The latest Overwatch update is currently available in the game’s Public Test Realm, and along with the new character Ana and a host of balance changes, it includes support for 21:9 aspect monitors. Unfortunately, the feature isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Blizzard just announced the first new character being added to Overwatch. Named Anna, Blizzard describes her as a "battle-scarred veteran who supports her teammates from a distance using a unique and highly specialized collection of weapons."
If every developer did this, we’d be living in a cheat-free world right now. Blizzard is suing a German company, Bossland for their Overwatch cheat tool that allows players to see through walls. This tool, ‘Watchout Tyrant’ as well as several others have been singled out for copyright infringement, giving Blizzard grounds to remove the tool. In a report by Torrentfreak.com, the website found out that Blizzard has filed a lawsuit against Bossland GMBH at a federal court in California. Bossland aren’t just making cheat tools for Overwatch, they also have tools for Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm and World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s lawsuit accuses Bossland of various forms of copyright infringement, unfair competition, and violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.
Ever wanted to play as Tracer, Mei or even Reinhardt in Street Fighter 5? Well, you might not care but at least you can now! Street Fighter 5 modder, THEJAMK, has released several Overwatch character mods, including: Tracer as Cammy, D.Va as Karin, Mei as Mika and Reinhardt as Zangief. The modding community for Street Fighter 5 have managed some impressive feats, such as creating alternative versions of stages (day and night variations) and even fixing some of the bad models like Ken, particularly his awful face. They’ve also created some creepy nude mods, but, you know, that’s ‘fan service’.
LawBreakers is a bit like Battleborn, in that almost every time someone mentions either one of those games, people can’t help but think of Overwatch. We aren’t sure whether this is because LawBreakers has heroes in it, or because people are lazy and will lump every FPS together as being near enough the same thing… Anyway, Eurogamer’s Chris Bratt asked Cliff Bleszinski, the founder of Boss Key what he thought of the comparisons between the two games. “…there is some overlap in regards to the fact that we have characters and guns and weapons and whatnot, but the thing is that our art style is a little bit more gritty,” said Bleszinski to Eurogamer. “Theirs is kind of, super bright colours, almost anime-ish characters…they’re going for a bazillion different characters, while we’re going initially with less is more, and we’re ramping up to find our balance.”
Did you have trouble playing Overwatch at around 10:30PM PST? Overwatch players were having trouble signing in (or even opening their game) for roughly two hours, supposedly thanks to the infamous DDoS group Lizard Squad. Blizzard were having trouble with their authentication servers only three days ago, though whether this has anything to do with Lizard Squad is another thing entirely. You’ve probably heard of Lizard Squad before. As a group, they’ve been responsible for several DDoS attacks that have taken down servers including: Destiny, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. We should make it very clear that the people involved with Lizard Squad are not hackers. They do nothing but run a program that ruins servers, individually it’s not a problem but with several thousand people it causes huge issues.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Jeff Kaplan (Game Director of Overwatch) went over several important questions the community has been asking since the game launched. Here are the most noteworthy things he spoke about in the interview: • Competitive mode is still planned for the end of this month, there’s still no set launch date right now • Seasons in Competitive mode will last around three months • You can rank up and down in the new version of Competitive mode, you couldn’t before in the beta • McCree will be receiving a nerf to his ‘Fan the Hammer’ move soon • Blizzard are still looking at ways to buff D.Va. It’ll either be in survivability or a damage upgrade, not both • PC and consoles will receive updates at the same time • Play of the Game will be tweaked to show the action from different angles • Blizzard have started work on patches throughout the year • Players still haven’t found all the hints about the upcoming hero named Sombra
We are sure everyone is loving Overwatch, and rightly so because it’s an amazing game, but there’s one thing that has been bothering a lot of FPS fans. The hitbox detection seems to be off, to the point where headshots seem to be registering even when you haven’t technically landed one. Force Gaming has analysed the hitbox detection and found that the hitboxes are definitely off. This is most likely a design choice by Blizzard, as Overwatch is a very casual FPS which is exactly why it is attracting millions of players. Bigger hitboxes mean players will feel like they are doing well when they land a hard headshot/kill. Casual players won’t have much fun if they are missing lots of shots.
Blizzard have confirmed that Overwatch has managed to sell seven million copies across all platforms since launching last Tuesday. These seven million players have racked up an astounding 119 million hours of playtime, swapped heroes 326 million times and delivered 11 million payloads to their destinations. “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,” said CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Morhaime.
