Could some of our favorite Overwatch agents be retired? After an initial comment to Game Informer by Jeff Kaplan regards to the possibility of removing existing heroes the game director has taken to the official forums to expand upon his comments.
Originally Kaplan stated to GI that the dev team had “left the door open” on the retirement on heroes in the future. He cited the game’s business model of providing all players new content for free as one of the reasons he might not feel bad for removing an existing hero.
“We would leave the door open to that. I think the fact that we chose the business model we did – that the game comes with all the heroes and we’re giving you everything [extra] for free so far – allows us to retire a hero without feeling bad about it. But I think we have a long way to go before heroes will need to be. “
Don’t Panic! Because now Kaplan has posted on the official forums to say that the dev team has no plans to retire heroes and that the internet is making “a mountain out of a molehill”.
“We don’t have any plans to retire any heroes. The interviewer asked if there was a possibility that this could ever happen and I “left the door open”. The original poster in this thread did not even link to the original article but rather to an article quoting the article in question.
We’re not even remotely thinking about retiring heroes right now or anytime in the foreseeable future.
I think this thread is making a mountain out of a molehill.
So all of those players (myself included) who have for their most play of the games as Bastion don’t have to worry about the mobile turret being removed from the game anytime soon! Blizzard has spent a lot of time since the game shipped in May teasing new heroes. Ana, the medical sniper was released this past June and the elusive spy master Sombra has not yet been revealed.
Console players of Overwatch have brought up an issue regarding the game’s auto-aim feature on consoles. According to several forum posts submitted by players the game’s aim system will actually move away from enemies such as Genji during the middle of a jump.
“‘I’m moving the control stick horizontally the whole time. All Vertical movement is due to Blizzard’s built in Aim Assist. Every time Genji jumps, the Aim Assist moves away from him. To hit Genji, you have to fight against the Aim Assist. Any other character spamming the jump button will show similar results.”
They even included video evidence of this glitch occurring:
Members of Blizzard’s development team where quick to respond, including the game’s director Jeff Kaplan.
Here is what technical lead Tim Ford had to say about the auto-aim snafu, apparently Blizzard has found the issue and a fix will be included in the next console patch:
“Thank you all for gathering data on this issue. We’ve identified the defect and a fix will be available with the next console patch.”
Are you playing Overwatch on consoles? Let us know about your experience in the comment section!
With the Rio Olympic Games beginning this Friday Blizzard is getting into the competitive spirit with their newest Overwatch update. An entire limited edition collection of Olympic-themed skins, sprays, voice lines and other goodies have been added to Overwatch’s loot boxes just in time for the international sporting competition.
All told there are over 100 different collectible items that are available through the Summer Games Loot boxes. Each box is guaranteed to contain at least one item from the new limited time set. These items are available via in-game loot boxes earned for leveling up through the regular progression system or by purchasing them for real cash. The Summer Games items will only be available August 22nd.
Everyone who logs into Overwatch from now until the 22nd receives a free loot box from the main menu!
Here is a detailed look at several of the exclusive Overwatch Summer Games skins:
Has all this excitement about a new Overwatch hero kept you in suspense? If you were expecting ‘Sombra’, well you have a few seconds to be sad before it is revealed that Ana, Overwatch’s new medical sniper may in fact be Pharah’s mother! Several hints are dropped during the trailer including the fact that it takes place on Temple of Anubis and also that Pharah is featured prominently in the trailer’s cast of supporting heroes.
In terms of abilities, Ana seems to be able to cast a damage reduction cool-down on friendly targets, she is also able to heal targets with a scoped snipe heal and it is possible that her ultimate is able to anesthetize enemy targets from long range.
No word yet on when we will get to play Ana, but as with all things Blizzard, I’m sure it will be a surprise. What do you think of Overwatch’s first post-launch addition? Let us know in the comments section!
If you like me find yourself spending most nights playing Overwatch, you probably already know about Sombra. Sombra is featured in a ton of the media for Overwatch. Shes in many of the levels. And there have been several hints to her identity from in game voice lines, pictures, and behind the scenes stuff.
