You wake up on Christmas. You log onto Overwatch. Warming up, you head straight into quick play, only to find you are paired with 11 players who have not reached level 25. This is Christmas Day. Christmas means new systems, new games, and new players. As you head over to play Mei’s Snowball Offensive, you can’t help but think about what you would want for Christmas within Overwatch. Here is a comprehensive Overwatch Christmas List!
More Heroes
In the past, a new Hero has been released on Overwatch every four months. This comes out to three a year, and a total of eight new Heroes have been added since Overwatch’s release in May of 2016. While fans have welcomed the new Heroes with open arms, some have been pushing for more. Many hope for up to six new playable characters in a calendar year, with others simply asking for four.
Four Heroes in a year seems like a feasible model. This allows Blizzard time to create and market their new Heroes. They can create the proper background stories and tie them into the current lore of Overwatch. It also allows for more fluid metas. The addition of new Heroes every quarter would bring a welcome change to the Overwatch scene. Many people, players and fans alike, have complained about the GOATS comp for months. Having new characters be introduced would bring a new sense of diversity to a meta that is quite stale in the eyes of those consuming Overwatch content. With an increasing line of Heroes, players at the top level of the competitive scene will be able to figure out new, exciting metas that help shape the future of competitive play.
New Map Type
There are a few ideas that have been tossed around for the new map type. First, there is a Tug-Of-War format, where teams would fight to move a neutral payload to their separate objectives. This mode could feature maps similar to control, where the objective starts in the middle, but would pit enemy teams against one another in pushing the objective closer to their desired location. To give a slight advantage to the losing team, perhaps the winning team would need to push the cart closer to the enemy spawn room.
Second, there could be a team deathmatch. There has already been a competitive team deathmatch mode. This mode could be a full 6v6, with limited ultimate charge. A 50-kill game, which could be titled “Brawl.” This would be less objective based, which could help players who are better at defeating enemies, and not as good at taking the point.
Next, an interesting concept is one of reverse hybrid. Reverse hybrid would entail pushing a cart to a few locations, and a brawl to control the point at the very end. This would allow players to push the cart while having various team fights, but show their defensive skills in a final held point. This would not take much of a change from Blizzard, seeing as the hybrid maps are already part of the game.
Finally, there could be a game mode that would have an objective that needs to be destroyed. This could entail an offensive and defensive team, one fighting to destroy a set point, while the other protects it. The attacking team may need to destroy a certain amount to get progress. This would be similar to the three ticks needed to capture a point on other map types.
New Seasonal Game Modes
Overwatch does a variety of seasonal events, which include various skins, emotes, sprays and game types. Summer Games brings Lucioball, Halloween Terror brings Junkenstein’s Revenge, Winter Wonderland has Mei’s Snowball Offensive and Yeti Hunter, Lunar New Year brought Capture the Rooster. Then, Archives brought in a PvE brawl in Uprising, while the Anniversary event first introduced lockout elimination and limited duel game modes.
There are two routes that Blizzard could take here. First, they could introduce new seasonal events. For example, there could be a St. Patrick’s day event, 4th of July event, Thanksgiving event or Easter event.. Also, these do not need to be as long as some of the other events. Maybe the 4th of July event is simply a weekend event with a few new skins. Or the Thanksgiving event lasts a week, with a new game mode. Finally, you could have a Easter Egg Hunt during the Easter Event, where players hunt for a number of small, hidden control points.
The other route Blizzard could take would be to change up the current seasonal events. The Halloween Terror event has occurred three times, each with a fundamentally similar game type in Junkenstein’s Revenge. If Blizzard were to switch up the types of games that are playable during the event, similarly to the Winter Wonderland event having two game modes, it could help spark new interest in Overwatch, and make fans happier with the seasonal events.
Better Merch
The Overwatch League merch has been pulled off of the Blizzard store. Before that, they had a large sale for Black Friday, where they had up to 75% off of certain items. They did this because recently, Blizzard and Fanatics signed a deal for Fanatics to do the merchandising for the Overwatch League teams. The deal will hopefully bring better merch to fans of the Overwatch League.
There were fans who were disappointed in their gear, with reports of some fans receiving off colored logos on their authentic jerseys. Hopefully the partnership with Fanatics, who do the fan apparel for various professional sports leagues, will bring better merchandise for fans to collect and wear.
Story Mode
The lore behind the Overwatch Heroes is one that runs deep. Various shorts have been released about some heroes. However, all of these exist outside of the immediate game. Fans yearning for more story would be excited to see a story mode created about their beloved heroes. Each chapter of the story could be about a hero or group of heroes. This would allow players to get a hands on with each of the characters, while learning their backstories, and more about their relationship with the other heroes. This story mode could build off of the exciting lore that has already been created about the characters in Overwatch.
Overwatch League Preseason
The Overwatch League is still 51 days away, and fans of the popular esports league have not seen their favorite players since Blizzcon back in November. With this amount of time before fans can experience the thrill of the second season, there is a hope for preseason. The Overwatch League has not announced the dates or matchups for their preseason, but has confirmed that there will be a preseason. Fans wait eagerly for Blizzard to give any announcement about the preseason for Season Two.
The Overwatch League welcomed eight new teams to the league as part of Season Two. There are also various format changes, including division updates, scheduling changes and playoff changes, which you can read about here. The Overwatch League kicks off their second season on Feb. 14, 2019. The first game of Stage One is a replay of the Season One playoffs between the Philadelphia Fusion and reigning champions London Spitfire. The game starts at 7:00 PM EST. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
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