Another BlizzCon has come and gone, but with the event’s end come all of the juicy news and upcoming details for Blizzard Entertainment games that were announced! Of those games, the team-based shooter Overwatch announced one big piece of news after the other during the two days of the convention, as well as thrilled fans of the E-Sport variety with the finals of the Overwatch World Cup. The Daily Crate has your wrap-up and rundown on all of these announcements!
BlizzCon brought the release of a new Overwatch Animated Short titled “Honor and Glory,” this time focusing on the hero Reinhardt. The Overwatch Animated Shorts have always been a way to learn more about the lore of the Overwatch universe as well as, in typical Blizzard fashion, look absolutely stunning. They also tend to be incredibly good at wrecking your emotions, to give you fair warning. You can check out the origin story of the Crusader himself below!
Blizzard pulled no stops when it came to what was announced after the new Animated Short. Adding hero number 26 to the roster, players now have a new Support character to call their “main”: Moira. You can learn more about Moira by checking out our Video Vault featuring Moira from last week!
Fans of Overwatch got a new hero, so why not bring out another new map to add to the rotation! In celebration of all things Blizzard Entertainment, the Overwatch team built an in-game theme park, known as Blizzard World, that includes all of Blizzard’s huge franchises: World of Warcraft, Star Craft, Hearthstone, etc. and made what they call a “hybrid” map (capture a point, then move a pay load to the finish). This means that Overwatch players can now have their favorite heroes running through the destinations throughout the Blizzard Entertainment world that they know and love.
((Blizzard Entertainment))
With the new map came the announcement of new skins, sprays, voice lines, and more! To keep the fun new concept of Blizzard World going strong when the map launches, the team also created skins for the characters to wear with pride while they roam the streets and escort/defend the payload. The announcement only showed off a preview of what is to come, but fans are already excited at the prospect of what skins may come next after seeing what was announced.
BlizzCon brought about the conclusion of the Overwatch World Cup, where teams from across the globe battled it out on the global stage to take home national pride and the title of Overwatch World Cup champions. Taking over the entire Arena at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California and making it the Overwatch Arena set the stage for all the exciting competitive E-Sports action that was to surely come.
In the end, it was reigning champions South Korea who took the World Cup title once more, beating out France in the grand finals. If you’re interested in watching how the World Cup transpired, you can find both days of the competition on the Play Overwatch Twitch channel, linked here!
(Blizzard Entertainment)
Riding high off the success of this year’s Overwatch World Cup, Blizzard dove into some of the details on their up and coming Overwatch League, which has been slowly picking up steam in the Esports news cycle as it gets ready to start in December of this year. Throughout the month of October, teams within the Overwatch League were announced and began to showcase their rosters of players. BlizzCon brought the rest- details on how the competition will work, how the jerseys look, how fans can find the information they need on their favorite team, and when fans could finally get their hands on tickets to the games. Seeing as Los Angeles has two teams based right here in our own backyard, the Los Angeles Gladiators and the Los Angeles Valiant, it’s going to be hard to choose a side, especially when there is so much talent spread across each of the twelve teams included in this inaugural season of the Overwatch League.
Overwatch fans can be plenty excited for all that is to come from these announcements. As the development team behind Overwatch continues to push out new and exciting content for the players to fully immerse themselves in, it’s a time to be thankful that there is such a game for a community to enjoy that is backed by a team just as passionate about it. We know that as each of these announcements actually become reality, fans will be there with open mice and keyboards, ready to play.
