Blizzard World Overwatch Map Finally Launching on January 23

The massive Blizzard World themepark map for Overwatch has been on the Public Test Region since November. However, its release has been put on hold since there are plenty of bugs to fix on the map. It is also the most ambitious map for the game yet, and ties in nicely with other Blizzard games. Until now, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan only gave a vague “Early 2018” response to any queries about its public release. The good news is that come January 23, the map will be launched along with other goodies.

New Blizzard Theme Skins

Since the map is a Blizzard theme park with elements from the publisher’s titles, new skins will be introduced to go with the map. The good news is that these are all going on regular loot boxes and not tied into a specific event theme. Which means players can either purchase them with the in-game currency or unlock them randomly any day of the year.

Some of these new skins include a StarCraft Nova skin for the sniper Widowmaker, and Protoss theme for the tank Orisa. Doomfist and Torbjorn also get Warcraft inspired skins ‘Blackhand’ and ‘Bronzebeard’ respectively. For Diablo fans, Zarya gets a Barbarian skin while Roadhog gets a Butcher skin.

Reinhardt and Mei also get new skins called ‘Crusader’ and ‘Ecopoint’ respectively. These are not taken from any Blizzard games but are rather taken from their animated short backstory videos.

‘Year of the Dog’ Lunar Event After

After the map launches, Overwatch will also start their ‘Year of the Dog’ Chinese-themed Lunar New Year event. More new skins, emotes, sprays and sounds are expected. Since it is the ‘Year of the Dog’, we might see everyone get a similar dog emote like what Orissa got for the most recent Winter event. Blizzard did not announce a launch date for this event yet.