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To help prepare Overwatch for launch, Blizzard announces the dates for an upcoming stress test beta weekend along with plans to invite a large portion of new users.
Blizzard’s first original IP in over 17 years, Overwatch , is currently enjoying its second closed beta session, which originally kicked off this past February. While the team-based shooter has seen extensive beta testing since last year, the release date in May is quickly approaching and to help Blizzard prepare for the large rush of players on launch day, the developer is planning a new stress test beta weekend.
The upcoming closed beta test weekend is set to kick off this Friday, April 15 and wrapping up the next day on April 16. While this is a shorter beta test, the good news is that Blizzard is planning to send out a lot more invites just as they did late last year during the first weekend beta test. Player accounts that have been flagged will start seeing the ability to preload the game within the Overwatch section of the Battle.net desktop client starting later in the day on Thursday, April 14. Email notifications will also be sent to selected players as well, so make sure to keep checking those inboxes.
For this weekend test, players will have access to all 21 characters and a few of the maps like Hanamura, Route 66, and Nepal. The popular Competitive Play and Weekly Brawl modes will also be unavailable during this weekend beta test as well with Blizzard choosing to focus more pushing the hardware to the limit. The studio also warned that because this is more of a stress test, players may see a rise of performance and server based issues along with random moments of downtime. At this point, issues like this have been fairly few and far between.
“Since this is a stress test, we’re primarily interested in your technical feedback, like how Overwatch runs on your system, your experience with the beta servers, critical bug reports, and other game-impacting problems.”
Fans still waiting for access to the closed beta of Overwatch won’t have to wait much longer as the game hits open beta on PC and consoles starting on May 5 and running to the 9th. For those that opt to preorder the game prior to April 29, the beta session on all platforms will be available a few days earlier on May 3. Additionally, fans who preorder the game before the deadline also gain the ability to invite a friend within the exclusive access beta window as well.
Overwatch launches on May 24, 2016 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC
Source: Battle.net Blog