BlizzCon 2016: The Arcade In ‘Overwatch’ Will Bring Back Lucioball and Junkenstein’s Revenge!

During the Overwatch- What’s New? panel, the team went into more detail about The Arcade, a new mode that’s on its way to the team based shooter. It turns out that not only is it right around the corner, but it’ll give us plenty of reason to duck out of competitive and quick matches by bringing back some fan favorite brawls!

Promising to bring back Weekly Brawls from past runs, players will be able to create a type of playlist for them and their friends to fight through. So rather than sticking to one brawl and getting bored after a few matches, each fight will mix up the combat with each fight’s unique set of rules. Most importantly, the event exclusive modes, Lucioball and Junkenstein’s Revenge, will return via The Arcade as well! So if you needed your FPS soccer fix, or want to team up with three friends against the AI instead of having to gun them down, we won’t have to wait a whole year for them to cycle back around! What’s even better is that I’ll have more time to unlock that no door damage Halloween spray!

Aside from the brawls, the team expanded on their reveals of one on one and three on three combat. One on one will have each player pick the same hero, and have them square off in a best of five duel. Three on three matches will consist of elimination rounds, with the team’s characters are locked in until a round is over. By elimination, it means that once a player is killed, they’re done for the round. At that point, they can decide to keep their team as is, or mix it up for different results. Some of these modes will take place in unique maps, such as the recently revealed Antarctica arena, giving us a look at Mei’s backstory through nods throughout the environment.

But who cares about Brawls, right? They don’t give you as much EXP for those sweet loot boxes. Or at least, that was the old Overwatch. When The Arcade is released, your first win during the Weekly Brawl will give you a box outright! After that, every three wins will award you with another, up until you reach the maximum of three for the week. That’s four boxes a week total!

Needless to say, we’ll have plenty of reason to dig into The Arcade when it launches, hopefully by the end of the year. Especially when it’s now the only way we’ll be able to play with stacked heroes going forward. What are your thoughts on the news? Let us know below, and keep checking back for all the BlizzCon 2016 news!