At long last, Activision has released the launch trailer for the long-awaited return of Call of Duty: Warzone’s OG map, Verdansk.
We already knew that a lot of fans would be happy to see the return of Verdansk, simply because Call of Duty: Warzone would have some nostalgia for it. While some gamers would say that it hasn’t been that long for fans to be that nostalgic, we have seen other live service games like Overwatch 2 and Fortnite capitalize on the same kind of longing for those games as they were when they originally launched.
However, this all picked up a new sense of urgency after a new rumor emerged around this time last month. Apparently, Activision is thinking that they may cancel making a Call of Duty: Warzone 3, or continuing to support Call of Duty: Warzone in some capacity, if Verdansk doesn’t turn out to be successful enough.
Since then, many Call of Duty players and community members have been chiming in on what Activision needs to do to guarantee Verdansk’s success. It’s self-evident that feedback will always be useful to any game developer. But this has come to light the strange situation where many players are making claims about Call of Duty being broken that the developers are simply disagreeing with.
As we just reported, Team Ricochet dropped a bombshell of sorts when they recently revealed that most players reporting that they saw cheaters beating them actually did lose fairly. In a roundabout way, they’re saying that their own players don’t know that they are losing fairly.
While Team Ricochet is adding certain notifications so players can get better feedback, this scenario reveals the precarious balance that Activision has to maintain. Indeed, how can you keep players happy when they don’t even see the difference between what they feel is wrong with the game, and data driven reality?
In any case, the launch trailer has all the bombastic pomp and circumstance you remember from the Call of Duty of old. This time, the fight song is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s kind of passé given how overused and mimetic the song is. But then again, for the purposes of evoking some sense of nostalgia, even anemoia, it works.
Verdansk launches on Call of Duty: Warzone on April 4, 2025, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Steam, Battle.net, and Windows Store. You can watch the launch trailer below.