next year, 2026, marks 10 years of Overwatch. This is a pretty big deal, and I think blizzard should do something cool for their tenth anniversary. But what should they do? Here's my thoughts:
2 characters at a time for the releases throughout the year. This could be a good opportunity to bring in highly anticipated lore characters (Lynx 17, Emre, Sanjay, etc).
A new map for each map type. There's plenty of locations we know that could become maps (Wuxing University, Swiss HQ Ruins, Port-de-Paix, Utopaea, Watchpoint Grimsvötn, Gothenburg, etc), and some map types haven't gotten anything in a while (Escort, Hybrid, Control)
A new skin for each and every hero. And I mean good, Legendary skins.
Reusing some popular season themes, like Mirrorwatch
Return to story mode. This is still highly requested, and bringing it back for the 10th anniversary would work well.
I mean yes "make more than double the number of every possible type of content and do it good and do the ones I want" is definitely a nice-sounding anniversary when you put it like that, but I'm, to be blunt, not expecting much, let alone that much.
If the anniversary gets acknowledged at all in terms of major content is already something I'm not certain of. For one, the Anniversary events now use Overwatch 2's release as their focal point, and while it'd be a bit silly I wouldn't entirely rule out that messing with how seriously the 10 year mark is considered. I also wouldn't be too excited considering that bigger games have done way less fanfare for their 10th anniversaries in the past few years, namely Minecraft for one comparison coming to mind. Frankly I'd say expect a social media post and a tiktok/youtube short on the day of at best, if nothing else just to not set yourself up for disappointment, however likely that'd be.
I also don't know what to get excited for with 2026 OW because I can't anticipate what next year is gonna be for the game. 2025 has been a pretty great year so far in terms of just getting players to play the game and have stuff to be excited for with the big additions of Perks to freshen up the main game and Stadium as a full "third pillar" mode, and now season 18 is coming to expand and refine those big additions while also adding a bunch of smaller features to round out the game in ways that have been lacking, either since OW2 or even OW1. 2024 was by comparison kind of a rest year without many major additions besides some solid new heroes, really just recovering after the massive setback of PvE's cancellation and the general dumpster fire of OW2's initial pre-release and launch year.
So I don't think 2026 is gonna be the anniversary content-splosion year, just based on the general direction the game is going in now. The question is what will be the focus of 2026, if 2025's theme was "player choice and engagement" spread across perks, Stadium, loot boxes, and the new revamped progression system. What does the game need now... I'm not entirely sure. I know the big hope is PvE making a comeback, but I don't think we can expect that so soon after Stadium as a major addition that now needs ongoing dev energy to update and maintain. Unless the team got a lot of hires back all of a sudden, I don't think it's reasonable to see it as soon as next year. 2027 maaaaaaybe but that's a MASSIVE maybe. I think a more reasonable focus would be to put out story content in general, since that's something the game's been at a standstill at for a while while getting the tiniest hints of progress, like Orisa and Efi, Juno, Wuyang, and Anran joining the new Overwatch team in the time since the last story missions. If they can get a separate team to get some ongoing external story format, even just comics or something beyond those for hero releases, I think that'd be decent. That does still leave the Actual Video Game lacking any BIG new content for the year though, and while I wouldn't expect something on par with Stadium, I think they need some big-ticket new crowd pleaser mode or feature to get people excited. Maybe a year-round simplified non-story PvE mode using Stadium's systems and PvE leftovers as a baseline could work, though it'd have to be something more appealing than the short-lived Hero Mastery co-op mode. That's my best pitch/prediction at least, but with how Stadium was a relative surprise I'm not going to expect anything too certain yet.
I also, saying this as polite as I can here, think speeding up hero releases is a goddamn terrible idea, even if just for a "special" year, ESPECIALLY if it's just for the sake of pleasing loreheads to catch up on an arbitrary list of old names we've gotten way more invested in than the devs.
Lowest-hanging fruit, but. do I need to point to an example of a very similar game churning out character releases just to fill a quota of crowd-pleasing established names as fast as possible, regardless of gameplay design or what the health of the game overall needs?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Marvel Rivals promising monthly heroes is BAD, it's a bad idea for the health and longevity of that game and would be magnitudes worse trying shove the same (or even just higher than current) release rates into Overwatch. And that's for the sake of cramming in characters with whole mainstream hollywood blockbusters named after them like Ultron, Blade, Phoenix, the entire Fantastic Four, not... Sanjay Corpal.
