Haven's Hollow may just be the best Warzone map to be introduced to the battle royale since Rebirth Island made its debut in 2020. With its clear lines of sight, evocative color palette, and varied points of interest, I have immediately fallen in love with this new battlefield – set to arrive in the fall, as part of the Black Ops 7: Season One roll out.
Now, is there a chance that a well-earned victory on Haven's Hollow is skewing my perspective here? Absolutely. It's been almost a week and I'm still amped up. My first drop was at Call of Duty: Next, a landscape dominated by developers, content creators, and former pro players. I've barely touched Warzone in recent years, but it doesn't take long for the muscle memory to kick back in; I suppose the hundreds of hours spent fighting in this arena through lockdown wasn't wasted after all.
One of the reasons I've fallen so quickly in love with Haven's Hollow is that it feels like a real showcase of the Resurgence game mode. Matt Krystek, creative director at High Moon Studios, says that the map is "smaller than Fortune's Keep and just a little bit larger than Rebirth Island." That makes it perfectly placed to engineer this steady stream of intimate engagements, applying just enough pressure to keep you moving around and enough downtime to give your squad a chance to catch its breath.
The more I think about it, Resurgence really doesn't get enough credit – it may be the best thing Call of Duty has given back to the FPS genre in a decade. The mode's smart blurring of lines between battle royale fundamentals and traditional COD multiplayer cycles is inspired, ensuring that every drop is fast, frenetic, and respectful of your time. Haven's Hollow sells the concept almost as well as Rebirth Island, a fan-favorite which is itself getting a refresh in early 2026.
If you're looking at images of Haven's Hollow and thinking that it looks a little familiar, that's because elements of it absolutely are. The map takes place in a pre-outbreak version of Liberty Falls – the home of Zombies in Black Ops 6. Krystek explains that fans will pinpoint some returning elements – "we've got a reimagined version of the mansion from Shattered Veil" – but that Haven's Hollow is otherwise "expanding out from where Liberty Falls was initially set."
Krystek says that High Moon Studios "wanted a fast-paced, high-action map" with "good flow and really interesting routes" and I'm happy to report that this is exactly what's been delivered. With nine core points-of-interest, there are exceptional battles to be had from the riverfront through to the elevated foothills. Haven's Hollow has a really smart balance of power positions and cover density, with "a lot of the structures constrained to just three to four stories," Krystek adds. From my time with the map, I found that this blend helps draw squads in and out of cover, generating winding games of cat and mouse in a way that Rebirth and Fortune's Keep never quite delivered.
I took a similar journey from the Riverboat (a floating casino that's destined to forever be a hot drop), up across Main Street with its elevated power positions, through to Pond on the other side of the map for the final circles – a mess of construction and dilapidation making this locale the perfect spot for frantic short-to-midrange engagements. The pond is ankle deep, with the river surrounding the Haven's Gamble paddle steamer the only area with any true vertical depth. Krystek says that High Moon presented "minimal water gameplay" on Haven's Hollow to instead "focus on player visibility."
That last point is really key, because Haven's Hollow is without question the best looking map in Warzone history. It's this vibrant, autumnally-themed playspace that feels exceptionally distinct. "It is bright, in terms of its lighting," says Krystek, "but we wanted it to be really colorful, to both focus and promote easy enemy acquisition." This is an aspect to Haven's Hollow that will be really born out on live servers, but my early playtest really did highlight the importance of checking your corners and moving with purpose when you do decide to step out of cover.
Krystek says that this focus on "player visibility" led High Moon to go so far as to "hand place every tree that's on here to try and curate these long lines of sight." If that anecdote tells you anything, it's that the studio is going out of its way to create a map with well defined power positions and clear balance. "Promoting all the different playstyles is important," he says. "Which is why we focused so much on cover placement, foliage density, and the flow through all of the spaces."
If nothing else, Haven's Hollow will continue Warzone's hit rate for repurposing Zombies maps (Rebirth was, arguably, a redux of Black Ops 2's Mob of the Dead). But I have a feeling that Haven's Hollow will become far more than that. It's an adrenaline shot to Warzone map rotation, a playspace that promotes the power of Resurgence and a dazzling reminder that Call of Duty still has some of the best weapon and movement feel in the FPS landscape. All I can hope now is that the wins keep flowing when Haven's Hollow lands later this year.
Haven's Hollow isn't the only new item coming to Warzone in the Black Ops 7 era. There's a new mode inspired by Blackout, Call of Duty's original battle royale, and some key changes to Warzone's approach to attachments and movement mechanics.
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