How Verdansk is taking Warzone back to its competitive roots

As Warzone’s very first map, many fans have returned to the battle royale to revisit their favourite memory from 2020. Though many new maps have been released over the years, nothing can top Verdansk’s diverse environments and strong selection of vehicles.

Now that the Trials of Verdansk tournament has concluded, it’s time to discuss how the map’s return is changing competitive Warzone for the better.

Verdansk is a large Warzone map with a mix of environments. Verdansk safe locations are all around, while notable locations include everything from simple forests to high-rise buildings, offering many end-points where the circle could close. The Stadium and Downtown POIs offer tall recon spots that are perfect for snipers, while the Military Base provides fairly flat terrain for balanced firefights.

The loot found around Verdansk originally contained a mix of different firearms. Due to the map’s large variety of terrain, it’s advisable to carry a primary weapon that can function well at any distance, such as an assault rifle. Vehicles like the Polaris and Helicopter help competitors traverse Verdansk quickly and efficiently, which is necessary due to its large size.

With over a dozen named locations and a plethora of different vehicles, esports players need to prepare more thoroughly than they would for a smaller map like Area 99. The variety in Verdansk is its strength, and it makes watching competitive Warzone extra interesting since there are more ways a match could end.

We’ve listed a few reasons why Verdansk is an ideal location for competitive esports.

Warzone and Verdansk’s release date was amid the Covid-19 pandemic, so many people were subject to local lockdown laws, leaving video games as a way to escape into the virtual world. As such, Warzone was immensely popular at launch, and so was Verdansk.

Game director Pete Actipis told IGN: “We hit our fifth year anniversary for Warzone and we wanted to bring back Verdansk for quite some time now. It just felt like the right timing. When we were talking about bringing it back, it wasn’t just bringing back the map. It was more than that.”

The development team wanted to ensure that the reintroduction of Verdansk was faithful to the original experience, but there’s always room for growth. Warzone fans will recognise that the OG map looks largely the same as the reboot.

According to Actipis, the community has reacted to Verdansk’s return with excitement and praise. “Post-launch, right now it’s getting great feedback from the community. They seem to really be enjoying it. We’re players too, so we wanted to build an experience that we fell in love with back in 2020.”

There are lots of good reasons to bring back old content to Call of Duty, and maps are remade all the time. However, Verdansk is a special case because, for many, it was their first-ever experience in a battle royale. For some fans, it was their first Call of Duty game since it was released as a free-to-play title.

Though Verdansk was only reintroduced on April 3, multiple tournaments have already made plans to use the nostalgic map. The Trials of Verdansk event concluded on May 7, with Team BennyCentral claiming victory, narrowly defeating other top teams like KayzahR and Fifakill.

Some competitors struggled to adapt to Verdansk’s mechanics and map placement, with talented players like Low4n and FlexZ falling behind but still putting up a good fight. Shifty of Team BennyCentral secured an impressive final kill in a Trials of Verdansk match by using the environment to his advantage. 

As Shifty was watching and waiting in an unmarked forest, he took note of an enemy below a nearby rock, then jumped off the edge to catch the opponent by surprise, winning the Trials of Verdansk. Since Verdansk is a large enough map to offer expansive POIs and a variety of forested areas, competitive play requires more adaptability and strategy, a perfect match for esports.

The Trials of Verdansk tournament further proved that esports fans are interested in watching huge competitions that take place on Verdansk, but its popularity in 2025 goes even further back. According to Esports Charts, the Warzone Verdansk Returns on Twitch Rivals event had a peak viewership of over 163,000.

Through a combination of strong POI placement and a wide assortment of terrains, Verdansk is perfect for beginners and seasoned COD fans who’d like to make the transition to competitive Warzone. The OG map is here to stay for now, so learning its many nuances is essential to success in Call of Duty’s battle royale.

While some Warzone teams were able to adapt to the latest locale in the Trials of Verdansk tournament, others were left in the dust. As we move further into 2025, Warzone fans can look forward to Nadeshot’s Verdansk Invitational on May 19.