After an intense back and forth in recent days, the Call of Duty League pros have decided to remove Al Bagra Fortress from the competitive map pool for both pro and Ranked Play, bringing in Himmelmatt Expo as a replacement — but it wasn’t easy.
Himmelmatt Expo was added to Modern Warfare 2 with the Season 2 Reloaded update on March 15, and talks immediately started over whether it could be added to the competitive map pool.
The one map players near-unanimously wanted out was Al Bagra Fortress, which is a Control map in both the CDL and ranked play, due mainly to the incredibly low success rate on offense on the map.
On March 28, it was announced that following a vote on whether to replace Fortress with Expo, pro teams voted overwhelmingly in favor of NOT making the change, much to the chagrin of the fans and the pros who wanted to see it gone.
I tried
— SlasheR (@SlasheR_AL) March 28, 2023
Rumors swirled around the teams that stepped up voted to remove it, including SlasheR’s Atlanta FaZe, LA Thieves, and possibly Vegas Legion or OpTic Texas, but it seemed their efforts were thwarted.
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However, after a few hours, news started to break that another vote had taken place and that, after the backlash and pressure from the community, Expo would officially replace Fortress in the map pool.
The @CODLeague has officially announced the Map Rotation Update for Control – Added Himmelmatt Expo – Removed Al Bagra Fortress pic.twitter.com/ZDZK6aDzNQ
— Dexerto Esports (@DexertoEsports) March 29, 2023
It wasn’t made public which teams voted which way, but this will definitely change things up for both pro players and ranked players alike.
The map will first be seen this coming weekend when Major 4 qualifiers kick-off, and with teams not having a lot of time to scrim it, we could see some interesting results.