Warzone servers struggle as Verdansk is finally nuked

Call of Duty Warzone servers are struggling as players attempt to join the battle royale title to experience a major in-game event.

Operation Rapid Sunder, which is ushering in Season 3 and a major map revamp, kicked off at 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 8pm BST today.

As first reported by VGC in February, the end of Black Ops Cold War and Warzone Season 2 will see the game finally transition to its new map.

More Call of Duty:

MW3 best loadout  | Best Warzone loadout | MW3 best sniper |  MW3 best shotgun | MW3 MCW loadout

As you can see in the video below, today’s event has seen Warzone’s Verdansk map nuked, similar to how Fortnite used an in-game event to transition to Chapter 2.

Footage of the new map was recently revealed in a leaked live-action advert for Warzone Season 3, which appeared to confirm that the updated battleground will be an evolution of Verdansk, rather than an entirely fresh design.

The trailer suggests that 1980s Verdansk will feature a mix of new locations, redesigned areas and some which will simply receive a visual refresh.

Further reading

5

New Warzone map: First footage of Call of Duty’s 1980s Verdansk leaks

The current Verdansk will be replaced by a new Cold War-themed map in April, VGC understands

It shows Cold War-era landmarks replacing Verdansk’s own points of interest, including an in-construction Stadium and an aqueduct replacing the Dam. Airport, TV Station and Downtown can also be spotted with a 1980s makeover.

It’s also likely Raven Software will take the opportunity to add some quality of life improvements to Verdansk, such as making the areas flow better and look more visually distinct.

Activision is currently investigating connectivity issues impacting several Call of Duty games.

Warzone, Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare are all affected by the online problems.

According to the Call of Duty online status website, Warzone and Modern Warfare services are suffering outages while Black Ops Cold War services are limited on all platforms.

“We’re actively investigating an issue with long wait times in the server queue for #WARZONE,” the Activision Support Twitter account acknowledged at 12.13pm PT / 3.13 pm ET / 8.13pm BST. “Stay tuned for updates.”

Activision claimed on Tuesday that Warzone has attracted over 100 million players since launching in March 2020.

And on Wednesday, the publisher said over 400 million Call of Duty premium games have now been sold since the first one released in October 2003.

The Call of Duty franchise has generated “life to date consumer spending of around $27 billion”, Activision claimed in February.