Blizzard Announces Overwatch Beta Test Coming Soon

Blizzard’s been chatting about its free-to-play shooter Overwatch pretty much non-stop since it announced it at Blizzcon last year. Blizzard has finally locked in the launch date for the Overwatch beta, so we can finally stop chatting and get playing.

The beta for the Team Fortress 2-esque shooter will be launching on October 27th in the United States of America, before rolling out to additional regions at a later date. Judging from Blizzard’s output it seems reasonably safe to get excited. The esteemed development studio has a knack for releasing addictive games polished to within an inch of their lives, and it’s about time there was a contender to Team Fortress 2’s ‘feelgood’ class-based FPS crown. Those opting into the beta will be split off into two groups. The first will be the closed beta testers. This a limited group of players that will have access to the Overwatch servers at all time, and who will be providing feedback directly to blizzard. The second group will be much larger but will be restricted to playing during certain beta test weekends. These will be limited to specific maps and hero types and will run intermittently, so you’ll have to keep your eyes on Battle.net for details on them. I’d imagine the latter one is a stress test, so expect those servers to take an absolute battering. “We're aiming to accomplish two primary goals with our public beta test,” wrote Blizzard. “First, get tons of top-notch feedback on the gameplay—including balance, feel, and fun—to help us make Overwatch the best team-based shooter on the planet. Second, we want to hammer the heck out of our tech, including stress-testing our server infrastructure and making sure the game runs great on the widest variety of systems possible.”
Overwatch isn’t really a title that stands out from the crowd but that’s never really been the case with Blizzard. It's all about perfecting what's already been done. Great gameplay will be enough to ensure word spreads among the fanbase and to the wider gaming world, and I’d be pretty confident Blizzard can deliver.