The upcoming Free To Play First Person Shooter title from the makes of World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft, will be available to a select few later this month.
In the wee hours today Blizzard finally announced their anticipated Closed Beta start date for Overwatch, their upcoming Free To Play First Person Shooter. Due to go live on the 27th October, the closed beta will be open to invitees only, likely starting with prominent members of the games press and streaming community. Normal Battle.net account holders shouldn’t despair however; a small number of invites will be made over time to those who have opted in to the Overwatch Beta program via their account management settings.
In addition to the Beta Invite process Blizzard are also planning to hold a few Beta Weekends, where limited time admittance will be made on a first-come, first-serve basis.
CLOSED BETA
The Closed Beta will be composed of a small number of testers who will have regular access to our public beta test. Our goal for the Closed Beta is 100% gameplay feedback, and we’ll be encouraging participants to discuss and dissect every hero, map, ability, and other aspect of the game on our upcoming beta forums.
In order to get the most meaningful and constructive feedback possible, the total number of players in the Closed Beta will be extremely limited—though we’ll be adding more people from time to time to make sure we have the right number of heroes actively engaged.
The first phase of the Closed Beta will deploy on October 27 in the Americas gameplay region, and players may be added gradually to start (with more being invited as new features are ready to test). During this time, we’ll continue to make preparations for our Europe and Asia gameplay regions—our goal is to have Europe come online next, with Asia following at a later date.
We’ll provide more details—including an FAQ—once the Closed Beta begins.
BETA WEEKENDS
From time to time, we’ll also need to open up the floodgates and call upon an army to overwhelm our hardware. The goal: get as many heroes playing as we can, all helping us “stress test” our servers to ensure they can withstand the assault.
These larger-scale Beta Test Weekends will be brought online occasionally for a limited time, generally over a weekend, and will run concurrently with our ongoing Closed Beta test. Because Beta Test Weekends are primarily hardware- and tech-focused, the number of heroes, maps, and gameplay modes will be restricted—but feedback on everything will definitely be welcome.
Multiple different Beta Test Weekends will be assembled in various parts of the world. We have tons of would-be heroes signed up for the Overwatch beta, and we want to give as many as possible a chance to play during the testing period. The first Beta Test Weekend is currently slated for after BlizzCon—stay tuned for more information following the event.
The Closed Beta will be composed of a small number of testers who will have regular access to our public beta test. Our goal for the Closed Beta is 100% gameplay feedback, and we’ll be encouraging participants to discuss and dissect every hero, map, ability, and other aspect of the game on our upcoming beta forums.
In order to get the most meaningful and constructive feedback possible, the total number of players in the Closed Beta will be extremely limited—though we’ll be adding more people from time to time to make sure we have the right number of heroes actively engaged.
The first phase of the Closed Beta will deploy on October 27 in the Americas gameplay region, and players may be added gradually to start (with more being invited as new features are ready to test). During this time, we’ll continue to make preparations for our Europe and Asia gameplay regions—our goal is to have Europe come online next, with Asia following at a later date.
We’ll provide more details—including an FAQ—once the Closed Beta begins.
BETA WEEKENDS
From time to time, we’ll also need to open up the floodgates and call upon an army to overwhelm our hardware. The goal: get as many heroes playing as we can, all helping us “stress test” our servers to ensure they can withstand the assault.
These larger-scale Beta Test Weekends will be brought online occasionally for a limited time, generally over a weekend, and will run concurrently with our ongoing Closed Beta test. Because Beta Test Weekends are primarily hardware- and tech-focused, the number of heroes, maps, and gameplay modes will be restricted—but feedback on everything will definitely be welcome.
Multiple different Beta Test Weekends will be assembled in various parts of the world. We have tons of would-be heroes signed up for the Overwatch beta, and we want to give as many as possible a chance to play during the testing period. The first Beta Test Weekend is currently slated for after BlizzCon—stay tuned for more information following the event.
Closer to 27th more information will probably be unveiled regarding the monetisation model Blizzard are going to use for the game, perhaps the most important aspect aside from gameplay itself.
An Official Overwatch Livestream begins at 6pm UK Time, covering 90mins of raw gameplay with Blizzard devs from two different perspectives. They can be found at:
