Overwatch's plans for 2017 include a server browser
The year is over, watch
Overwatch [official site], aka The Shooter Whose Locker You Leave Perfumed Notes In, will be getting a server browser next year alongside other updates, says Blizzard in a developer update. It'll let you set your daft custom games as 'public', and they want to have a working version of it running in "early 2017". There's other small changes on the horizon for our best multiplayer shooter of the year, including the ability to have up to four emotes equipped at a time, which is downright obscene.
Firstly, here's the update vid from Overman Jeff Kaplan.
If you don't care to listen to that, I'll give you the diet version. For the emotes, they want you to have four at a time usable through the in-game communication wheel. But there's also going to be room for four voice lines and four sprays, which I imagine will make the pre-game wreck session even more gabby.
More seasonal events are planned too, some of the kind to be expected and some "you have absolutely no idea we're working on". More importantly, they are still clacking away with new hero prototypes, including one which is "promising" and is going through the art department now. We've been told previously that Blizzard tend to prototype heroes first by using the body of an existing character as a model, so hearing that a new hero is in the art stages is encouraging - it means the prototype must be feeling essentially good. A lot of fans are expecting a character called Doomfist, whose likeness, name and lost glove can be seen dotted about in maps. Any abilities he might have remains total speculation. I'm predicting a giant hand that slaps you on the bottom.
There's also talk of new maps, some traditional and some experimental, with new game modes being thought up and toyed with. But apart from all that there isn't much to go on. A quiet update for a quiet time of year in the gamez newz biz. That's fine by me.
"I know that there's a lot there and some of it was kind of vague," says Kaplan, "but at least its a small glimpse into how 2016 went and how 2017 is shaping up."