Blizzard previews the year ahead for Overwatch

Year of the Dog

Fresh off his marathon yule log stream over the holiday break, game director Jeff Kaplan is back with a recap of the last year for Overwatch and what’s coming up in 2018. “We are well along the path on [introducing the 27th hero],” he says, adding that there are “some great new maps in the works.”

Kaplan doesn’t delve into anything particularly out there or unexpected. The topics discussed today are more of a continuation of Blizzard’s work over the past year, so don’t expect any big reveals yet.

With that in mind, here’s what he touches on:

• Overwatch League skins are coming soon.

• The Blizzard World map is also dropping soon.

• The team will continue fine-tuning competitive play with fixes and tweaks with each new season. “As the year goes on, we want to evolve our plan for what competitive play looks like over the long term of Overwatch,” according to Kaplan. That could mean it will eventually “take a different shape or form,” but that’s “still to be determined.”

• More story development, specifically furthering the storyline with shorts and comics.

• The Lunar New Year event (Year of the Dog) with “some pretty significant content.”

• The “next iteration” of the lore-based Uprising event. “We have a lot of really big ideas.”

• The Anniversary event will return.

• Finally, “a ton of new content” will be added to the basic (non-event) loot boxes.