April 21 saw the destruction of Call of Duty: Warzone's original Verdansk map in a nuclear bombing, followed by the launch of a redesigned map, Verdansk '84, the next day. Many players had trouble experiencing either event, though, and it was only on April 23 that network status seemed to return to normal. Evidence appears to back an obvious explanation for the Warzone server downtime.

The annihilation of Verdansk was teased for weeks, set up by marketing, a growing zombie infection, and other in-game evidence, such as missiles flying overhead. Towards the end, some parts of the map were already irradiated and impossible to survive without a gas mask. The campaign and map swap seem to be aimed to reinvigorate interest in the COD battle royale. While Warzone technically had a second map already - Rebirth Island - players are normally directed to Verdansk, which remained relatively static compared to other battle royales like Fortnite or PUBG. The latter has seven battlefields, plus a training area.

Related: Is Warzone Optimized For PS5 & XSX With Black Ops Upgrade

Updates from Activision Support's official Twitter feed confirm players were coping with long server queues on both April 21 and 22, which even prompted Activision to extend the nuke event by an hour. According to GamesRadar+, wait times averaged around 20 minutes, but some players were getting disconnected even if they did hold out long enough. In those cases, error codes were followed by being put at the back of the queue. Considering long waits and the error messages have mostly disappeared - other than comparatively minor outage reports from Downdetector users - Warzone's map launch server issues were likely caused by common reasons for server downtime: too many players trying to connect at once and too little server capacity.

Why Wasn't Activision Ready For Map-Launch Crush On Warzone Servers?

Online game developers have to balance the cost of running a game's servers versus its potential level of long-term popularity, rather than versus worst-case scenarios. Special events or sudden viral popularity can bring servers to their knees in ways that won't matter weeks or even days later. Activision was presumably prepared for high traffic because of the Call of Duty brand's usual success, but it may have still underestimated just how many people would want to see the new Warzone content.

Verdansk '84 is tied to Black Ops - Cold War and features bits of several popular Black Ops maps, such as Grid and Summit. A limited-time event, Hunt For Adler, is asking players to track down intel about the Cold War character in exchange for new cosmetic items and more background about Verdansk. It remains to be seen if this will help Call of Duty: Warzone keep up its current player numbers.

Next: Warzone On Xbox Controller vs PC Keyboard - Which Is Better

Sources: Activision/Twitter, GamesRadar+