Overwatch 2 announced it was considering testing out a return to its original 6v6 format after swapping to its current, controversial 5v5 structure back when the sequel launched in 2022. Now, it sounds like that test is coming up sooner than originally expected, as Blizzard has announced it will bring back the format in the hero shooter’s next season.
In a new blog on the game’s website, the team announced it will be holding two separate tests for a return to 6v6. The first will take place a week into the new season, which begins on December 10. Rather than a direct return to the 2-2-2 role spread of the original Overwatch, this test will require the team to have at least one hero of each role, but no more than three per team composition. For example, in a six-person team, you could have one tank, one DPS, and one support, and as long as those are accounted for, the other three players can freely pick whatever hero they want so long as there are no more than three per role. This way you’ll definitely have at least one person on healing and another person to tank, so a group can’t just queue up with six damage heroes.
The second test will take place midway through the season, but will “incorporate some new principles” from the sequel like incorporating hero reworks and deprioritizing crowd control abilities. With any luck, the Sombra revision from the current season will have been reverted by then, but I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, Blizzard is also planning on a test for a new variation of its current 5v5 format that limits a team of five to two heroes per role. This means you can finally have two tanks again, but they will have the nerfs associated with the open queue format, so they won’t be quite as powerful as they are in the current, standard role-locked play. This will also include a midseason game mode codenamed “Kingmaker” that will reward any player who is the lone person in one role with a “bonus,” but they didn’t get any more specific than that.
Blizzard says it’s going to look at the reaction to these tests and determine what’s next, but the studio says there’s a possibility that both 5v5 and 6v6 could exist in the game simultaneously, which might be the best of both worlds, though it does sound like a lot to manage for a team that has seen such drastic cuts in the past year.
This is probably exactly what some folks who miss the days of the original Overwatch were hoping for, but I still find it hard to get too excited about Overwatch 2 when it’s given me so little in the past two years. Maybe the return of folks coming back to the game to relive the glory days will be enough to rejuvenate my love for it. We’ll see when Season 14 starts in December.
