Blizzard Entertainment announced Overwatch 2 PvP Beta will start on late April. Aarok Keller details a new era for Overwatch 2 and announced Alpha will start this week internally under NDA, followed by closed Beta late April, and an open Beta later this year.
PvP Beta Late April:
- 5v5
- New Hero: Sojourn
- 4 New Maps:
- Circuit Royal – New Escort Map
- Midtown – New Hybrid Map
- New Queen Street – New Push Map
- Colosseo – New Push Map
- New Mode: Push
- Hero Reworks:
- Orisa
- Doomfist
- Bastion
- Sombra
- New Ping System
You can opt-in to participate in this upcoming late April Overwatch 2 PvP Beta here (at the bottom of that page). Video transcript below.
Aaron: Hello, heroes of Overwatch. The team has been making great progress on the development of Overwatch 2. Daily playtests and feedback have given us confidence that we’re creating something you’re going to love.
At the same time, we want to get the game in your hands soon, which leads to why I’m here today. But before I get to that, I want to thank our players for your continued support. We recognize we haven’t communicated well, haven’t kept you up to date, and honestly, we’ve let you down when it comes to delivering Overwatch content.
We hear you, and we’re committed to more continual updates on all things Overwatch 2. This starts with my update to you today. Based on your feedback, we’ve taken some time to rethink Overwatch 2 with the singular goal of ensuring it is a living game, serving our players with exciting content on a regular basis; and we are shifting our plan for Overwatch 2 to enable you to play it sooner.
This starts with us decoupling the PvP features of the game from the PvE systems so we can bring you PvP sooner. This includes the new 5v5 team format, new heroes, new maps, the new Push game mode, significant hero updates and reworks, and many new gameplay features, including, for example, a new ping system. When you put it all together, this represents the most new content we have brought to our game since launch.
Let me take a moment to share how we got here. A few years ago, we made the call to focus our team’s development efforts almost entirely on Overwatch 2. And as development of the sequel stretched on, it meant that the live game received less focus. It meant that we were no longer delivering on one of our core values: to support our game by updating it and delivering content on a regular basis.
Today’s change in approach enables us to deliver frequent PvP content to the live game, with the goal of far exceeding Overwatch’s previous rate of content release, and making the live game the most vibrant and dynamic PvP experience anywhere. In that spirit, I’d like to share that we are beginning Overwatch 2 PvP testing this week, with a closed alpha containing many of these PvP features, as well as a new hero: Sojourn.
The Alpha will be run under NDA and be limited to Blizzard employees and key partners, like Overwatch League pros as they get ready for the next season. I’m also excited to announce that we will be opening the first closed PvP beta in late April so that we can start testing this content with more players. If you are interested in participating in this upcoming beta, please visit PlayOverwatch.com
Following that first Beta test, we are planning additional public PvP beta testing later in the year, which will include new features, new maps, and yes, new heroes.
I want to come back to how we started this conversation, improving our communication to all of you. We know you are eager for more information. As I stated earlier, starting now, we will be communicating much more frequently about our plans. During and after each beta, we will share updates about what we are learning, changes we are considering, and what we will look to test next.
We look forward to working with you to make Overwatch 2 amazing together. This is going to be an exciting year for Overwatch, and we are looking forward to taking this journey together. Thank you for your dedication, your passion and your patience.
I can’t wait to see players in our alpha anb future beta builds, and of course, the entire team can’t wait to get Overwatch 2 in your hands. Thanks for watching. Be good to each other, and we’ll talk soon.
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