How Overwatch’s Anniversary Event Stacks Up to Past Seasonal Events

Anniversary Event

• When: May 23, 2017 to June 12, 2017
• 134 new items
  • 11 skins
  • 24 emotes
  • 48 voice lines
  • 25 sprays
  • 26 player icons
  • No event-exclusive Victory Poses and Highlight Intros
• New Arcade Brawl: None
• New Maps: Necropolis, Castillo, and Black Forest

Overwatch’s Anniversary event is currently ongoing, celebrating the game’s first year since launch. In that time, Blizzard has reached over 30 million players with its online multiplayer shooter and released five other seasonal events. Compared to the others, the Anniversary event is probably the weakest update so far.

According to one Reddit user who did the math, buying all the new items from the Hero Gallery costs a whopping 56,475 credits. It’s not surprising, since this update has the most new cosmetics so far. It’s important to note that playing the game rewards you with loot boxes to bring that cost down, and do not spend any credits until the last day of the event. You can also straight up buy loot boxes with real money, but the chances of receiving better loot does not increase. As compared to the the previous seasonal events, this one is the most expensive, credits-wise, by far.

There is also no new Arcade mode to tie the event together, only rule changes for the 3-on-3 Elimination and 1-on-1 Duel modes. The three new maps are small because they cater to the two game modes, which means you may not see them if you are not a fan of going solo or limited teams. Blizzard has placed more emphasis on the actual first anniversary of the game, rather than the event itself, by offering a Game of the Year edition and a free weekend for all platforms.

Uprising

• When: April 11, 2017 to May 2, 2017
• 114 new items
  • 10 Skins
  • 3 Emotes
  • 6 Victory Poses
  • 48 Voice Lines
  • 31 Sprays (including 6 Sprays from achievements)
  • 3 Highlight Intros
  • 13 Player Icons
• New Arcade Brawl: Uprising
• New Map: Modified version of King’s Row

The Uprising event offers the game’s second co-op mode, allowing four players to battle waves of Null Sector robots while capturing and defending objectives. Players could pick Mercy, Torbjörn, Reinhardt, and Tracer in the featured mode because there was a little bit of exposition in their conversations, but there was an “All Heroes” option for those that want to stomp robots with any character.

The only new map in the update was a modified version of King’s Row exclusive to the Uprising mode. The physical layout was mostly unchanged, but there were obstacles and debris littered everywhere. The new mode was fun to play a few times because it was varied with defending points, moving a payload, and defeating four boss-like characters at the end. It also forced players to try out some of the lesser picked characters.

Year of The Rooster

• When: January 24, 2017 to February 13, 2017
• 124 new items
  • 13 Skins
  • 3 Emotes
  • 7 Victory Poses
  • 23 Voice Lines
  • 52 Sprays (including 2 Sprays from achievements)
  • 3 Highlight Intros
  • 23 Player Icons
• New Arcade Brawl: Capture the Rooster (CTF)
• New Map: Lunar New Year reskin of Lijiang Tower

The Year of the Rooster celebrated the Lunar New Year with a new game type and seasonal reskin of Lijang Tower. The update was divisive among the community over the new Capture the Flag mode. One opinion was that it was a welcome change to the usual payload and control point modes, while another was that the old maps were not fit for a CTF mode.

The still available mode was a fun diversion, but games often went one of two ways. Either the match became a stalemate, or one team would roll the other for an early flag capture and then defend heavily for the rest of the match.

Winter Wonderland

• When: December 13, 2016 to January 2, 2017
• 124 new items
  • 12 Skins
  • 3 Emotes
  • 7 Victory Poses
  • 23 Voice Lines
  • 51 Sprays (including 4 Sprays from achievements)
  • 2 Highlight Intros
  • 26 Player Icons
• New Arcade Brawl: Mei’s Snowball Offensive
• New Maps: Winter reskins of Ecopoint: Antarctica, Hanamura, and King’s Row

Winter Wonderland was the holiday event for Overwatch, bringing good cheer and vicious snowball fights to the game. The new Arcade mode in the update was Mei’s Snowball Offensive, where two teams of six Meis throw snowballs in an elimination match. The player can only hold one snowball at a time, and must scramble to various snow piles around the map to gather snow and reload.

Her Ice Wall and Cryo-Freeze abilities remain unchanged, and offer temporary relief against those with perfect aim and strength in numbers. The mode was very tense, but often frustrating when you have no ammo and don’t have enough time to gather snow because the enemy was all around you. Blizzard did give all players five free loot boxes on Christmas Day, so that was nice at least.

Halloween Terror

• When: October 11, 2016 to November 1, 2016
• 116 new items
  • 12 Skins
  • 3 Emotes
  • 22 Victory Poses
  • 22 Voice Lines
  • 36 Sprays (including 4 Sprays from achievements)
  • 3 Highlight Intros
  • 18 Player Icons
• New Arcade Brawl: Junkenstein’s Revenge
• New Map: Halloween reskin of Hollywood

The Halloween Terror update added the game’s first cooperative mode, called Junkenstein’s Revenge. It was a fun, wave-based mode against zombie robots and four bosses. Players could only pick between Soldier 76, McCree, Hanzo, and Ana.

The waves were not very long, and the mode was very accessible to those that like to shoot a lot. It was Blizzard’s first crack at offering something more substantial to Overwatch, and left players wishing there was more of it.

Also, everyone lost their damn minds over Mercy’s Witch skin.

Summer Games

• When: August 2, 2016, to August 22, 2016
• 112 new items
  • 12 skins
  • 3 emotes
  • 9 victory poses
  • 22 voice lines
  • 23 sprays
  • 3 highlight intros
  • 40 player icons
• New Arcade Brawl: Lúcioball
• New Map: Estádio das Rãs

The Summer Games event was loosely based on the 2016 Summer Olympics, which took place in Rio de Janeiro. This was the first seasonal event after Overwatch had launched in May 2016. It introduced the idea of seasonal skins that could only be obtained through exclusive loot boxes, which would go away once the event ended.

The community was disappointed that the new Summer Games items could not be unlocked with in-game currency. Before, all normal items could be obtained through loot boxes and unlocking through credits earned by receiving duplicates. Blizzard rectified the mistake in future updates by allowing seasonal items to be unlocked during the events, though at a cost of three times the amount of normal items.

The first new mode for Overwatch was Lúcioball, a 3-on-3 soccer game type. Six Lúcios use their Soundwave ability to hit a giant soccer ball around and try to score goals on the Estádio das Rãs map. The hit detection on the ball was a little wonky at times, and there was not much to the new mode. All it did was made me play more Rocket League.

Conclusion

The Anniversary event is the weakest update since the game’s launch. Maybe it’s too soon after the cool Uprising event to have another Arcade Brawl, but it makes the Anniversary feel less than a regular holiday update.

The seasonal events all have one thing in common: drop a whole ton of loot with a specific theme into the game at one time. The Anniversary update shows that sometimes a theme isn’t even necessary. It does have the most items out of any seasonal event to date, but it’s a mish-mash of cosmetic styles and fantastically animated dance emotes that could have been added into the normal loot boxes. Though, there will always be more skins and emotes to come.

Overwatch is a great team-based multiplayer shooter and more substantial, permanent content like the cooperative modes would be welcomed, but these limited-time events are more focused on the characters than gameplay. The game has spawned a massive influx of fan art and cosplays. Blizzard even released character reference sheets for cosplaying months before the game even came out.

The company can afford to tinker with new, smaller game modes all they want after Overwatch became a billion-dollar franchise within its first year. Let’s hope the second year offers more than a new wardrobe every few months.