Warzone’s most iconic weapons will reportedly return alongside Verdansk in season 3

With the return of Call of Duty: Warzone’s original, fan-favorite map Verdansk just weeks away, it’s looking more and more like season three of Black Ops 6 will center around nostalgia for the battle royale game.

Classic, original Warzone weapons like the Grau 5.56 assault rifle and HDR sniper rifle are “potentially” returning to the game alongside Verdansk, according to a report by CharlieIntel. Meta-dominating guns in their own right, the two weapons and many others haven’t been available in Warzone in several years.

With Warzone as a full-time live-service game, Activision has done a soft reset on things like weapons and level progression a few times since it launched almost five years ago. For example, everyone started over with the launch of Call of Duty: Vanguard in 2022 with a new map called Caldera and a slew of World War II weapons.

When that happened, a large amount of fan-favorite guns from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War disappeared from the BR mode, while still staying available to use in the yearly release titles they originated from.

The Grau 5.56 originally launched alongside season two of Modern Warfare way back in 2020, a month before Warzone first released. It quickly became a top weapon in BR and stayed that way for some time. The HDR, meanwhile, was a top pick for snipers as a one-shot option at long distances.

If these two guns do make their way back to Warzone somehow, it opens the door for a wide variety of classic guns to come back, including other long-range death machines like the Bruen Mk9, Kar98k, or AX-50.

Although nothing about season three has been announced or confirmed yet, Verdansk’s return is likely. Activision previously confirmed the map would be back in early 2024, and March 10 is the five-year anniversary of Warzone’s launch, so everything is lining up for it to happen very soon. This would also make sense considering Warzone heavily took a backseat in season two of BO6 while the devs worked on fixing bugs and other issues in the game ahead of a big season three.

Season three of BO6 is likely to begin on March 20, so we’ll officially know more about what’s coming in the days and weeks ahead. It should hopefully be a fun time to be a Warzone gamer.