Jungle removed from official matchmaking.

The first community map added to Danger Zone has now been removed from the rotation.  Introduced with the Shattered Web Operation, many players disliked or even hated dz_junglety.  This was made worse because during the Operation the rotation was changed to Jungle, Blacksite, Jungle, Sirocco.  So not only were you twice as likely to play Jungle, but you could get stuck playing Jungle multiple games depending upon the game length.

Personally I disliked Jungle because my computer would occasionally lock up when playing the map.  (I had similar problems with Blacksite when Danger Zone was first released, this was later corrected by an update.)  It also took me a long while to "learn" the map so I could quickly navigate and give call-outs.  But once the map was patched and the lock ups stopped occurring, I started to enjoy playing Jungle more.

That's not to say Jungle was my favorite map - but I didn't dread having to play it.  In fact, there was much to like about it.  There's lots of cover when moving around the map and various high ground positions for sniping.  Of course the fog also restricts sniping, although I've noticed Blacksite has also gained some fog.  And yes there were some glitches, but michal3210 continued to release updates with fixes and tweaks after the initial release (the same can't be said for Blacksite & Sirocco).

Apparently the update which removed Jungle contained the string "dz_frostbite" - a recently released community map, which many have taken as a sign of its impeding inclusion.  While I don't doubt that Valve will continue to include community maps in the Danger Zone rotation, I do wonder why Jungle was removed without a replacement.  Was it because of something Valve saw in the analytics reflecting it's least liked status?  Was there a royalty payment which Valve didn't want to pay?  Or did they plan on replacing Jungle with Frostbite, but had to pull Frostbite at the last minute?

Sidenote: I never created a Jungle intro / outro because Valve didn't create a panorama background for it.  I considered using "Sirocco night" from the Shattered Web Operation, but it didn't seem appropriate or worth the effort to create the first person view for the intro.  (I did use "Sirocco night" for the Elite or Cheat intro.)

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