Raven Software already gave Warzone players a good idea of what they should expect from the upcoming seasonal update. However, there was one surprise that nobody saw coming: even bigger Warzone lobbies.
One day before Warzone Season 4 begins, Raven Software has tweeted, “120. BR.” The post all but confirms that the lobby size on Urzikstan will be increased from 100 to 120 once the patch goes live on May 29 at 1 p.m. ET. Warzone 2 initially featured 150-player battle royale lobbies, but the developer controversially slashed that number down to 100 in August 2023 as part of the Season 5 update.
To justify the decision, Raven Software at the time argued, “We’re reducing the number of players across our core Battle Royale modes, which will prevent the match feeling too chaotic but provide improved matchmaking times, faster pre-game lobbies, and a better quality of match overall.”
Warzone 2 increased second-chance mechanics and the speed of circles closing in as a counterbalance to fewer players in a match. Modern Warfare 3’s iteration of Warzone doubled by adding a drivable train, zip lines around the battle royale map, and quicker movement mechanics to increase engagement in light of fewer players. Unfortunately, none of those quality of life changes did enough to reinvigorate interest in standard battle royale matches.
Resurgence took over as Warzone’s most popular game mode, and doubts started to creep in for players, if the devs intended to continue supporting the traditional battle royale format. As part of the March Season 2 update, Treyarch introduced Ranked Play Resurgence to accompany the returning small-scale map Fortune’s Keep. Then, at the start of the Season in early April, the devs showed more love to Resurgence by bringing back Fortune’s Keep and moving Ranked Play over to the popular map. Urzikstan did not get any new POIs, substantial changes, or Ranked Play throughout both seasons, and won’t get Ranked Play again in Season 4.
While Resurgence provides a fast-paced experience because of the smaller map sizes and respawn mechanics, Urzikstan suffers from lulls between engagements as the map is much larger. Increasing the player count on Urzikstan should help the map attract some players back, but it’s unclear if this change will be enough to bring back interest to the game mode’s peak.
