Overwatch: Classic brings back the 2016 game as a limited-time event and promises to “capture the charm” of its original heroes and maps

by Junna Base November 11, 2024

It’s almost as if all the popular shooters got together and decided they really needed a bit of nostalgia. Fortnite brought back its original map last year, Apex Legends is currently doing the same, and tomorrow Overwatch will turn back time in its own throwback mode.

Blizzard is calling it Overwatch: Classic, a limited-time mode in Overwatch 2 that attempts to recreate the original Overwatch experience as it was on the day of its release. It won’t be a 1:1 remake – maps, interface and sound effects remain the same as in Overwatch 2 – but the heroes will all play like they did eight years ago: D.Va’s exploding mech will take them away. Then Torbjorn will hand out armor packs and Mercy will once again being able to revive her entire team at once.

“We want to capture the charm of what it was like to play Overwatch at launch,” said lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson in an interview with PC Gamer. In other words, teams of six Symmetras destroy their enemies with a wall of laser turrets and destroy people behind a corner with Hanzo’s scatter arrow. “It can be a little chaotic,” Dawson said, “but I think that’s what makes it really special.”

Overwatch: Classic, which runs until December 2nd, will also see a return to the original game’s 6v6 format. Teams can have any number of heroes from any role, and in the “early days” there will be no limit to how many people can play the same hero. The team composition will be just as chaotic as in 2016.

Despite the return to larger team sizes, Overwatch: Classic is not part of Blizzard’s upcoming 6v6 testing. These experimental modes will focus more on gathering feedback on hero balance and wait times. However, the development team will continue to collect data and monitor how players react as more players participate in a game.

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(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Overwatch players are hungry for silly modes that give up some of the sequel’s hyper-competitive hero design.

“I think when players ask for 6v6, they’re asking for something different than Classic,” said game director Aaron Keller. “At the same time, this is the first time we are releasing a 6v6 format. So this is a great stress test for our engine.”

The announcement post states that Overwatch: Classic will be a regular event that will “feature heroes and balance from beloved moments in the game’s history,” but Dawson and Keller made it sound like the next event is still in the pipeline Air. “It really depends on how players actually adhere to Classic,” Dawson said. We could see a return to old metas, like the three-tank, three-support “Goats” meta from 2018, or remixed snapshots of the past, like a mode where every hero is at their most overpowered state. Dawson said the team has “a few in mind that could be very exciting or very frightening for the players to go back to.”

Overwatch players are hungry for silly modes that give up some of the sequel’s hyper-competitive hero design. A surprising number of players flocked to Junkenstein’s Laboratory, a mode that lets you equip talents that change how hero abilities work. “About 35% of the hours [spent] in Overwatch were in Junkenstein’s lab on launch day,” Keller said. It was so popular that Blizzard released a balance patch for it and kept it for another week.

“We want to make sure that players who love the world of Overwatch, who love our heroes, have something that’s a little less stressful and a little less cagey,” Dawson said.

Overwatch: Classic is scheduled to go live on Tuesday, November 12th.

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