As a reminder, with monthly heroes and 4 more months left in this year, Marvel Rivals is getting four more additions to its current roster of 41. Overwatch is getting one new hero after Wuyang, coming right at the end of the year. That means both games are tying the number of heroes they have. One of them has been out for a decade, one is still not at its one year anniversary yet. One year after that the game will have 57 heroes to contend with in terms of meta, balance, just knowing the game as a new player, while Overwatch will be ending the year at 48, only three new heroes each spaced 4 months apart. Which is fine!!!
Even how bad it is for MR, it'd be worse in Overwatch because those heroes need more work. The designs and backstories have to be made from scratch, there's more animations to make because of first-person, the game works on a more specialized engine, and there's just a higher standard of quality established. And Overwatch hero just needs more than a Marvel Rivals hero, and if three per year is the rate that the team has maintained for years (barring the pre-OW2 PvE sinkhole) then I really don't think trying to push out more any faster is a good idea for the overall longevity of the game. I think heroes come out at a good rate without overcomplicating the story or the meta, and now there's new systems and modes that bring more interest to the existing heroes, which I'd say is much more sustainable long-term.
I will concede that a lot of the heroes we have gotten in the past few years have been mostly entirely fresh faces that expand on the world rather than dive further into existing facets or following established loose threads... ignoring that Venture is the payoff to Petra as a map introduced eons ago, or Freja as a new insight into the fallout of Overwatch, or Juno revealing more about Lucheng Interstellar, or Lifeweaver as someone else impacted by Vishkar, or Mauga, or all four of the OW2 near-launch heroes being major established characters expected for a while. so... kind of just Illari, Hazard, and Wuyang (+Anran) as the complete new curveballs adding entirely new factions to the world. If we see an established lorehead cut make it in soon then cool but I gotta be real, I'm gameplay and character design first, story second in terms of my priorities, so if we get more entirely new characters and not established names then it's an "Oh Well" from me at worst.
It's also a weird time for maps because the past few years have had new modes release with two maps at a time, and the Stadium-exclusive maps, the original planned pacing of alternating heroes and maps each season got thrown to the wayside, but we've got a few cool ones to expect sooner than later revealed in the spotlight. That Atlantic Arcology map I think was supposed to be this year? So maybe expect that at the start of Season 19 since Hero 45 is going to be the end of season hero trial.
uh... skins, yeah I don't have the energy to complain about skin distribution. A promise of "every hero gets at least one legendary every year" feels like a realistic standard (if you don't repeat heroes getting battle pass skins then I think that's 36 of those per year and that's almost everyone) but I'm not fussed about that as a hard rule, whatever they have ideas for and keeps the lights on and I'll be fine. I'd want more standardized emotes but I thiiiiink we can expect something like that this season? There's too much information flying around this time, I can't keep track. which I guess is a good problem to have compared to some of the past few years.
But uh. Yeah that's my boring lame take: don't expect anything cool unless it's literally days away. I'm predicting a twitter post for the 10th birthday, anything else is exceeding expectations. The game is in a pretty good spot right now after a couple years of only looking one year ahead at a time, and we're still in this year. If they do have plans then I'm expecting it's dev plans, not fan plans. And that's not a bad thing, I think if the devs have an idea for the game's Next Big Yearly Thing, and it's something in respect to the 10 year anniversary since OW1's original release, then cool! But if that Big Thing isn't just pure content overdrive or PvE like fans know they could want, then I don't think that's a letdown by any means. I'd prefer the game to expand in new directions than just do the Marvel Rivals thing and triple down on adding sheer Stuff without taking the time to readdress the game's fundamental systems. And I think it's more exciting to not know what to expect as a big next step after Stadium, and trust the current devs to think a little outside the box for major additions, even if not every one of them lands (RIP Hero Mastery, sorry nobody cared, me included). Not sure what else to address but to say I'm excited for these next few months to close out this year, then wait to know what to expect for next year. I'd rather the game have another 10 years ahead of it rather than burn itself out on making its tenth year "extra special". we can get Emre later. and then he'll be underpowered or overpowered and everyone will complain. it'll be fine.
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