Step aside Nuketown and Shipment: Nadeshot says there’s a new classic CoD map on the block

Call of Duty personality Nadeshot has fired off what might be the hottest Black Ops 6 take so far: He believes polarizing map Babylon will become a CoD classic that will dwarf Nuketown and Shipment combined. He can’t wait to queue for its supposedly “inevitable” 24/7 playlist.

Nadeshot opened his Sept. 10 stream by chatting about his experience playing the Black Ops 6 beta for the past two weeks and following up on an earlier tweet where he stated that Babylon—the newest “small” map coming to CoD with BO6‘s impending release—is better than a few of its peers. “I think I like Babylon more than I like Nuketown and Shipment combined, bro. I actually think Babylon could be a new CoD classic map and I’m being dead serious.”

He went on to say much of the discourse around the map was simply a kneejerk reaction to something new and that the wider CoD community was resistant to change. Concluding, the 100 Thieves founder claimed: “This map is a lot of fun to play, this map is a great warm-up map, it’s fun to grind out ranks on your guns, it’s mixy the entire time—I pray to god when we get to Black Ops 6 full release we have a Babylon 24/7 playlist.”

It’s in stark contrast to the wider community’s thoughts on Babylon, which many players had written off as “too chaotic” with horrendous spawns and is the “epitome of crack-addicted ADHD brainrot” CoD maps are fast becoming. “Treyarch, please don’t underestimate our attention spans,” one player said in the hopes the studio will move away from releasing tiny maps in the future.

We’ve seen small maps become the norm as more iterations of CoD land in our laps. From the early days of Shipment in CoD 4 and Rust in MW2 (2009) through to Nuketown and newcomer Meat in MW2 (2023), small maps have held a special place in the community’s hearts. But, after giving the beta a go myself last weekend, I’m totally siding with the more aggrieved fans over Nadeshot here: This map’s a jumbled mess and a blight on modern-day CoD.

I lost count of the number of post-game kill cams that featured players spawn killing their opponents or the back-to-back deaths by grenades across the CoD map. The map is really great for leveling up weapons and unlocking attachments, but outside of that, the sensory overload of spawn-death-spawn-death within five seconds is the furthest thing from what CoD multiplayer should be, and maps like Nuketown at least give you a chance to get your gun up.

We’ll see whether Babylon gets touch-ups between now and the game’s launch in October, but until then, Nadeshot can keep his 24/7 Babylon—I and many others won’t go near it.