This game update will go live on October 10, 2023!
HALLOWEEN TERROR 2023
Get ready for the spookiest event of the year as Overwatch 2 transforms into a haunted battleground. Halloween Terror is back with your favorite game modes—Junkenstein’s Revenge, Wrath of the Bride, and Trials of Sanctuary, a new Blizzard crossover game mode. Team up with the heroes of Sanctuary, power up their abilities, and defeat powerful bosses, including Butcher Roadhog, Azmodan Wrecking Ball, and Lilith Moira.
NEW MAP - SAMOA
Samoa is a new Control map where you’ll fight on a tropical beach, a gleaming city, and inside a volcano! Watch out for deadly pitfalls, or you might just be swimming in lava! Samoa will be available to play right away in a dedicated Arcade card and will appear in Quick Play and other unranked modes starting on October 10 with it appearing in Competitive Play later in the season.
HERO REWORK – SOMBRA
We approached the Sombra Rework by identifying key goals to guide decisions throughout ...
Read moreHola amigos! Andre Abrahamian from the Hero Design Team here subbing in for Aaron this week. I wanted to share with you an in-depth journey through the most recent changes to Sombra, our notorious stealthy hacker. Since her original release in 2016, Sombra has received many changes, including a rework for Overwatch 2's launch. Now the team brings changes to this latest iteration on Sombra once again.Â
When we look at each Overwatch hero, we are guided by general values to provide a great hero experience. Each hero should have clear strengths and weaknesses that can be tuned accordingly. A hero's impact on a match should be felt by you, your team, and the enemy team. That impact should be clear enough to inform counterplay so that enemies infer how to respond to a particular hero or their abilities. With these points in mind, we felt that Sombra did not have the correct building blocks for her long-term place in the game, and that is what started our latest approach to the rework. ...
Read moreSeason 7 begins next Tuesday, and we’re bringing a frightening amount of new content and a seasonal theme that is darker than ever before! We’re introducing a new Blizzard crossover game mode in Trials of Sanctuary, the Halloween Terror 2023 event, and a hot new control map featuring the tropical island of Samoa. We’re also bringing a massive balance update, including a reworked ability kit for Sombra, and new changes to the Route 66 Map! Keep reading to find out what Overwatch 2: The Rise of Darkness has in store.
Battle against Lilith Moira in Trials of Sanctuary!
In our first-ever Blizzard crossover game mode launching with our Halloween Terror event, you’ll descend into a battle against the demons of the Burning Hells in an all-new co-op survival brawl, Trials of Sanctuary. Fight as one of six different heroes: Demon Hunter Sombra, Barbarian Zarya, Night Raven Illari, Cleric Lifeweaver, Imperious Reinhardt, and Inarius Pharah, while facing an onslaught of unrelenting forces in ...
Read moreDue to ongoing technical issues with our Anniversary Challenges, we’re going to keep the Overwatch Credits rewards from challenges disabled for the remainder of the Event. To make up for this, we’re granting everyone who logs in during the first week of Season 7, starting October 10, a reward of 3,000 Overwatch Credits, even if you don’t complete challenges in the Anniversary Event. The Anniversary Credits Shop will be live through October 16. We’ll also have more content available for Overwatch Credits starting in Season 7 which we’ll reveal soon.
Illari has taken Overwatch 2 by storm—or rather, by the power of one thousand burning suns. We’re incredibly happy to see that players are enjoying her gameplay, personality, and story. To provide a little more depth and insight into how Illari came to be who she is today, we on the Overwatch 2 hero design team thought we’d share some of how her abilities were created through early prototypes.
Heroes can be inspired by many things! Sometimes, heroes are made from whatever prototypes of abilities we think are cool or have a positive impact on gameplay. Ana is a great example of this—parts of her kit were made before her character and story ever existed.
In Illari’s case, we had a strong starting point because we knew we wanted to theme the hero around the sun. These themes inspired her early abilities as well as her internal codename, Solar.
Prototyping is a journey through different questions, scenarios, and ideas. The goal is to test out and experiment with new things. We ask que...
Read moreWe’re currently experiencing an issue with Anniversary Event Challenges granting Overwatch Credits inconsistently. While we investigate, we’re disabling Credit grants from these Challenges. Once we have resolved the issue, we will compensate impacted players.
Please note that Credits will still be displayed as a reward for each of these Challenges. Apologies for the inconvenience!
With the Shop recently having Owl Guardian Mercy available for purchase, all players who bought the skin between August 29 - September 7, 2023, have received a full Overwatch Coins refund and still own their items. If you purchased the skin during that time frame, you should now see the Overwatch Coins credited back into your account. There is no need to start a ticket with Blizzard Customer Service to request a refund. You will need to restart your game client to see the Coins added back to your account.
If you do not have this skin already, you can claim it and add it to your collection when you connect your Prime Gaming account to Battle.net. Learn more on Prime Gaming for details.
Read moreSo new abilities confirmed, Im actually really surprised cause I feel both hook and vape are things that should stay, they seems to be a core of his identity and new ability either replace vape or is bind to new key. My guess some minor things to hook, maybe vape heal allies on a tray it leaves behind, but Im afraid vape is gone.
Hook and Vape are both staying :)
Hey y'all! This is Alec, Lead Hero Designer, stepping in for Aaron this week. We thought this Director’s Take would be a good time to chat about our heroes, recent balance changes, and what we’ve learned from them, and talk a bit about the philosophy behind our two upcoming reworks for Sombra and Roadhog.
Illari and the Safe Side of Strong
Let’s start with Illari. Going into Illari’s launch, our slogan was “safe side of strong.” We want hero releases to be impactful. It’s best for the game for a number of reasons, but most importantly, it creates change throughout the meta. An impactful hero launch can shift other heroes’ viability and create new and unique team compositions - an unimpactful hero launch can feel as if the game didn’t enter a new season.
Making a new hero feel impactful on launch is challenging because we are asking you to choose between that hero and their overall potential versus picking the heroes that you may have hundreds or thousands of hours on. Players li...
Read moreThe first anniversary of Overwatch 2 is here! Millions of players have already answered the call, and we’re celebrating with lots of fun rewards. For three weeks, you’ll be able to play returning modes from past events throughout the year in the Arcade, along with the chance to earn Overwatch Credits, which can be spent on fan-favorite skins in a limited-time Anniversary Shop. Keep reading to find out more about everything coming in the Overwatch 2 Anniversary event!
Week 1 – Winter Wonderland and Battle for Olympus
During the first week of the event, stay frosty with the return of Winter Wonderland event game modes. Join in the ultimate snowball fight with Mei’s Snowball Offense, both in Elimination and Deathmatch versions. Try your hand at the epic 1v5 Yeti Hunt, or the challenging Flash Freeze elimination game modes.
If you prefer more godly challenges, Battle for Olympus also returns in Week 1 with both Free-For-All Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch game modes. Battle for Ol...
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