Blizzard teased Overwatch 2 The return of 6v6 in one recent developer blogand director Aaron Keller said it’s finally happening in season 14 of the movie multiplayer game. For a little bit, as a test, so don’t get too attached.

Keller said in a new director’s blog that the first test, which will launch a week after Overwatch 2’s Season 14 launch in December 2024, is a variation of the open queue “not only to judge our player’s appetite for bigger teams, but also to explore different ways where we could implement a change without running into the same problems we had before.” It follows a “Min 1, Max 3” rule where each team must have at least one of each role and cannot have more than three heroes in a given role. Keller said this initial test will also help the team see how Overwatch 2’s heroes perform in a 6v6 match.

Blizzard will hold the second 6v6 test in the middle of Season 14, a standard 2-2-2 setup where both teams have two heroes for each role. Keller said it will mostly resemble the original Overwatch, but with some of Overwatch 2’s features, such as crowd control and hero replays.

Overwatch 2 6v6 is its own mode and will not replace others or be available to play in ranked matches.

Overwatch started live as a 6v6 game where each team had two tanks, two dealers and two healers, but Blizzard removed the extra tank when Overwatch 2 was released. The reason was that removing the second tank would help matchups to move faster and prevent them from stalling when both teams’ tanks and their dedicated healers were forcing a stalemate. The change was unpopular at the time, and Blizzard did little to convince players that it improved Overwatch.

Even Keller admitted in the post that first teased Overwatch 2 6v6 that players were unhappy with how most roles leaned towards dealing damage instead of fulfilling their role duties. Kiriko and Illari, for example, are built equally for damage and healing, while older heroes like Lucio are designed primarily for support.