Call of Duty: Warzone’s Caldera map has arrived for Vanguard Season 1, taking players from the drab buildings of Verdansk to a sunny island getaway. However, Season 1 also launched with myriad issues in Caldera that hampered the enjoyment and playability of the map. Now, with the release of Season 3, Warzone’s tropical island is a much better place to visit.
Call of Duty Season 1 made it really hard to enjoy the beauty of the island with graphical bugs causing giant polygonal monsters to swallow buildings and players whole. Consoles struggled to keep up, with various crash and performance issues on PlayStation and Xbox systems. Some of the operator skins in the battle pass were also broken, causing many players to abuse skins that allowed them to be nothing more than a floating head on the map, making finding them frustrating. Also, Ricochet’s promised anti-cheat didn’t make it to all regions at launch either, so hackers continued to spoil all the fairness and fun. Overall, Caldera was a refreshing change of scenery for Warzone, but it got off to a really bad start.
The tides turned when Call of Duty Season 2 was delayed, which Activision claimed was to give the developers of Warzone and Vanguard time to work out the issues within both games. Shortly after the announcement, the Warzone developers admitted that the game was broken and bloated, but reaffirmed the studio’s dedication to fixing the issues. A content delay might seem like a bummer, but the extra time helped Raven Software get Caldera into a much more playable state. Various updates were made to reduce bugs and improve overall game performance, and the eventual release of Season 2 continued to bring positive changes to the new Warzone map.
As Raven Software ironed out issues with Caldera, a much smoother experience came with the big Season 2 update. This improved version of Caldera also included new features and points of interest to bring Battle Royale to life. The Season 2 Redeploy Balloons were a huge hit with players, allowing them to parachute up and down to more easily traverse the massive island.
With the recent release of Season 3: Classified Weapons, Caldera continues to evolve into a much more satisfying battle royale experience. Warzone Season 3 is themed around the upcoming battle between Godzilla and King Kong for the Operation Monarch event, which will bring a number of positive changes to the Caldera map.
For starters, the island has gone from a sunny paradise to a cloudy sky. This atmospheric change is a drastic improvement in the visibility of the island, and players seem to love the change in lighting. Additional improvement in visibility also comes from changes Raven Software made to reduce thick foliage in some areas of the island. As a result, there are fewer shadows and hiding places, making it easier for players to spot enemies.
Season 3 also brings the new Dig Site POI and several other map changes to give Caldera a new Skull Island-inspired look for the upcoming arrival of King Kong and Godzilla. The ancient Caldera ruins, volcano, and newly unearthed monster bones make this the perfect place for the Hollywood titans to take down. In general, the map looks more interesting and fun in this current season.

It’s also worth mentioning that Raven Software has done a good job of keeping the weapon meta in good shape for Warzone Pacific. Much of the Verdansk map’s lifespan was left in the chaos of overpowered weapons, but the developer is now staying on top of weapon balance. Broken weapons don’t stay broken for long, and players aren’t limited to just using a handful of weapons to compete with the pack. The recent Season 3 weapon balance made major changes to Warzone’s sniper rifles, and we recommend a few loadouts to try. The perk system even received a few changes, including the addition of lootable perks to give players an additional way to equip their perks.
Anti-cheat is also doing a solid job of detecting cheaters, as some players have praised Ricochet for the lack of hackers in his games. Activision’s latest software update even goes as far as trolling cheaters with the new “cloaking” feature, which is a feature that makes cheaters unable to see or hear legitimate players.
While it’s unfortunate that Warzone Pacific often felt like an unplayable experience in Season 1, it’s great to see Raven Software delivering on the promise of making Warzone better. Season 3 feels like the best version of Caldera yet, and should hopefully leave players more confident that Warzone will continue to receive positive changes as the Vanguard seasons progress.
Of course, there’s no telling how long Caldera will remain, as Warzone 2 has already been announced. The battle royale sequel is currently in development alongside this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. However, players are still wondering if their cosmetics will carry over to Warzone 2, but the developers recently discussed issues with trying to import all inventory. from previous titles.
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