Call of Duty's Warzone Battle Royale Map Might be Better than Blackout
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare fans have been hyped for "Warzone," the rumored battle royale mode coming to the game at some point during Season 2. Pair the Season 2 opening cinematic with the bevy of leaks about the purported mode, and there's plenty of reasons to get excited.
Comparisons are obviously going to be made between Warzone and Blackout, the first Call of Duty battle royale mode that was a main part of Black Ops 4's multiplayer. One of the biggest leaks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Warzone was the map size, which is apparently huge. Assuming the leak is true and the map does adhere to what the leaks are reporting, Warzone's map could likely be larger and more varied compared to Blackout.
Now according to the leaks, Warzone's map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is going to be much larger than any Spec Ops or Ground War map in the game currently. According to Warzone's map leak, it will be incorporating many of the environments found in the Spec Ops modes already in the game, but mashing them together into distinct sectors of the overall map. Some fans are even theorizing that certain sectors of the map are references to multiplayer maps from past Call of Duty games.
Warzone's environment is going to be about 3-4 times the size of Blackout's original map, according to the leaker. Blackout's original map was 1,500 times bigger than Nuketown and only slightly smaller than the original Fortnite battle royale map which was around 5.5 km squared, prior to the revamp in Chapter 2. That means Warzone's could easily rival that of PUBG's Erangel, which is around 64 km squared in size. And considering it's rumored that Warzone's player count is going to support over 200 players per match, it makes sense for Modern Warfare to up the ante.
Blackout's map in Call of Duty Black Ops 4 was understandably conservative in its first outing. Considering the short turnaround of development time for Call of Duty games, it made sense for Treyarch to not take too many risks on what would be a core mode for Black Ops 4. Blackout was essentially a 50/50 mix between pre-existing multiplayer maps in the Call of Duty universe mixed in with complementary environmental elements to help fill in the gaps between.
Blackout, in its first outing, was very similarly designed to other definitive battle royale games, except with Call of Duty mechanics and visual flair. Despite being smaller in comparison to other already-established battle royale games/modes, Blackout still rose in popularity over time for emphasizing what makes Call of Duty multiplayer so great. Reducing the amount of open areas and spaces between sectors in Blackout helped encourage more close quarters combat, what Call of Duty always excelled at.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare achieved a similar balance with its Ground War multiplayer mode. Analyzing the leaked map images shows that Warzone is likely following this same design queue, despite being much larger in size. While it was important in Blackout's design, Modern Warfare's gameplay focuses even more on the importance of environmental awareness and strategy. So long as Infinity Ward can strike a balance of proper scenario-focused sectors while also not creating an issue with too many long sightlines, Warzone should be able to avoid some of the problems Modern Warfare's core multiplayer had.
There's a reason why camping was a big problem in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare early on, because longer sight lines and unconventional map design meant adapting to defensive strategies was much harder. Conventional shooter and Call of Duty map design in the past was generally designed in a three-lane layout, always allowing at least one out should situations like overpowered defensive play become an issue. Obviously with battle royale modes, the camping issue takes on a less broken, more manageable form since the playable sector of the map is always decreasing in size.
Essentially, Warzone looks to be taking the existing template of Blackout and turning it up to 11, and that's not a bad thing. Despite minor gripes of the map being smaller than the standard fare for battle royale games, Blackout's map was near-perfect in size. Assuming the increase in size doesn't cause any camping issues during early game, Warzone's map should be a vast improvement. The larger 200-player count is also going to justify that size as well as in some way help mitigate any camping concerns.
Even though the leaked images are hard to analyze from so far away, fans can at least gauge the scale of the environments in Warzone's map and compare it to Blackout. From what we can tell so far, there appears to be a solid variety in environment design, but with a clear focus on tighter corners. Infinity Ward is likely taking cues from its Season 1 maps that helped improve multiplayer. Especially exemplified in the southern region of the leaked map, there's several structures and interweaving streets that should create tons of close quarters combat situations.
Fans should be excited for when Warzone eventually launches for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Assuming most of these about the map are true, Modern Warfare players should be in for a real treat for the rest of Season 2.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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