Warzone’s game timer slashed for Urzikstan map in Season 1

There's no denying that there are stark similarities between the new Urzikstan map in Warzone and Verdansk.

From POIs to movement changes, Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software are teaming together to bring back the golden era and inject a lot of pace into the battle royale which thrives on aggression.

So in a final lesson before Urzikstan is rolled out to the public, the developers have taken one final slice of advice from Verdansk, as the match timer has just been slashed in comparison to Al Mazrah and Caldera.

Warzone Urzikstan sees match timer be slashed to 20 minutes

Although there are set to be significantly fewer players in the same Warzone lobby in Urzikstan, Sledgehammer has now reportedly slashed the game timer to just 20 minutes in order to pick up the pace of the battle royale.

Many different content creators revealed that they had been on a call with the Warzone developers prior to Urzikstan's release to explain the new features and major changes.

World Series of Warzone queen Ariel "Smixie" has now revealed one of these features is the match timer, listing "20min game time" and "Map is 20% smaller than Al Mazrah" among a wealth of positive changes. 

This means that the 20-minute timer will be the absolute maximum that Warzone players (stim glitch aside) can survive in Urzikstan before the final gas circle closes.

Most games don't go down to the wire like that either, meaning you might see some Warzone games edge more towards 15 minutes in length, which makes good reading for fans who like action.

Warzone reverts match timer to one of the shortest in the battle royale genre

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This change moves away from the more tactical gameplay that we saw deployed in Caldera and Al Mazrah, where looting took much longer and the mid-game stagnated. Instead, it will be paced much more like Verdansk and stays quicker than most other battle royales.

Apex Legends takes just over 20 minutes for the final ring to collapse, being another of the shorter options, but titles such as Fortnite and PUBG have significantly longer match timers, edging towards the 30-minute mark.

Warzone will also have a lot more "regain" features like Gulag Tokens and Flares which will also combat the smaller player count, so you won't have time to get bored in your 15-20 minute matches in Season 1.