Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is being integrated into Warzone with the launch of Season 1 on November 14, but unlike previous years when Warzone got its big update, the hype and excitement for this year’s iteration is significantly lower – and there’s one key reason for it.
Every year, the new mainline COD game gets integrated into Warzone battle royale, bringing with it a selection of new weapons, styles of gameplay, movement, and more.
For that reason, it’s one of the most exciting times of the year for Warzone players: much like how a new game is great for multiplayer players, the huge changes in Warzone can make it feel entirely new.
However, there’s one thing missing from the Black Ops 6 integration that has seriously diminished excitement for the upcoming Season 1 update, and it’s a fairly significant one too. On November 14, there will be no new big map, like players have become accustomed to in recent releases.
We’ve had the likes of Caldera, Al Mazrah, and Urzikstan arrive with each new COD release, and in Cold War we got Rebirth Island, a completely new map for a completely new mode at the time while players still adored Verdansk.
Now, we know that there are two big battle royale maps coming to Warzone as well as the Area 99 Resurgence map – but neither will be arriving at launch.
This in itself could be salvageable if the current big map, Urzikstan, still felt fun and fresh much like Verdansk did back in the day. However, the lack of love that Urzikstan has received from developers Raven Software in recent months means that an entire portion of the player base that doesn’t want to simply grind Resurgence has almost nothing to look forward to.
Not only that, but Urzikstan will actually be reverted back to how it was when it originally released. That means no more Superstore, no more bunkers, and no Popov POI upgrades, among other things.
Urzikstan will remain the main battle royale map in Warzone.
Of course, it’s not all negative. Ranked Play will finally be coming to big map in Season 1, which competitive players have been begging for all year.
Similarly, we do know there are two big maps in the pipeline: Verdansk, which is arriving in Spring 2025, and Avalon, which is expected at the end of 2025.
That doesn’t do much for Warzone right now, though, and this is the key reason why players have struggled to get excited about the new Warzone launch.