Activision has revealed that Warzone Caldera – the ‘old version’ of Warzone – will be taken offline forever as of September 21st, 2023. It’s a monumental event that effectively brings an end to classic Call of Duty: Warzone as we know it, and that includes fast-paced movement, slide-cancelling, and many of the elements that made ‘old-school’ Warzone all that much more enjoyable. It’s a sad day for many gamers the world over, but did we even appreciate Caldera that much?

For the most part, Caldera seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for Call of Duty: Warzone when it was first released in December 2021. It almost killed the platform, with many millions of players ruing the fact that Verdansk had been stripped from the game’s ecosystem after almost two years of battle royale bliss. Now, we are well and truly bidding farewell to that original platform, as within three months, it’ll cease to exist.

The Memories We Made

Image Credit: Activision

Caldera was effectively an extension of the original Call of Duty: Warzone. It originated following the destruction of Verdansk, which had been the go-to map for battle royale fans since March 2020. However, everything from Caldera’s layout to the general aesthetic of the map never really impressed many Call of Duty fans, and for a while, it looks as though Caldera was going to kill Warzone.

It turns out it was a case of better the Devil you know, though – in 2022, Warzone 2.0 was released, and fans hated that map too. It has been a year and a half since Verdansk disappeared, and fans still call for Activision and its related sub-studios to put the map back in the game. It’s going to return in Warzone Mobile – but it won’t ever grace the main Warzone platform ever again.

On September 21st, 2023, fans will need to bid farewell to that original platform that gave us Verdansk – and the likes of Rebirth Island and Caldera, of course. In a Tweet, Activision confirmed that ‘all Caldera gameplay, player progression, inventories, and online services will expire on that date.’

It was stressed that any gameplay on Activision’s other platforms will remain unaffected. That means that Al Mazrah, Vondel, Ashika, and Modern Warfare II (and other multiplayer games before it) won’t be changed or impacted in any way following Caldera’s shutdown.

Read More: Is Call of Duty Dying?

One Last Hurrah

It’s expected that content creators and Call of Duty streamers will flood Warzone Caldera before it’s taken offline in September. It’s the way it works – they celebrate the disappearance of the platform until it’s actually being removed, and then everyone gets nostalgic. They’ll pour into Caldera in their thousands before it’s taken offline, appreciating for one last time the fluid, high-speed pacing that made Warzone a joy to play almost a year ago.

There’s a chance it’ll be like other games that have been ‘sunsetted’, with the servers going offline while people are playing on them. We’ve seen the closure of other multiplayer or online games in the past where players have clung to that game until the closing seconds of its lifecycle. Will that be the case for Warzone Caldera?