Sombra
Well now we know shes probably coming this month to an Overwatch team near you.
[ARCHIVE] Communications Records of Ziegler, A. – Overwatch File 00231 – Security Classification: CONFIDENTIAL pic.twitter.com/lLAxTL2DhO
and that will probably be her gun. In case you dont want to read the text (it is kinda small) here it is
“While Torbjörn has, as ever, put forth a very clever design for his latest weapon, I would like to remind everyone that my intention when agreeing to the development of different biotic delivery mechanisms was to save the lives of Overwatch agents and others in need of medical aid. With this latest proposal, it is clear to me that we are on the slippery slope to modifications that will inevitably result in a weaponized version of this technology: something that I have been completely opposed to from the beginning.”
So what’s a Sombra anyways?
We don’t know a whole lot about this new character, but what we do know is this
She’s Pharah’s mother
She’s an Overwatch founder
She’s going to be a long range healer
Her gun might be dual mode with a heal and a damage ability
Neogaff has a long thread that puts together all of the evidence that Sombra is going to be the new character revealed later this month. Its pretty good reading but Neogaff is known to jump to conclusions on things that they dont really know about. So take it with a LARGE grain of salt.
Jeff Kaplan muddied the waters even more and made Neogaff seem smart when last week he told Eurogamer “We have put a lot of hints, all over the game and out of the game, so I would say it’s about time that people are concerned with who Sombra is.”
So it sure seems like Sombra is going to be the next member of Overwatch, but we will have to wait a little bit to find out.
Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net service was the target of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack this past evening. Customer service agents announced the service distribution on one of the company’s official twitter accounts.
Users reported connection problems with games like Overwatch on Reddit, with several posts being unable to even sign-in to the Battle.net launcher. Over the course of this outage our staff noticed considerable lag and matchmaking issues with Overwatch as well.
The entire attack lasted roughly seven hours – at least that the time difference between Blizzard CS announcing the attack and sounding the all clear.
[#BNet] We are currently monitoring a DDOS attack against network providers which is affecting latency/connections to our games.
We all knew it would be big, but im not sure that anyone could have predicted that almost 2/3 of the people who played in the free beta would end up paying for the game. Seven million players have played overwatch during this its first week of existence. To put that in perspective the last COD sold a total of 5 million copies, and with in a few weeks its player population had dropped to less than one million.
Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said “Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch—from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who’d never picked up a game like this before—and we’re very grateful for everyone’s incredible passion and enthusiasm, We poured a lot of effort into creating a game—and a new universe—that anyone could enjoy. We’re ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we’re looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come.”
The total number of hours played of the game is already over 100 million as of this writing. I my self have sunk about 40 hours in to the game this week, it has been one of the very few games recently that I have been willing to play on my own. its unique feel and solid shooter mechanics just keep people coming back. I personally also can not wait for competitive mode when I hope find a team to play with in a semi-competitive manner!
A friend recently shared with me some Overwatch art from the talented artist 솔져앓이 릴루. As the internet absolutely loves Overwatch right now, and has always loved cats, I thought that I just had to share these cute kitty heroes!
Below is cat fan art for 18 of the 21 heroes in Overwatch, only the three non-human heroes have been excluded (Bastion, Winston and Zenyatta).
A little skill with Photoshop or Gimp can turn these images into your very own team composition. I’ve shared my own above!
Symmetra looking stoic and regal, while Mei sits next to her; cute, fluffy and joyful!
Reaper and McCree about to start a cat-fight. I wonder what Reaper’s kitty voice would sound like?
Junkrat looking as hyped-up and unstable as ever, while his colossal bodyguard, Roadhog, rests behind him.
A perky and muscled Zarya chatting to a less-than-pleased looking Pharah.
Two of the fastest cats around, Lucio and Tracer, share a paw-bump.
Even kitty Mercy still has her wings and she towers over her old Overwatch comrade, Torbjorn.
