It’s been less than two days since Verdansk, the original Call of Duty: Warzone map, returned to the battle royale game. And I’ve already played more of the mode since yesterday than I have since Black Ops 6 launched.

Warzone lost me, and presumably many others, over the past few years with its influx of changes. I play♉ed what I had to for my job, but outside of that, I rarely played it for joy or in my spare t🗹ime. And that stinks because I liked the game a lot at one point.

As a CoD writer for over a decade now, my finger is on the pulse of the community as part of my job, but also as a series veteran who started playing back in 2007. I’ve seen and played it all, for the most part, and for the last few years the negativity surrounding the game has been a real drag.

Through both additions and subtractions, the player base has felt scorned enough to inspire Activision to base the majority of BO6’s season three around rolling back many of tho🦹se changes and highlighting the OG map.

Well, the throwback to Verdansk and several of the BR’s original features thankfully seems to be a big success thus far, because community sentiment around the update has been massively positive over the first two days. This could always (and likely will) change with time, but for now, Verdansk’s return is a smash hit.

“Verdansk is perfect,”  one user in response to detractors wishing for redeploy balloons (zip lines that allow players to glide over long distances) to be added back to the map. It seems as though many players are enjoying the fact that Verdansk makes Warzone feel like a battle royale yet again, where playing your life is more important than in recent seasons due to an influx of ways to resꦉpawn.

“The more valuable your life is, the more rewarding it is to survive,” another player . “With less plates, less buy stations and less money, your life has VALUE. This makes every encounter have high stakes, which leads to a more engaging game.”

The reintroduction of a couple of classic “necessary” vehicles like the Big Bertha truck and helicotper, along with rollbacks to the speed and movement of the gas circle, makes rotations “feel meaningful” again, better lining up with how Warzone and Ver🐬dans𝐆k felt when the game took the world by storm in 2020.

Adding Verdansk back is just a part of why the game feels so fun again to so many, as evidenced by those taking to social media to express their joy. Since Verdansk was swapped out of Warzone back in💦 2021, it felt at times like the game was changing for the sake of change, moving fur♕ther away from what so many gamers found fun about the free-to-play game.

“This is the closest this game has felt to WZ1,” posted. “Map visibility, movement, audio, flow, and the satisfaction of downing/finishing is an absolute W again. Server stability – no dev errors, no glaring bugs, great job DEVS.”

The happiness is a nice change of pace in the CoD playerbase, where everyone seems to be miserable all of the time judg✨ing by how they talk online. But for once, it feels as though there is a semblance of peace among us.

Nothing is perfect for everyone, of course. Many players still wish to see more Buy Stations, more money, and more armor plates on the map. But for the time being, Warzone feels like the hot drop in town once again, and I’m going to enjoy it while I can.