Call of Duty: Warzone 1 has officially relaunched as Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera, after almost two weeks of being offline.
Following the release of Call of Duty: Warzone 2, the original Warzone is back and relaunching as Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera. The title has been offline since Warzone2's debut a couple of weeks ago, but don't expect the fully-loaded experience you've become familiar with over the past couple of years.
As Activision confirmed earlier this month, Warzone Caldera has been stripped of all of its live service features meaning that players will need to turn to Warzone 2.0 if they want regular updates, seasonal content, and a Battle Pass. You can still access all of the content you've unlocked or bought up until this point, but that's about it.
"Player progression, cross-progression for XP and weapon XP, inventories, Battle Pass content, weapons, Store Bundles," and anything else you've purchased from Modern Warfare, Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, and Vanguard will only be accessible in their respective games and Warzone Caldera.
The smaller maps – Rebirth Island and Fortune’s Keep – are gone, so it's just the Pacific-themed Caldera that awaits players along with just two playlists; Solos and Quads.
The relaunched game won't even have an in-game store, but Activision will let you transfer your COD points to Warzone 2.0 if you have any left over. This shouldn't come as too much of a shock, given we've had ample warning of what to expect, but it'll be a jarring experience for original Warzone players who've yet to make the jump to Warzone 2.0.
Dead in the water
It's clear to me that Activision doesn't want you to play Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera, and is trying to kill it off slowly and quietly, whilst giving you a constant nudge to download Warzone 2.0 instead. When loading up Warzone Caldera, Warzone 2.0 is everywhere, from the main menu to the pre-game lobby. Okay, we get the hint Activision.
The publisher has dealt its own title a mortal blow from the get-go by relaunching the original Warzone with Caldera as the only playable map – which I think is truly one of the worst battle royale maps ever made. Imagine making a trip to a McDonald's that, for some reason, only sold Filet-O-Fish burgers. It's truly a 'here's our worst product here for you to enjoy' kind of vibe. For me, it's the hardest of hard passes.
And as if that wasn't enough, the final nail in the coffin of the DOA game, is the permanent removal of Rebirth Island and Fortune's Keep. For many months before the release of Warzone 2.0, those two maps were the only thing keeping players actively engaged with Call of Duty: Warzone; such was the community disenchantment with the game's poor big-map experience after Verdansk was unceremoniously nuked.
Warzone's smaller battle royale maps offered a great experience because they were the antithesis of Caldera. They were well-designed maps that offered fast-paced gameplay across a variety of environments, making them genuinely fun to play.
In retrospect, part of me wonders if Rebirth and Fortune's Keep were actually that good, or whether Caldera was just so poorly designed that they only seemed great by comparison because there was nothing else available. Kind of like McDonald's beef burgers. But of course, I couldn't say for sure, now that the maps are gone and there's no way of replaying them.
I did try to load into Warzone's battle royale solos match for old times' sake, and was expecting a long wait to find a full-enough lobby. But to my surprise, I was able to find a game within about a minute. So it's not quite the tumbleweed-ridden affair I'd anticipated. Yet. There will obviously be some people who are still happily playing on Caldera, and if that's you, fill your boots, while you can!
As for me, I had to quit as soon as the match was about to start, as I couldn't bring myself to actually play Caldera again.
The one positive with Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera is that players can't waste their money on redundant store or battle pass content, because there isn't any. At least that's something.