Reinhardt and Soldier 76 rock their scars on white fur together.
The two moodiest kitties, the snipers, Hanzo and Widowmaker, glare at everyone else.
And, finally, D.va playfully bats at Genji, whose cybernetics transferred quite well to his cat form.
Hope you enjoy these feline heroes. Share your own team composition kitties below!
In-universe, when the world needed the heroes of Overwatch they were nowhere to be found but thankfully they’ve come to our consoles & PCs at just the right time to save us from the onslaught of generic grey/brown FPS games. This is not only Blizzard Entertainment’s first original intellectual property in 17 years but also the company’s first foray into team based First Person shooters. Can the folks at Blizzard capture the objective and prove that they can still innovate or is Overwatch a causality of its own hype?
It is almost impossible to talk about Overwatch without acknowledging what little we do know about the project that preceded it – Titan, we do know for sure that it eventually became the team based shooter we know today after a lengthy development period stretching all the way back to at least 2007 and included at least one full project reboot. Blizzard has publically said that Overwatch is not only their first new franchise but also a redemption story for Jeff Kaplan and his team – who up until the game’s November 2014 unveiling had lived in the shadow of the other Blizzard development teams. Like the heroes that comprise Overwatch the development team behind this game experience a great loss before being able to climb their way back to the top.
At it’s most basic Overwatch is a 6 Vs 6 team based shooter where co-operation and communication between teammates to absolutely vital to victory. Blizzard has taken hints from one of their other games, Heroes of the Storm, by eliminating the focus on kills (called eliminations in Overwatch) or the ratio between a player’s kills / deaths. Instead, teams must focus on the objective at hand – whether that is defending / attacking a given point on the map or escorting / stopping a moving objective called “the payload”. Player’s won’t find a traditional scoreboard upon death either, everything revolves the completion or failure of an objective and this gives players a sense of comradery even when playing with randoms.
Heroes are a core component of the Overwarch experience and the game does as much as it can, without locking you out of selecting certain broad categories of Hero, to ensure that your team is as balanced as possible. Each hero has a hand full of abilities which give them a unique play-style and toolkit but if you were to boil them down to the essentials you’ve got: Attack, Defense, Tank & Support. A successful team must be able to adapt their play-style and change heroes fluidly in order to successfully counter-strategies from the opposing team. A failure in maintaining a good team composition can make the difference between success & failure.
Overwatch’s gallery of heroes sports a roster of 21 colorful and eccentric individuals. Rather than list all of them here are just a few of the heroes that I’ve enjoyed in the week since the game’s release:
Bastion – Categorized as a defense hero this robot is able to transform into a powerful stationary turret at the press of a button. A well placed Bastion is able to rip through an entire team minus a tank in just a few seconds flat. The downside to bastion is that it takes several seconds for Bastion to switch modes, so a well-placed Tracer can be an effective counter to our robotic friend. Bastion’s ultimate allows players to transform into a mobile tank delivering a near insta-kill concussive blast.
Pharah– This armor-clad security chief is a no-nonsense combatant. Welding a medium damage rocket launcher & thruster pack, former Quake III players will be right at home with Pharah. Her primary attack launches a rocket straight forward while her secondary move allows her to jet into the air for a couple of seconds before floating down. Perhaps her most devastating attack is her Ultimate which sees her rocket into the sky and unleash a barrage of missiles at a given target area. If you’re looking for that old school arena FPS feel you can’t go wrong with Pharah.
D.VA – A professional Starcraft player who joined up with the Korean special forces during the story events leading up to the present. How did South Korea defend itself from the oncoming Omnic hordes? By allowing professional E-Sports players to pilot mecha, of course! D.VA has one of the highest health pools in the game and to offset this advantage her base damage is a lot lower than other tanks. She has a “defensive matrix” that allows her to negate all incoming projectiles in a frontal cone for a few seconds which is a great option when you are cornered waiting for teammates to help out. Her ultimate is perhaps my favorite in the game – she sacrifices her Mecha, bailing out and overloading its engines causing a miniature nuclear explosion killing all enemies within line of sight. The destruction of her mecha isn’t the end of the game for D.VA either, she continues on foot with a smaller pool of health and a powerful pistol!
