Yesterday it was just announced on the Counter-Strike Blog that Dust II, one of the most popular maps in gaming is now back in the Active Duty Map Pool which is a group of maps in which professionals play on and the most played maps in general. Dust II was originally always apart of the Active Duty Map Pool until Valve decided to take it out to make some changes. Therefore, taking it out and replacing it with Inferno which was another classic Counter-Strike map.
Whenever a map is brought it, another one is taken out. This time it was Cobblestone which I don’t really play for a few reasons. Cobblestone is a decently old map even though it has had some minor changes over the years. I know a lot of people like to play Cobblestone, but for me, it’s a bit awkward to play. As a Counter-Terrorist, it has different angles that are difficult to hold with a lot of height differences. I feel like this is a reason why they took it out because months ago a new map was released called Canals. It was very different than most other maps since like Cobblestone there were lots of height differences. Canals now is alright, but even now not too many people play on it. Personally, I already felt like Cobblestone was a bit different from other maps and that we didn’t really need another one like it.
Most of the time when maps are taken out of the map pool means that Valve’s making changes to it. For example, Dust II was brought out and had changes done to it mostly visually but changes none the less. Nuke was brought out and also had changes made. Cobblestone takes place in a castle sort of environment so I’m interested to see if they’ll change it or how they will if they do.
Overall, I’m interested in seeing how the pros will play the new Dust II and seeing how the changes will affect their play. However, I think the most interesting thing for the community now is going to be Cobblestone since changes to maps usually cause a stir in the community especially if they’ve remained the same for a while.