Overwatch fans may be slightly disappointed to hear that Blizzard are going to need more time creating the Competitive Mode. The Competitive Mode was originally scheduled for mid-June, but the official Overwatch Twitter account has posted that the mode has been pushed back to mid-to-late July. The open beta of Overwatch featured competitive play, but could only be accessed by players that reached rank 25 or higher. Perhaps this wouldn’t be the worst decision for Blizzard to delay the competitive mode. Not only would it give the developers time to make the mode better, but it would give the Overwatch community more time to get better at the game. This is by no means an ideal solution, but there are some terrible Overwatch players that could probably do with some more playing time.
Most Overwatch players are getting sick of the High Noon cowboy, who seems to have enough power to kill any character in the game in less than three seconds. Blizzard are working on figuring out the best way to tone his damage down. D.Va players are also in for a treat, as Blizzard are looking into giving her a slight damage upgrade. Geoff Goodman, Overwatch’s Principal Designer posted on two topics at the Official Blizzard forums explaining the reasons why these two characters may receive changes. Here’s what Goodman had to say about McCree: ”I've been watching McCree carefully since we've released. McCree's flashbang plays an important role in being a strong option against very fast/agile teams (tracers/genjis/etc). It is also a nice tool to prevent close range devastating abilities and ultimates such as Reaper's Death Blossom. That said, its probably a bit too good at dealing damage to higher health targets such as Tanks and barriers. I don't have any concrete changes yet, but I'm going to be testing some things internally to see how he plays."
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Overwatch is the type of game you can jump in and out of whenever you want, but the game really gets good when your team works together. Here are two group finders that will help you elevate your gameplay to another level. The first group finder is THE100. Originally a group finder created for console exclusive title Destiny, this group finder has been described by one Reddit poster as the reason he kept playing Destiny.
Overwatch has officially released, and with its release come details about the microtransactions. Overwatch features microtransactions that allow players to purchase loot boxes. These boxes contain four items that be any of the following rewards: skins, voice lines, sprays and animations. Players that receive the same reward twice will be given credits instead. With enough credits, players can purchase any item on the store provided they have the required amount.
In the run up to Overwatch’s launch, Blizzard have been releasing short animated videos that explore some of the character’s backstory. This time, Soldier: 76 gets his animated debut. Soldier: 76 used to be the original leader of the Overwatch, the group of heroes tasked with saving the world. According to the video, it sounds like he no longer sees himself as a hero, choosing to spend his time beating up local cartels in El Dorado.
Yesterday, Blizzard released another animated short that explores the relationship between playable Overwatch characters Hanzo and Genji. The short is entitled ‘Dragons’ and focuses on the sons of the Shimada Clan and an event that changed their relationship forever. This is the third animated short released by Blizzard in the last few months, with the others focusing on characters Widowmaker and Winston. A number of threads are also now active on Reddit as fans discuss the short in detail.
There’s been a lot of anger towards cheaters in the Overwatch beta who have seemingly gone punished. Blizzard have calmed down the community by reaffirming their position on cheating: anyone caught cheating will be permanently banned from the game. This news is welcomed by the e-sports scene in particular as there have been a number of players with suspicious aiming. NeoGAF and Reddit have been watching the Overwatch Pro League to catch cheaters – so far two players (Taimou and Surefour) have been caught using aimbots. Of course, the e-sports scene isn’t the only part of the game with cheaters. As a result of cheaters, Blizzard are adding the ability to report players mid-match.
Blizzard have announced that an incredible 9.7 million people participated in the Overwatch open beta last week across PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Not only did Overwatch break all of Blizzard’s internal records, it also managed to surpass other betas too, including: Star Wars Battlefront (9.5 million players), The Division (6.4 million players) and Destiny (4.6 million players). In just five days, participants had racked up more than eighty-one million hours of gameplay across thirty-seven million matches.
Overwatch’s Open Beta (which was originally scheduled to end today) has been extended until 6pm BST tomorrow (10th May). Community Manager ‘Lylirra’ posted this on the Overwatch Open Beta discussion forum on Battle.net yesterday:
Overwatch beta access has been a pretty hot commodity over the past couple of months, and Blizzard is giving players one more chance to get in ahead of the game’s release next month.