This is a categorized archive of all relevant Communication from Blizzard Entertainment regarding Overwatch. This includes all relevant forum posts from the Overwatch Development Team, community managers, and customer service representatives from both the new forums and the old forums. This also includes any relevant Reddit posts, Developer Update Videos, News Articles, Technical Support Articles, Third-Party Interviews, etc. Basically, anything that is not in an organized place. Links to Patch Notes along with descriptions of the key changes in each patch are now included with the recent change to the website structure.
Any Irrelevant Meme or Prank responses (yes they do have some from time to time).
Any posts that hint or preview features or changes to the game that have now been applied in the current patch of the game. For example in 2016 and 2017, Reporting on Console was a heavily requested feature. Since that feature is now in the game, any mentions of that post are no longer included in this archive.
Any posts that donât specifically discuss the reasoning of any hero balance changes that have already been applied. (i.e. âYes, we have plans for Mercyâ coming soon.) However, posts that give specific reasoning to hero balance changes will be archived. (i.e. âWe have no plans to revert Mercy. We are very satistified with the changes.â)
Most Blizzard Posts regarding the gameâs development in Beta, unless it is historically relevant. I donât have direct access to the beta forums which have been shut down for years now, not to mention most posts in the Beta are irrelevant to the state of the game today.
How to navigate this guide
To keep things simple, click on the expand header to open that category to view that list of posts. Posts are organized by subject, post author, date, and source. A emoji indicates a post that is no longer available to be replied to. A emoji indicates a post that may be longer relevant to the current state of the game. A emoji indicates a post that contains highly relevant information and is a recommended read for all members of the community. A emoji indicates a post that contains information that is temporarily relevant and will likely be removed from the archives at a later date. A emoji indicates a post that may lead to âdangerousâ content, the post is to denote the warning from Blizzard about such content, but be sure to not navigate to the source content in order to protect your accounts. A icon means the content can only be viewed if you have a BlizzCon Virtual Ticket (when the BlizzCon site is open and available).
Why this guide was made
I like maintaining a record of all relevant responses from Blizzard in order to answer questions to other players on these forums. I hope that by sharing this organized database, players will be able to look into past developer responses to be able to cite from when creating constructive content here on the forums. Please let me know in the comments below if I missed any relevant content (be sure to provide a link), or if I just screwed something up (I am sure I mislinked something at least once). As a Forum MVP, I do not represent Blizzard Entertainment, and while all information in this thread is believed to be correct to the best of my ability, there may be mistakes present. Learn more about the Forum MVP program here.
Overwatch 2 is considered a live-service game delivering content on a seasonal basis.
The game will launch on October 4th, 2022 with all new features including new heroes, a new âcoreâ gamemode called âPushâ, and new maps. New PVE content including Story Missions and Hero Missions will launch starting in future seasons in 2023.
Overwatch 2 will be Free to Play for everyone (regardless if you own Overwatch 1) with optional purchases including premium currency and seasonal Battle Passes.
Overwatch 2 will have an updated graphics engine and updated sound engine.
Heroes will have a new default skin appearance in Overwatch 2.
There will be a new gameplay HUD to be more streamlined.
Players from Overwatch 1 will be able to access their collected content (skins, emotes, sprays, etc.) on Overwatch 2.
Cross-Progression will be available upon the launch of Overwatch 2 and players can access all collected items from all platforms linked to the same BattleNet account.
There is no release date for Overwatch 2 as of the announcements made in Blizzconline on February 19th, 2021
New Maps
New Confirmed PVP maps include:
Circuit Royale (Monte Carlo) - Escort
New Queen Street (Toronto, Canada) - Push
Midtown (New York, United States) - Hybrid
Colosseo (Rome, Italy) - Push
Unconfirmed maps include:
Gothenburg, Sweden - Originally was seen as an Assault map in BlizzCon 2019, but the Assault PVP map type is being removed from core gamemodes.
New Story Mode PVE Maps include:
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Toronto, Canada
India
New Heroes premiering at launch.
Sojourn - Damage Role
Junkerqueen - Tank Role
Upcoming Support Hero
Changes to PVP Modes
5v5 - Overwatch 2 core gamemodes will change to a 5v5 format with Role Queue modes using 1 Tank, 2 Damage, and 2 Support heroes.
PUSH - Push is a new core PVP mode that combines elements from both Control and Escort. A neutral robot/omnic stands in the center of the primary route of a symmetrical map with teams spawning at each end. The teams will engage and attempt to gain control of the robot (similar to gaining control of a payload). The team that is in control of the robot will begin escorting that Robot until it reaches an obstacle on the primary route, where then the robot will start pushing it (this causes him to move slower). If the robot pushes past the halfway point between the center starting point and the final objective point, a forward spawn for that team unlocks. The robot will start to walk in the opposite direction if the opposing team takes control of the robot. If the robot reaches the center point of the map after a team has a forward spawn activated, that forward spawn will be closed. The team that can push forward the greater distance within 10 minutes or successfully pushes the robot to the endpoint of the opposite end of the map will win.
