What Happens To ‘Warzone’ When ‘Warzone 2’ Goes Live?

Warzone 2 goes live today. What does that mean for its predecessor, the original 2020 Call Of Duty: Warzone?

The answer is a bit complicated. What comes next happens in stages. According to Activision, here’s how it works:
• At approximately 8 AM PT on November 16, Call of Duty: Warzone servers will temporarily go offline as Call of Duty®: Vanguard Season Five concludes.
• At approximately 10 AM PT, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 will be released as part of Modern Warfare II Season 01.
• During this time, studio development resources (led by Raven Software) will be focused on ensuring the new Warzone 2.0 free-to-play ecosystem is running effectively.
• At this time, you are encouraged to jump in and play Warzone 2.0 for free.
• Once the Warzone 2.0 ecosystem is fully stable, and after a small development break for Thanksgiving for the developers who observe this U.S. holiday, Warzone is planned to be relaunched as Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera as a separate experience. This will happen at approximately 10 AM PT on November 28.
• As a token of our appreciation, those who played Call of Duty: Warzone will be gifted a few items to use in Warzone 2.0.

While Warzone Caldera will return after Thanksgiving, the same cannot be said for the smaller maps, Fortune’s Keep and Rebirth Island. These are going away and, as far as we can tell, will not return to the game.

However, it seems likely that revamped versions of both will make their way to Warzone 2.0 in the future, given the popularity of these maps and the excellent Resurgence Mode. Activision has hinted at smaller maps making their way to the new Battle Royale. Hopefully that means a mix of new maps and new versions of old maps.

Activision shutting down Warzone temporarily makes sense for two reasons:
• It makes developer resources, customer service resources and servers available for the new game rather than dividing all these between the two.
• It pushes players out of Warzone and into Warzone 2, including reluctant players who would have otherwise just stuck with the old game.

In any case, if you end up hating Warzone 2 you’ll be able to go back to Warzone in a couple weeks. From what I’ve played of Modern Warfare II, however, the shooting mechanics are just leaps and bounds better, and I imagine the revamped Warzone 2 experience will be much improved over the old game—assuming matchmaking issues don’t ruin the experience. We shall see!