of Warzone, with each one bringing various highs and lows for the battle royale. For example, the transition to 2021’s Call of Duty: Vanguard and the WWII era rebranded the battle royale as “Warzone Pacific” with the introduction of Caldera, a Pacific island map in a matching WWII setting.

Most of Caldera’s post-launch updates aren’t as memorable as Verdansk’s, but the map did offer up one of Warzone’s most colossal moments–quite literally, with Godzilla and King Kong spawning onto the island for the Operation Monarch limited-time event. Some players were disappointed and torn on Call of Duty’s use of these two Hollywood titans, but I have to admit, I still had a blast fighting them on Caldera.

When speaking with the developers about the limited-time mode, Pete Actipis discussed how Operation Monarch was one of the most difficult to bring to life in Warzone, saying, “That one was hard for several reasons. Definitely the scale: how to make these two titans play well on a map like that and still have it based around being the last to survive.”

Overall, though, this Warzone Pacific era was a mixed bag. There were major graphical bugs at launch, and the WWII setting and era-appropriate weapons weren’t popular. On the other hand, Caldera added new features that reshaped how the battle royale was played during Warzone Pacific. The map introduced WWII planes and dogfighting, which offered up impressive new ways to get kills if you or a squadmate wanted to take to the skies. One of the most notable additions to the map was Caldera’s redeploy balloons, which were a huge hit for providing a faster way to traverse the island, and these balloons inspired the redeploy drones used on the modern maps currently found in the game.

For me, I enjoyed the refreshing change in scenery with Caldera. I found flying to be disorienting and could make me motion-sick, so I preferred to stay boots-on-the-ground in the lush jungles and enjoyed the tropical water around me. At the time, one of my biggest complaints was that I wanted to swim, but that mechanic wouldn’t arrive until the next era of Warzone.

Warzone’s 2.0 setbacks

Warzone left Caldera and WWII behind with a return to modern times in 2022’s Modern Warfare 2. The battle royale has been a collaboration of various Call of Duty studios over the years, but MW2 put Warzone back in the hands of the original studio, Infinity Ward.

The developer dubbed this era as Warzone 2.0, which overhauled the gameplay features, introduced AI soldiers, added swimming mechanics, and launched Al Mazrah as the new big map for battle royale. This midpoint could’ve been a more refreshing take on Warzone, but it was instead one of the battle royale’s biggest stumbles, with a lot of the best design choices from Infinity Ward’s original game getting lost in the sauce.

In terms of map design and visual appeal, I actually think Al Mazrah is one of Warzone’s strongest maps for standard battle royale. Al Mazrah featured one of the most vibrant designs, and there was a nice map flow with plenty of diverse locations. Unfortunately, Al Mazrah struggled with popularity since it was tied to the controversial design changes.

Warzone 2.0 introduced a complex backpack system and slower looting mechanics, all of which tanked the pace of the game, and it felt like a huge regression from what made Warzone’s gameplay feel so satisfying in the beginning. You could no longer get propelled into the action, instead needing to slow down, sort through a backpack of items, and take more precaution to make sure you had the right gear equipped. Even the gulag became an overcomplicated and less satisfying experience, with the addition of a miniboss and a 2v2 teamwork approach.

Despite Warzone 2.0’s backpedaling, I feel confident that if Al Mazrah returned in the present time with Black Ops 6’s omnimovement and classic gameplay mechanics, the map would be much more popular today.

Warzone 2.0 also wasn’t all doom and gloom. There was a huge crossover with The Boys that gave everyone superpowers on Al Mazrah, and it was a blast to teleport around the map or use Homelander’s laser-eye attack. The Haunting event for that year was also really well designed, which included a crossover with Diablo IV and a variety of minibosses to fight.

Resurgence

Much of this trip down memory lane focuses on big maps and standard battle royale, but Call of Duty has experimented with various game modes and maps since Warzone’s inception. One of the biggest additions was the highly popular Resurgence respawn modes on a variety of small maps over the years, including Rebirth Island, Fortune’s Keep, Ashika Island, Vondel, and most recently, the Black Ops-themed Area 99 map. Warzone didn’t even have a Resurgence mode until Black Ops Cold War’s integration, but now, a lot of the content seems to shift in the direction of these smaller map experiences.

One of the most interesting game modes for Modern Warfare 3’s era of Warzone took place on Rebirth Island instead of the big map. 2024’s The Haunting event added a unique sandbox-style mode called Purgatory, which didn’t provide players with any clear way of winning the match and instead seemed to be more focused on letting players choose how they wanted to play. There were spooky and whimsical elements for the Halloween festivities, but mostly, Purgatory was a chill and welcome way to level up weapons, unlock camos, and complete challenges with your friends.

When asked what led to the creation of this mode, and if the reception was positive enough to warrant another sandbox-style mode in the future, Pete Actipis revealed that Purgatory had great reception and anything is possible for the future. “We love exploring,” Actipis said. “And that’s the whole point of these limited-time modes. We want to introduce new and interesting ways of playing. We want to introduce new types of mechanics and reach new audiences. So, doing a mode like Purgatory makes sense.”