The Assault (a.k.a. 2CP) map type will be retired from Competitive Play in Overwatch 2. It may still appear in other game modes and there is no word on whether maps that were originally the Assault map type will change or appear as a different map type.
The Overwatch Team is currently experimenting with dramatic changes to all heroes including the introduction of Role Passives and significant reworks to all existing Tank heroes.
Role Passives are passive benefits granted to heroes of a specific role. Right now this includes tanks giving less ultimate charge for damage taken and have knockback resistance, damage heroes gaining additional movement ability for flanking, and support heroes regaining health after avoiding damage for a time.
Tank overhauls are geared to making the Tank role more of an upfront brawler rather than be a defensive guard. Some changes include giving Reinhardt the ability to use 2 Firestrikes, be able to cancel his charge, but have his barrier at very limited health (was seen at 800 HP).
PVE Modes
Story Missions - The primary story mode will consist of 4 players working together to complete a series of objectives against computer-controlled enemies (similar to the Overwatch Archives PVE missions). There will be item abilities that are picked up which can be used by any hero including manual turrets, grenades, shields, and health pods.
Hero Missions - Hero Missions are designed to be deeply replayable similar to that of World Quests in World of Warcraft and will play on the existing PVP maps with variable objectives. Missions include holdouts, boss battles, and more. All heroes can be selected in all Hero Missions.
Archive Missions - Players will be able to enjoy the Archive PVE missions that have been released previously in Overwatch 1
In-Game Cinematics - Every Story Mission will include a cinematic intro and outro.
Talent System - Players will be able to level up their heroes throughout the game and gain new and more powerful versions of their key abilities and ultimates (which are exclusive to PVE modes).
Other Quick Facts
The game will introduce a new dog character related to one of the heroes which according to Jeff Kaplan âpeople will fall in love with.â It is confirmed not to be any existing dog (such as Orisaâs French Bulldog).
No heroes from Overwatch 1 will be removed.
Overwatch 2 will replace Overwatch 1 entirely.
Loot Boxes will be removed upon the launch of Overwatch 2. It is not yet known what will happen to Loot Boxes, Gold Currency, or Competitive Points, but details will be provided in the months to come leading up to the launch of Overwatch 2.
All players will be required to enable Phone Notifications on their Blizzard BattleNet acccount in order to play Overwatch 2.
This section details specific responses related to how Blizzard interacts with and manages the expecations of the community, along with details explaining the community manager role. (Some older posts from other sections have been moved here.)
As always if any of you have sourcable information about any developer comments about Overwatch or Overwatch 2, be sure to post here and I will review it to see if it needs to be in the archive or not. Thank you everyone for your support in this project of mine. Cheers!
Hey everyone, as we have all noticed, we got a short story for Mercy (and likely and upcoming mini-event this week). However there has been some chatter on Reddit from mostly Lead Engineer Bill Warnecke. So here is the latest tidbits of information added to the Dev Post Archives.
Hey everyone, there is a new section added to the Archives, which is the âArtâ section. The reasoning for creating this is that I discovered that PlayOverwatch.com has overhauled the Media page and the Reference Kit PDFs are no longer directly available on the site. The good news is that those PDFs are still in their original locations on Blizzardâs servers (for the moment), so I have provided the links to them here in the archive. To give the section a little more content, I have decided to go ahead and link any available panels and videos that relate to the art development of Overwatch (though mostly this is BlizzCon panels, so you will need a Virtual Ticket to access that content). Find the Art section just below the Lore & Comics sections.
On a side note, I am aware of another interview that Jeff Kaplan did at University of Southern California. There was some information informally tweeted out by those who attended including comments on why the PTR is not played a lot. I will not be posting any information from that here in the archives as it was not necessarily intended for full public distribution and the posted information is subject to personal interpretation (and may be inaccurate).
Do we know whether cosmetics earned in OW2 will cross back to OW1? Or will it be like on the PTR, where live will cross over to PTR, but PTR wonât cross over to live?
Is it possible Overwatch 2 will be cross platform considering Blizzard working with Activision which just successfully produced a cross platform Call of Duty. Surely this would help maintain a stronger Overwatch community.
I figure it will happen, unless the legacy code of the matchmaker and servers is that difficult to rewrite. Theyâve said before it is something they want to do, and they might implement cross profession as well while theyâre at it.
emoji indicates a post that is no longer available to be replied to. A 
emoji indicates a post that may be longer relevant to the current state of the game. A 
emoji indicates a post that contains highly relevant information and is a recommended read for all members of the community. A 
emoji indicates a post that contains information that is temporarily relevant and will likely be removed from the archives at a later date. A 
emoji indicates a post that may lead to âdangerousâ content, the post is to denote the warning from Blizzard about such content, but be sure to not navigate to the source content in order to protect your accounts. A 
icon means the content can only be viewed if you have a BlizzCon Virtual Ticket (when the BlizzCon site is open and available).