With little single player content, save for a versus A.I mode that is more of a training tutorial to get your feet wet with new heroes before heading off into the competitive mode no discussion of Overwatch can be complete without talking about the game’s community. For the most part it was smooth sailing in regards to fellow players but every so often one or two players would decide that they didn’t need to play the recommended roles – a sniper on an attack phase is totally a legit strategy and there is no way 6 tracers (who has a very small health pool) could go wrong /s. Overwatch is certainly one of those games where it is better to play with a full party of friends than just going it alone in the matchmaking queue. Also, given that this is an FPS – be prepared for “salty” players to hurl slurs at you and ignore objectives to play Overwatch like a team deathmatch simulator. Sadly, like most popular online games there is an element to the community that is outright toxic and they can sometimes ruin the fun vibe that Overwatch works so hard to create.
How did someone not realize that maybe this particular skin isn’t the best idea?
Once you’ve mastered your favorite heroes and memorized all of the maps what is left to keep you coming back? Overwatch offers players experience after the match based upon a number of factors – damage dealt, healing done, number of eliminations, whether or not they were part of the winning team etc. Upon leveling up players receive a “loot box” which contains up to 4 collectible unlocks for their heroes – wheether that is a new skin, voice line or spray. These loot boxes are a great way to keep players engaged with the game long after they’ve seen everything there is to do, content wise. For some reason, Blizzard has decided to allow players to purchase loot boxes for .99 each, which would make sense if Overwatch was a free to play or budget title but the console version is a $74,99 CDN release. Also, some of the additional outfits are cool but hopefully Blizzard veers away from the cultural appropriation with the next infusion of unlockable content – one of Pharah’s unlockable costumes is literally a stereotypical North American aboriginal person complete with headdress. Not only does this make zero sense in the context of the character – she is of Egyptian origin – but a company as large as blizzard should be culturally aware enough to realize than an entire culture’s way of dress is not a costume for characters to throw on and murder each other in.
In the end, Overwatch is an entertaining and bright shooter than brings the popular “hero” mechanics from the MOBA genre successfully into the FPS space. With its focus on objective game types it does its best to ensure that every game is a fun experience, even if the community can sometimes hamper these efforts. At the heart of the game is its’ great cast of character, with 21 options available at launch players are sure to find a few heroes who resonate with them but even new players shouldn’t be afraid to step outside of their comfort zone and check out that one hero that they have 0 minutes of play time with. A lack of gameplay mode variety and some troubling unlockable costumes certainly take Overwatch down a peg but if you’re looking for that unique brand of Blizzard fun, Overwatch has your back.
So if your alive, and awake at all, you probably have been playing Overwatch, Blizzards huge new shooter. I my self have spent about 40 hours playing since the games release just over a week ago. I often found my self wondering if some of the more prevalent “myths” about the game are real or fake. Well DefendTheHouse (of mythbusters halo fame) is here to answer your questions. With this second volume they are covering many popular myths like can you block a Hanzo ultimate with a D.iVa shield? and can Bastion kill people by landing on them.
Take a gander at the video and while you are there be sure to subscribe to us on Youtube so you can catch all of our videos too!
Overwatch has only been out three days but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a shortage of awesome moments, partially thanks to the closed beta that was everywhere for several months, and partially thanks to the fact that Overwatch is the only thing the internet can talk about right now.
The moments I’ve selected below range from the jaw dropping (the reaper kill-streak) to the dark and twisted (scroll down to the last one).
If you have your own GIF of an awesome play make sure to share it in the comments.
In case you have been busy, or just forgot, last night was the global launch of Blizzards first FPS Overwatch. With the launch came the answer to the long left in the air question of “but how will Blizzard make any money if its not free to play with microtransactions?” We finally know how much each of those sweet, sweet loot boxes is going to cost if you want to skip the grinding and just get right to the games rarest items.
