Fortnite Battle Royale was released on Sept. 26, 2017, as an add-on to Epic Games original game, Fortnite: Save the World, a strategic base defense zombie game. This new game mode came with the original map with familiar places such as Tilted Towers, Greasy Grove, or Pleasant Park. Now revamped on Nov. 3 2023, Fortnite fans six years in the making now have back the original map being brought back until Dec. 2. 

     This revamp brought in an influx of 44.7 million players on launch day. Radio Times also reports that players are canpaning to keep the original map in some way. A trio consisting of juniors Jacob Turner, Drew Tagliaferri, and Camrian Brewer have been grinding the game since the release. The three agree that the revamp was “genius” because it made  “a lot of the people who played the game six years ago come back and see the old map and bring back some of that old hype,” says Brewer. Tagliaferri added he thought it was “perfect” and it “brought back a lot of older players and made so many new memories.”

     This revamp lasted for a month of gameplay, followed by the highly awaited Eminem concert. Videos going around of the audio of Eminem rhyming orange with banana grew in popularity, hyping up the concert. However, this hype was short-lived after the concert was actually released and people saw it. Turner believes that the concert “didn’t live up to the hype that everyone put on it, and he only did two songs, not even close to living up to the Travis Scott concert.”  

      The game has now introduced a new Battle Royale map, plus two more game modes to be introduced further into the month. This includes a Lego game mode being introduced on Dec. 7, or the Rocket Racing that’s being introduced on Dec. 8. This was followed by the Fortnite Festival on Dec. 9, with a performance by The Weeknd. 

     The trio all expressed the wish that the season would have lasted longer because of the nostalgia that was brought back and the things they wished they could have done with it. Epic Games also tweeted after the original season concluded, saying “Not going to lie, the OG season far exceeded our expectations. So much so that we’d like to bring it back… *opens 2024 roadmap doc* In the meantime, see you on the Battle Bus.” This tweet brought back hope and praise of the original map being revamped again because of the hype that it got, and the influx in players that Fortnite got.