Though many fans are also waiting for Overwatch 2 news (Blizzard will be answering questions from fans at an upcoming developer livestream), the original Overwatch is far from forgotten. In reality, in honor of 2021’s fifth anniversary, Blizzard has put together a special anniversary season event that began yesterday and will last three weeks until June 8th.
Overwatch players will, of course, access a variety of new character skins, eight to be precise. The Funky Baptiste skin, which was revealed a few days ago, is one of them, but three of them can only be obtained by solving weekly challenges. Fortunately, the problems are very straightforward.
Per week, players need to play in 27 games (won games will count as two). In the first week, you’ll have the Cybermedic Ana skin, the Bird of Paradise Echo skin in the second week, and the 8 Ball Wrecking Ball skin in the third week. Black Cat Sombra, Gladiator Doomfist, Junkfood Junkrat, and Venus Moira are the remaining new skins. Tracer, Ashe, and Brigitte also have three new emotes but no new intros.
Apart from that, a variety of skins, emotes, and intros from previous Overwatch seasonal events can be obtained, making this season the ideal opportunity for new players to catch up or long-time players to obtain cosmetics they missed out on previously. They’re from the Summer Games, Halloween Terror, Winter Wonderland, Lunar New Year, and Archives activities, specifically.
Players need to unlock anniversary loot boxes to get some of these returning cosmetics, which Blizzard warns will disappear after the celebration is over. According to the official website, these loot boxes are, predictably, available for purchase with actual money. And if you buy 50 of them in a pack, you’ll get an extra legendary loot box with at least one legendary piece.
It’s not all about the makeup. Players will be able to participate in past activities in the coming weeks as well. It varies by day, but each of the above incidents, as well as their related brawls, will be available for the duration of the anniversary celebration. Every Wednesday, for example, the Halloween Terror brawls will be available, while the Junkenstein challenges will be available every Thursday.
Blizzard has stated that the game will not be abandoned until Overwatch 2 is out, whenever that could be. All games will be compatible, which means that content from one will be shared with the other, including new characters, and players from one game will compete against/with players from the other.