Overwatch celebrates its 2nd anniversary with goodies
Hail to the queen of the masquerade
Two years of terrible Hanzo mains. Two years of Mercy wondering why she even bothers. Two years of weirdly time-limited co-op events and two years of fan-art of everyone doing smooches on everyone else. Overwatch has been a wild ride so far, and there's plenty yet to come, but for the time being Blizzard are celebrating with three weeks of dancing, returning events and cosmetic goodies, plus a new Deathmatch map.
The biggest addition for this event is the Petra map, which Alice took a longer peek at here. Set in the Egyptian desert, it's a small, tight warren of tunnels built into the mountains with plenty of opportunities to knock people off high ledges. It's full of jump pads leading to higher vantage points (Widowmakers take note), but that comes with its own obvious risks. The other big thing happening in pure gameplay terms is an encore for every seasonal brawl to date, cycling daily. Today, it's Lucioball. Tomorrow, who knows? The co-op events and the asymmetrical Yeti Hunt will be included in this rotation, too.
Every character is getting in the party spirit for the anniversary, with new skins for all (many dance-party themed, but a few seem to think it's a costume event), plus new dance emotes, new sprays and all the usual Overwatch cosmetic gubbins. 50 new pieces in all, plus the temporary return of every other seasonal cosmetic item added to the loot box drops. If there was ever a time to grind to fill out your Overwatch wardrobe, now would be it.
Along with the anniversary event, they're putting the game on sale for the duration. The basic edition of the game is down by 50% to a quite palatable $20, while the new Legendary Edition (which includes 15 fancy character skins, but otherwise feature-identical) is down 33% from RRP from $60 to $40. You can snag both of these direct over on Blizzard's store.