Warzone season 1 is capped at 100 players because Raven wants it to be "a faster-paced battle royale"

gamesradar.com:

Warzone's season 1 launch will introduce a new 100-player limit that developer Raven Software hopes will make for a "faster paced battle royale."

Warzone season 1 is launching alongside the new Modern Warfare 3 battle pass on Wednesday, December 6, bringing along the brand new Urzikstan map and the aforementioned 100-player cap. Urzikstan, which according to Charlie Intel is about 20% smaller than Al Mazrah, will also put a 20-minute cap on match times.

In a tweet, Raven said its priority is "creating an optimal and fun experience for all of our players based on critical metrics," which include "time-to-action, the map size of Urzikstan, new circle timings and sizes, total match time (20 minutes), red dots, contracts, and various new and existing second chance mechanics."

More specifically, Warzone senior creative director Ted Timmins followed up on that tweet with his own explanation for the smaller player count, map, and match time.

"We want Season 1 to be a faster-paced Battle Royale and fundamentally we are here to listen and evolve," he said. "It's never easy to balance a single experience for hundreds of millions of different player types and motivations - but we hope you love it too."

The Call of Duty community has dubbed the upcoming relaunch 'Warzone 3.0', and although that's not its official name, it does do a good job emphasizing how big an update it is. In addition to Warzone's new Urzikstan map, the battle royale's integration with Modern Warfare 3 will completely reset your stats and start everyone on the same clean slate. There will be new weapons, modes, and events, a host of quality of life updates, and a few key updates to movement and other mechanics for parity with the latest mainline entry.

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