2 Loot Boxes: $1.99/£1.59
5 Loot Boxes: $4.99/£3.99
11 Loot Boxes: $9.99/£7.99
24 Loot Boxes: $19.99/£15.99
50 Loot Boxes: $39.99/£31.99
What do you think? Personally I think its right in that sweet spot of not too expensive, but also giving you enough that you will come back for more. YouTube is already filling up with people opening 100 crates, or 50 crates, and just like CS:GO boxes, as long as Blizzard keeps releasing skins, or other new content, this monetization strategy could keep the game profitable for years to come. The game has hundreds of unlockables, from voice lines, to sprays, to skins, and it would take a non paying player hundreds of games to unlock all of them, if you just cant wait, it seems like 40USD (the same as the base price of the game) will get you pretty deep in to the games unlocks.
That’s the time that the servers go live and Overwatch officially changes the landscape of team based first person shooters.
If the ticking of the clock is driving you insane, I recommend burning time reading the official Overwatch comics and watching their animated shorts. If you missed the beta or are looking for some tips, we’ve complied a list that will help ensure you enter the world of Overwatch with guns blazing:
Counter Pick – One of the key features of Overwatch is the ability to change heroes in the middle of a match. This allows you to adapt to the enemy team and pick counters to anyone who is being particularly tricky to deal with. Pharah raining on your parade? Snap to Soldier 76 or McCree and clip her wings. Bastion going for seige-mode? Turn him into a pile of scrap with Tracer, Reaper or Genji.
Did you know he used to have a shield, too? Bastion has already caused many broken keyboards, so make sure you counter him when he tries to mow your team down!
“Objectivewatch” – Overwatch is an objective based team game. You can get all of the kills in the match and still lose the game, so try not to get too distracted chasing down kills. Blizzard worked in a lot of benefit for helping the objective and not just badges! If you’re guiding a payload, note that it heals you and will increase its speed for each person standing near it (maxing out at 3 players).
Love Support, Kill Support – Healers in Overwatch are your best friend… unless they are on the enemy team, then they should be one of your top targets. A good support can make the enemy team feel unkillable, so make sure they are taken out!
Mercy can heal her teammates or give them a massive damage boost!
Move as a Team – While matches have a limited time, it’s okay to wait and group up before charging back into the battle. While an assassin character might need to run off and cut down an annoying sniper on their own, for the most part, you will get the most benefit of staying together, as each hero compliments and fills in the gaps that others leave. Not to mention, running in one by one is a good way to spend the whole match dead!
Play as a Team – Work on picking a well-balanced team that compliments each other well. Note that your ideal team composition on offense will likely be different than your ideal composition on defense, so switch around to fill in the gaps. Also work on playing your role in the team. While it might be really fun to charge into the enemy team as Reinhardt and get some good swings in, don’t charge off while you’re providing valuable defense to your squishier teammates and let them get slaughtered when their shield unexpectedly runs off.
Just avoid Winston if he is out of peanut butter.
Shoot Traps – Lots of heroes leave nasty little presents on the ground (and walls) for the opposing team. While you might be able to walk around them, you or your teammate might not be so nimble on your next pass, so light them up! Plus, you get kill credits for nuking them!
Enable Your Killfeed – In the options under gameplay, you can enable the killfeed, which will allow you to see who is killing whom in real time during your match. This will give you additional insight into what is happening, so you know who is alive, who isn’t, and who is mowing down their opponents.
Overwatch killfeed, courtesy of Gosu Gamers.
BE NICE – It’s a team game. If you are a jerk and toxic to your team, everyone will play worse. Mistakes happen and you’re in this together, so be nice!
Have Fun – It’s a game, enjoy it! Play at six Solider 76s and yell out “Call of Duty!!” every time you attack, see what happens when you put five Mercy’s on a McCree, go bananas with an all Winston team. Don’t be afraid to mess around here and there to see what strange team combinations can do!
After all, how seriously can you take this abomination?
