Vanguard’ and ‘Warzone’ goes live and Season 2 ends

A brand new season of content is about to launch for Call Of Duty: Vanguard and its free-to-play battle royale counterpart, Warzone.

After a successful Season 2 that included a midseason overhaul of the Rebirth Island map, both games are poised to launch into Season 3. The new season brings map changes to Caldera in Warzone, new multiplayer maps to Vanguard, and a brand new cross-game Battle Pass that includes new Operators, weapons and other goodies to unlock.

When Does Season 3 Begin?

I’m glad you asked! The ‘Classified Arms’ Season 3 content goes live on Wednesday, April 27th at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET. You’ll just have to download the content before you can play, so the exact time you can hop into your game will vary.

The update for Vanguard is actually available on April 26th at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET but the season still doesn’t kick off for another day. At least this way you can preload and be ready to get into the action.

Here’s the Season 3 trailer:

As you can see, King Kong and Godzilla are both headed to Caldera in Season 3, though the special monster event, Operation Monarch, won’t actually kick off until May 11th, a couple weeks into the season.

Other New Content

In both games, three new Operators from team Harpy will be available—one in the Battle Pass and two in the Item Shop. The Operators are:

• Mateo Hernandez (Battle Pass at launch)
• Florence Carter (In-Season)
• Kim Tae Young (Mid-Season)

There will also be a handful of new weapons unlockable either as part of the Battle Pass in the free tiers, or via in-game challenges—or, of course, via the Item Shop. These are:

• The M1916 Marksman Rifle (Battle Pass)
• Nikita AVT Assault Rifle (Battle Pass)
• Sledgehammer Melee (In-Season)
• H4 Blixen SMG (Mid-Season)

Vanguard will get two new maps:

• Mayhem (Launch) a three-lane warehouse-turned-mock-city movies set that is perplexingly described as a “1950s movie set” by Activision. Has WWII gone on longer than we thought?
• Sphere (In-Season) is a hidden weapons lab that’s on the small side, emphasizing close quarters combat.

Warzone is seeing some map changes on Caldera, including:

• A new Fortified Peak area that greatly expands the once-barren mountain top.
• Runway Rebuilt with lots more structures.
• Various other smaller changes to the map including giant unearthed skulls of long-dead monsters.
• New Gulag, Hold, designed by developer Toys for Bob. The new 1v1 map takes place inside a ship moored off the Calderan coast. More open than many other Gulag arenas.

There’s lots more to come, especially when Operation Monarch kicks off on May 11th, but that’s your basic overview of what to expect in Season 3 when it kicks off Wednesday. See you in the Warzone!

Follow me on this blog to keep up-to-date with all my video game coverage.

You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook and support my work on Patreon. If you want, you can also sign up for my diabolical newsletter on Substack and subscribe to my YouTube channel.