Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 is now live according to a tweet from the game's official Twitter account.
Starting things off are seven new Legendary skins for some of the game's heroes. There are no new Epic skins or anything else of lower quality this time around. Six of the heroes received a new "toasting" victory pose (continuing the theme that started last year). Zenyatta has an Epic emote where he cooks up a snowflake, and Orisa has a new Legendary emote where she opens up a present and plays with a puppy. (Please gift animals to sentient security bots responsibly this holiday season.) Lastly, Reinhardt has a new snowball fight highlight intro.
Aside from the skins, Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 brings along a new game mode: Mei's Yeti Hunt. A team of five Meis must work together to take down a single super-strong Winston before he can gather four pieces of meat and get a heck of a lot stronger. Notably, the Ultimates for both heroes have been changed slightly - the knockback on Winston's Primal Rage has pretty much been removed, and Mei's Blizzard Ultimate has been replaced with the "Yeti Trap" (which functions more or less like Junkrat's trap). The Mei Team can win by killing Winston, and Winston can win by getting five kills before he dies. The first victory in Mei's Yeti Hunt will award players a free Winter Wonderland loot box. If the new game mode isn't your kind of thing, Mei's Snowball Fight returns from last year.
Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 has brought along a much-requested feature for the Hero Gallery - players can now click "Mark All As Read" to remove the "New" flair from heroes who have recently unlocked items. 50 new items have been added this time around, so odds are you're going to be making use of this new feature if you can get some game time in (or just buy a bunch of boxes).
Player reporting has seen a bit of improvement as well. Players who have been reported will be notified about the report along with a message cautioning them about their behavior. Severe instances of misbehavior may result in players having action taken against them before they see this message. As for the person who sent the report, they'll be notified when a report they sent resulted in disciplinary action for the targeted player.
The last of the big-ticket items in Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 are two new options have been made available for Custom Games. Players can activate a setting that allows heroes to spawn with a fully-charged Ultimate meter, and the duration of an Ultimate can last for the entirety of the match with a second option. This would, for instance, allow players to have a big ol' Bastion tank battle or a bunch of Genjis running around with their Dragonblades out.
A ton of other small bug fixes and changes have made their way into the patch - be sure to check out the event page as well as the full patch notes. If you don't yet own Overwatch, you can purchase it directly from Blizzard for the PC, via the Microsoft Store for Xbox One, or the PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 4. The PlayStation 4 version is currently discounted 40%.