Category: Overwatch News

Blizzard has posted a fun infographic about the recent Overwatch Uprising event. It reveals that the Null Sector Omnics won 78M brawls to only 67M by the Overwatch heroes. Game difficulty played a big role in these stats. The harder the game, the less likely Overwatch heroes were to win, even in “all heroes” mode.

It’s no secret that South Korea is a hotbed of gaming culture, particularly wrapped around Blizzard titles. South Korean presidential candidate, Sim Sang-Jung, has released a new political ad with an Overwatch theme. The ad shows her shutting down political rivals in debates, enough so that they are literally rendered speechless, thereby earning “Play of the Game” status due to her silencing “kills”.

With the first anniversary of Overwatch coming soon (May 24th), a new build of the game went up on the PTR. Players have been busy datamining what they’ve discovered in the client. The current speculation is that an anniversary event will be incoming (hopefully!) with new skins, voice lines, highlight intros and emotes.

Blizzard has proudly announced that Overwatch has scored 30 million players in its first year. The announcement was made via the Overwatch Twitter account with an appropriately juggernaut-ish looking Reinhardt and with gratitude to its community.

Blizzard has altered a somewhat controversial Overwatch competitive mechanic implemented last week in the v1.10 update. Designed to reduce the number of ties in competitive game play, the update required one team to “fully capture one more objective than your opponent” in order to win. This did not sit well with players and Blizzard admitted that it had “received a tremendous amount of feedback” (i.e. lots of forum crabbing). As a result, the mechanic has been changed to something simpler.

Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan has weighed in on a lengthy thread about “smurfing”, the name for when an experienced ranked player buys a second account and plays in low-tier competitive matches. According to Kaplan, smurfing isn’t a big issue with the team, though when a highly skilled player “carries”, or boosts, another player to artificially increase their rating is something the OW team frowns upon.

Blizzard has officially revealed the Overwatch: Uprising event that kicks off today and runs through May 1st. Players “celebrate the Overwatch Legacy” by taking part in Tracer’s first mission to London with the action taking place on a modified version of the King’s Row map.

If you speak French — and even if you don’t — the Overwatch video leaked today gives us plenty of new information about the Insurrection event that will be (we think) starting tomorrow. It will take place in the early days of the Overwatch organization during one of Tracer’s first missions to King’s Row in London. The event will be similar to the Halloween event and a cooperative experience. It will come with new sprays, emotes, skins such as those seen in the new comic and more.

Earlier this week, Overwatch NZ/AU posted a cryptic video about the Overwatch King’s Row Uprising. In the day since, we have learned that this is likely tied to a new in-game event that is centered on the Overwatch lore rather than on an outside holiday such as Christmas. A new interactive comic simply called “Uprising” has appeared that seems to lay the groundwork for the information that is set to be announced on April 12th.

Blizzard’s Australia / New Zealand Twitter account has a teaser video on it that seems to be teasing some type of revelation headed out on April 12th. Called “Overwatch Mission Archives”, it shows off recorded data from several years ago of the King’s Row Uprising. In the background (lower right), you can see Tracer in a skin that is not in the game at the current time.