The present state of Warzone

Present-day Warzone’s big-map battle royale is played on Urzikstan, which was introduced with Modern Warfare 3. Urzikstan is solid in terms of the overall design, but this map has received very few changes since its arrival in December of 2023. The setting has grown drab, and all the buildings just start to look the same. Until the more recent addition of Ranked Play on Urzikstan, the map has felt largely abandoned, as most of Warzone’s updates and interesting events take place on the smaller Resurgence maps.

When I asked about these lack of map updates, Actipis told me the developers try to be smart about how they use the resources within Warzone. “It’s a big project, and we try to provide the best value we can to the players.” Additionally, Actipis revealed that players can expect more balance for content in the future, saying, “We have lots of great plans moving forward of how we’re going to equitably distribute content to make sure all player types in all modes are getting fed [in] a little bit more balanced [way].”

Black Ops 6 did bring improvements to Warzone by removing the backpacks and simplifying the looting of the past two years, and the game’s omnimovement spices up the gunfights, but it just doesn’t feel like enough to make Urizkstan feel satisfying to play.

As a longtime fan of Warzone, I’m sad to admit that Call of Duty’s current “big map” experience for battle royale has grown so stale that I mostly find myself dropping into the smaller and more chaotic Resurgence matches.

Urzikstan’s lack of content also puts Warzone in an awkward slump in a time when it’s getting even harder to keep a battle royale fresh and hold players’ interest, especially when none of them come close to the production level and style of Fortnite’s in-game events. Call of Duty has been nailing the major IP-crossovers like this year’s Squid Game and TMNT events, but they don’t always translate well into Warzone modes.

Additionally, there is a growing worry that Warzone being tied to each yearly Call of Duty title is holding the battle royale back from continued success. With each year’s integration, Warzone seems to be disrupted with broken perks, frustrating bugs, and constant overhauls to the game’s mechanics. The battle royale never truly gets to have its own unique identity, and by the time enough seasonal improvements are made to Warzone, a new year begins with a host of new problems to solve.

All other issues aside, it must be mentioned that Call of Duty continues to struggle against cheaters, so much so that Activision has finally allowed players to turn off cross-play for Ranked Play modes. Warzone has had hacking issues from the start with Verdansk, but the game didn’t launch with an anti-cheat system in place. Warzone Pacific introduced Call of Duty’s Ricochet anti-cheat, but despite its efforts, each era of Warzone still suffered from lengthy cycles of hacking.

The Future of Warzone

As for the future of Warzone, it’s unclear how much success nostalgia can bring for Season 3 and beyond. Verdansk is returning as a remake of the original design, with new technology allowing for improved graphics and lighting. Etienne Pouliot provided further insight into Verdansk’s new look, revealing that the visuals include enhanced textures, improved player perspectives, and better visibility.

The developers expressed that the map remake is for the fans and meant to be faithful to the original design. “We’re making sure we don’t forget any small details from back then. So, it’s not something different. It’s really the best version of Verdansk,” Pouliot said. “It’s just a big commitment to all the players who loved that map and experience.”

“Verdansk holds a special place in my heart,” Grigsby said, reminiscing about the map. “Not only does it reign supreme as the iconic map that started it all, but I’m hyped to relive the vibe we all felt back then. The memories of looting in Farmland, then trekking through Downtown with all that verticality, wondering where the circle was going to push us next.”

Pouliot also confirmed the map would allow for swimming. There’s only a small area of water featured on the southern portion of Verdansk, and the developer said, “It’s not a big game-changer, but it is a nice addition that’s no longer a dead zone.”

“We don’t perceive that as being a major component to how the game flows,” Actipis added. “That is the only place on the map where there is any sort of swimmable water, but the whole idea is that we don’t want to take control away or make it feel lousy in any part of the map.”

Players will also be saying goodbye to Urzikstan. The developers confirmed that Verdansk will be the only playable big map for Season 3 of Warzone.

In the past, we’ve only had map rotation for the small Resurgence maps. When I asked if Warzone could eventually add in big-map rotation, it didn’t sound hopeful for fans of the standard battle royale. “It’s a complicated problem,” Actipis explained. “Development is difficult on maintaining multiple big maps and keeping those up and running with all of the latest changes that are happening. Memory is a component of it. Disk space. There are a lot of different things.”

“For the moment, we’re focused on creating the best experience on Verdansk possible and not distributing our resources and losing the focus of the moment of coming back with the classic Verdansk experience,” Actipis continued.

While I am very excited to drop back into my favorite places like Boneyard and Prison, I’m also reminding myself that Verdansk likely won’t feel the same. The fights will surely be different, as Call of Duty’s movement has evolved into more complex omnimovement, and most Warzone engagements play more aggressively and less campy than they did five years ago. Verdansk will also carry a different vibe in 2025 with squads composed of Ninja Turtles, stoner iguanas, and Cheech and Chong.

And personally, I don’t think there’s anything Call of Duty can do to truly recreate the magic of Warzone’s first year. The friendships and memories formed during lockdown are hard to duplicate, and I don’t want to suffer through another pandemic to try. However, the return of Verdansk has the potential to still be successful, and I truly want to drop into a match and fall in love with big map Warzone again. It will likely require thoughtful updates, fresh events, and harder-working anti-cheat, but I still believe this battle royale has life left to breathe.