When can I play the Warzone Pacific map and what is the release time?

Wondering the question: when can I play the Warzone Pacific Map? With players both in the US and the UK wanting to know the release time for the Caldera map in Call of Duty Warzone, we've put together the basics on when the Caldera map unlocks and can be played, wherever you are and also whether you've bought Vanguard or not (it is important to answering this question).

Warzone Pacific map release time

Call of Duty Warzone — (Image credit: Activision)

The Pacific map, Caldera, has a release time that differs according to one thing: have you bought a copy of Call of Duty Vanguard? If the answer is yes, you should be able to play it right now. If the answer is no, you won't get it for a few more hours (laid out below depending on your region). Players who bought Vanguard have the chance to try out Caldera 24 hours before anybody else on early access, assuming they link their Call of Duty account to both games. So if you have Vanguard, you can do it right now. However, for those who don't, these are the times you should be waiting for on December 9th:

EST (East Coast): 9:00 AM December 9th
PST (West Coast): 12:00 PM December 9th
GMT (UK): 5:00 PM December 9th
CEST (Europe): 6:00 PM December 9th

If you don't have Vanguard, Warzone will be unplayable for those 24 hours leading up to the above release times - sorry to say it. This club is Vanguard-exclusive until the doors are thrown open for everybody.

How to play the Pacific map early

Call of Duty Warzone Pacific — (Image credit: Activision)

For those who want to play the Pacific map early, you need to make sure that you have a copy of Vanguard, that you've actually played it (it's not always enough to go into the main menu), and that it's tied to the same COD account as your copy of Warzone.

Once you've done that, simply close Vanguard again and open Warzone (ensuring you have all the latest updates for both). While there will be a new loading screen explaining that non-Vanguard players can't come in, this is just a loading screen - wait for a few minutes at most and you should be let in.

It's also worth mentioning that (at time of writing), the only gamemode playable in the new map is the Vanguard version, so while you can technically access Caldera and tweak your loadouts from Modern Warfare, Cold War and Vanguard in the menu, you can only bring in Vanguard guns, equipment and items to Caldera - try anything else and you'll just be given random Vanguard loadouts instead.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.