'Overwatch' Director Teases 'Year Of The Dog' Event, Upcoming Changes

Overwatch’s latest wintry mix of new skins, game modes, and holiday glee in the form of the Winter Wonderland event may have just ended, but that certainly isn’t the last of the holiday-themed celebrations the game will host. The year has just begun, and Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has taken to a new Developer Update to run down what’s coming for fans in the new year.

First, Kaplan confirmed that a new Lunar New Year event called Year of the Dog is coming soon, which will likely add in new skins, gameplay modes, and additional content just like last year’s event, Year of the Rooster. Year of the Rooster added a Capture the Flag game type as well as skins for heroes like D.Va, Mei, Zenyatta, and more. It ran from January 24 through February 13, and while Kaplan didn’t give an exact date for when we can expect the Year of the Dog event, the Lunar New Year begins in February this year. It’s likely we’ll see the event drop sometime next month, but hopefully sooner.

In addition to the Year of the Dog event, both the Anniversary and Uprising events will be making a return, though there wasn’t a specific date given for either of those events, either. Uprising took place last year in April 2016 with a lore-based game mode and special skins, while the Anniversary event brought with it some coveted new skins and dance emotes in late May.

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If you prefer to play vanilla Overwatchbeyond all the glamour and glitz of the special events, there’s more coming in store for the base game as well. There’s a swath of additional goodies coming to regular loot boxes, so if you’ve collected everything you’re interested in collecting, there’s more for you to keep an eye out for in the future.

Let’s not forget Blizzard World, which hasn’t been released in full yet either. Kaplan didn’t give a date for the new map’s release (sensing a trend?) but said it should be out early this year. It’s up for grabs right now on the OverwatchPTR for PC players, so if you need an early taste, it’s available there to test out.

Rounding out the Developer Update, Kaplan mentioned the coveted hero 27, the next hero to come to the Overwatch roster. While he didn’t have much to say about who the character might be or anything other than the fact that it’s currently in internal testing, he did stress that a lot of time is being put into making the character feel perfect instead of laying out a release roadmap. There’s going to be a bunch of new maps on the way too, apparently.

In other Overwatch news, Season 8 of Competitive Play has just begun, where you can test your might against your fellow Overwatch players and come out of it with a special spray and player icon as well as a ranking among the best of the best. It’s available across all platforms right now. Clearly there’s plenty of content for Overwatch fans to sift through now through the coming weeks, so if you still haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, it might be a good time to do so.