Warzone players say farewell as original battle royale deleted forever

Joseph Pascoulis
captain price looking over warzone's verdansk map

The original Warzone battle royale has been shut down forever, leaving players to reminisce and bid their final farewell.

It’s a sad day for fans of the original Warzone, as September 21 has brought an end to the game as the devs have decided to shut down the servers.

While the game is known today as Warzone Caldera, many remember it as the original Warzone, and mostly for its first map, Verdansk, which has become an incredibly iconic map for the Call of Duty franchise.

With Modern Warfare 3 on the horizon, and Verdansk seemingly playing a part in the upcoming game’s campaign, it’s only right that players bid farewell to the game that made it so popular.

Popular YouTuber FaZe Jev said his goodbyes to the original Warzone on September 20, jumping on the game to enjoy the “final full day that you can actually play Warzone 1, the original.”

Despite not being able to play Verdansk, as the game’s final active map was Caldera, Jev says, “It’s still Warzone 1, Warzone 1 mechanics, Warzone 1 pacing, the original, it’s still there regardless of what the map is.”

Others on Reddit also said goodbye to the original Warzone by “dropping in for a final time.” User ‘DefunctHunk’ said, “Farewell, WZ1, you gave me some truly outstanding times with the boys while the world was a mess.”

Warzone 1’s most successful period was during the 2020 pandemic, as it gave players something to enjoy while being locked in their homes. Many feel after this period and the removal of Verdansk, the game “died the moment they introduced Caldera.”

In the comments of the Reddit post, one user said “Bums me out man… never cared for the mess that Warzone 2.0 is/was so I had a lot of fun still playing Caldera despite the map not being my favorite… for me and my buddies this is a huge bummer. No idea what we will play now.”

While it is a shame, clearly the devs want to move on from Warzone Caldera and continue to develop Warzone 2, which is now just called Warzone.

Modern Warfare 3 will integrate into Warzone, so we’ll have to wait and see how players take that update and if the battle royale is ever able to reach the heights of its predecessor.

Until then, make sure you also check out the details for Modern Warfare 3’s recreation of the grisly “No Russian” mission from Modern Warfare 2 2009.