Learn Overwatch

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Overwatch 101

Overwatch took the world by storm when it was released in the middle of 2016, strategically between the annual Call of Duty launch in November. This was Blizzard’s first shot – pun intended – at making a first-person shooter game. However, they didn’t want to drift too far away from their most familiar structure. Thus, the team-based hero shooter was released to the world on May 24th of that year.

They have seen hardships ever since the announcement of the second Overwatch because the expectation of content updates of the new game grew exponentially. Also, there were significant management changes that affected the life of the game and its ongoing development. For example, Jeff Caplan, the original director of Overwatch, has since retired from the company. Many Blizzard fans revere him as the only one who can lead the Overwatch developer team.

A Hero Shooter by Blizzard

What’s Overwatch without its unique heroes from all over the world? Overwatch has heroes with unique abilities and even more special personalities. The voice actors and sound designs are spectacular. However, the individual playstyles of each character make playing with different heroes feel like playing totally different games even when they are in the same role group.

Overwatch removed its defense role, leaving three main parts to choose from: Tank, Damage, and Support. Like Reaper, McCree, and Pharah, most heroes are straightforward in their intended goal, which is to do significant amounts of damage to the enemy team. In contrast, other heroes like Mei and Sombra have different utilities instead of high damage output. Supports have simpler jobs but are just as crucial as DPS. Getting kills is the best thing you can do for your team. Inversely, dying is the worst thing that you can do for your team. Having a good Mercy or Moira to keep the team alive in team fights is mandatory for success.

When players seek to capture an objective, they need space to play the game in their specific roles. That’s where the tanks come in. Just like the DPS role, tank heroes are not all the same. Some do exactly what you expect: man the frontlines and make space. Tank heroes like Reinhardt and Orisa are expected to do this job the best. However, offensive tanks like DIVA and Roadhog punish poor positioning and cause trouble for enemy back lines. While DPS takes more mechanical skills to master, many people believe that Tanks have the highest skill-ceiling because their existence on the field has the most impact. Without tanks, none of the other roles can do their part.

Overwatch Multiplayer

Overwatch doesn’t have a campaign mode, although that is expected to change when Overwatch 2 launches. While Quick Play reigns supreme in the overall player base, most of the content in online media sources comes from the Competitive mode of Overwatch. When Overwatch 2 was announced, Blizzard also confirmed with the community that Echo would be the last hero, and they would drop no major content for the game.

Skins and events still come up occasionally, but there aren’t any new maps or heroes coming out for the original game. Still, Competitive is a fantastic pass time for players looking for a challenge and determining how their skills quantify against other players in the community. If you ever get bored, though, consider playing the Arcade mode.

The Arcade was released relatively early in Overwatch’s life as an addition to the Quick Play mode to give players more options than just traditional PVP modes. One of the more popular ones is the addition of Free-For-All. When it was first released, there was only one map, but as time progressed, Blizzard fulfilled the inclusion of other unique FFA maps. That helped broaden the play area for players looking to seek a more individualized thrill or simply practice their dueling skills with some DPS heroes. They have others like Mayhem and Mystery Hero that do well to shake things up.

Overwatch League

People who prefer to watch Overwatch at a high level can do so through the Overwatch League professional competitive matches. Some teams are much better than others, and it doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon. However, it’s comparable to watching speedruns of your favorite games. Seeing the game played at such a high level will give you new insight into the current meta of heroes and map positions.

On top of that, it’ll humble you and encourage you to seek a deeper, more profound practice in your matches. You can get a similar experience from watching content creators play competitive Overwatch mode. However, it’s nothing like seeing people who get paid full time to play and train and be coached against other people who have endured the same grueling hours of practice and discipline for victory in a video game.

Overwatch has lots to offer new and experienced players to the first-person shooter genre, and getting back to the game might be just in time for the sequel’s release very soon.

 

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