Overwatch

From December 11th to January 2nd, Overwatch players will be able to take part in the game's annual Winter Wonderland event. As expected, Winter Wonderland comes with a host of new cosmetics, sprays, voice lines, victory poses, skins and more. Speculation is high after a wily fan saw a new t-shirt for sale on the Blizzard Shop and opines that both Junkrat may get a "Rat King" skin that is thematically tied to Nutcracker Zenyatta and Odette Widowmaker.

From November 20th to November 26th, anyone on PC, PlayStation 4 or XBox One can play Overwatch for free including the game's newest hero, Ashe and her sidekick B.O.B.. During the free event, players who link Blizzard and Twitch accounts, and who watch 2-hours of authorized Overwatch streaming, can earn up to three Ashe sprays that are exclusive during the event. All items will be retained on the account should a player choose to purchase Overwatch.

The latest Overwatch patch notes have been published, most notably with the news that the game's newest hero, Ashe, is now live in the game. In addition, several heroes have been tweaked including buffs to Mercy, nerfs(ish) to Reaper and a mixed bag of both to Roadhog.

The Overwatch site has been updated with a new post to let the community know that the game's next major update will require players to reinstall the game completely. According to the post, this is due to the addition of "some pretty fundamental changes to the game client" on the back end. The post goes on to say that the "substantial number" of changes means that it isn't efficient to simply patch over the existing client.

The Overwatch site has been updated with a new blog post in cooperation with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. After players helped raise nearly $13M dollars earlier this year through sales of the Pink Mercy skin, the Foundation wanted to share insights into how those funds are being used in the spirit of transparency.

Overwatch's annual Halloween Terror event is back with lots of spooky theme items including new skins, sprays, highlight intros, emotes and more. Several heroes are getting the new-skin treatment this year such as Moira, Sombra, Pharah, Wrecking Ball, Mei, Soldier 76, Widowmaker, Doomfist and McCree. In addition, items from Halloween events in the past are back, so there's lot to collect.

The Overwatch Twitter has been busy over the past several days releasing short videos for some of the new skins coming during the Halloween Terror 2018 event that kicks off tomorrow. So far, we have seen Pharah, Wrecking Ball, Moira, and Doomfist.

Get ready for Overwatch thrills and chills when this year's Halloween Terror event kicks off. You can look for it starting on October 9th and for the goodies that will come with it. We don't know which Heroes will be getting new skins, but you can bet that there will be a plethora of them as well as sprays, voice lines, victory poses and much more.

A pair of interesting Overwatch news items came to light this week. The first is that Blizzard has thrown down the gauntlet regarding real-time predictive stats tracking apps similar to Pursuit or Visor. Players have been warned to stop using them or face bans in the future. The Visor app provides players with predictive information including when enemy ultimates will be ready, how quickly healers are dying and more. Pursuit provides statistical analysis to players after completed matches.

Overwatch has been updated to bring the new Busan map into the rotation. The map is themed around the home city of D.Va and the Korean city of the same name. The map was first previewed with the recently-released D.Va short, with the team working closely with the cinematics department to recreate their vision in the game.

The Overwatch League is growing again, this time with the addition of six more teams. Teams will be representing the following cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Washington D.C., Chengdu, Hangzhou and Paris. These six join the previously announced expansion franchises in Atlanta and Guangzhou.

Over the next couple of weeks, Overwatch players will be able to take part in D.Va's Nano Cola Challenge in order to earn specially-themed items including sprays, portraits and more.

The Overwatch forum has been updated with notice to Belgian players that paid loot boxes will soon be removed from both Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard, the post reads, made the decision "to comply with their (the Belgian Gaming Commission) interpretation of Belgian law".

Overwatch has been updated to bring Summer Games 2018 to players. The event brings a ton of new things to collect including skins, sprays, icons, highlight intros, emotes and more. Ana, Winston, Zenyatta, Reinhardt, Roadhog, D.Va, Moira, Brigitte, and Sombra all have new skins for 2018, though skins from past events are also available, including Soldier 76's awesome dad skin.

Blizzard has announced that the Summer Games will be making a return to Overwatch starting August 9th. "You'll get a kick out of this! Team up with your friends for the Summer Games on August 9th!" the Overwatch Twitter reads. You may remember that the first summer games was themed around the Olympics. Last year, the event took on a more generalized "summer" theme with bathing suits and even Soldier 76's grillmaster skin (complete with socks & sandals!).