Blizzard Entertainment has dropped a bunch of news about their first-person shooter Overwatch, so we're putting the lot of it together into one convenient piece! The announcements include the start date for this year's Summer Games, two new cities being confirmed for the Overwatch League, and a couple of neat pieces of merch. Let's get right to it with the Summer Games start date.
https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1025169386783404032
The official Overwatch twitter has announced that 2018's Summer Games will be kicking off on Thursday, August 9, 2018. This will, of course, mean the return of Lúcioball for players to enjoy. A brand new map set in Busan, South Korea was hinted at in the English-language tweet; the Korean-language Twitter for the game released a slightly different look at the map according to a submission by /u/LowFatHam on the /r/Overwatch subreddit:
https://twitter.com/OverwatchKR/status/1025154177113247744?s=19
We don't yet know what new skins we'll be getting or if a new game mode will be entering the fray this year - we'll probably be seeing some more about this soon. Speaking of sports, the Overwatch League All-Star Weekend will be taking place on Saturday, August 25th - right towards the tail end of the Summer Games. You can read more about the All-Star Weekend and the rosters at the league's website.
12 teams competed in the Overwatch League this year and six new cities are expected to be added as expansion teams in the coming weeks. It was rumored that Guangzhou, China and Paris, France would be making the cut, but these were based on tips given to ESPN. We've now heard directly from Blizzard about the first two expansion teams and where they'll be located: Atalanta, Georgia, USA and Guangzhou, China. Details on the team's logos, colors, rosters, and the like will be revealed in the future.
Finally, a branding deal was announced towards the end of May of this year. Among the many cool Overwatch products we could expect to see was Nerf Blasters. A Reaper version was announced in late June, and we've just now heard that D.Va's Bunny Blaster will be getting the Nerf treatment as well, as Blizzard accepts D.Va's taunt to 'Nerf This' by well... nerfing it.
https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1025410994254700544
That might not be all for the cool upcoming products - an eagle-eyed Redditor by the name of /u/Starlord_who s that the Korean Blizzard store is displaying a Hammond/Wrecking Ball plush for sale. We're not sure if or when it would make its way to Western shores, but a girl can dream!
That's it for the burst of news coming out about Overwatch! The Summer Games kick off next week, we'll be hearing about more Overwatch League teams in the next few weeks, and the character-themed Nerf blasters should be available to purchase sometime in 2019.
What do you think of the return of the Summer Games? Which cities do you think should be the next to get a team for the league? Are you at all interested in buying the themed Nerf blasters? Let us know in the comments below!
