Overwatch 2 will have seasons launching every nine weeks, and Blizzard aims to launch a new hero every other season.
Three new heroes will launch with Overwatch 2 on October 4: Sojourn, Junker Queen, and a new support character that has not yet been revealed. When season two kicks off on December 6, an unannounced new tank hero will join the roster, as well.
Blizzard aims to keep up a regular cadence of new content releases with these seasons. You’ll typically get a new hero in one season, then a new map in the next, alternating throughout the year.
The devs say that they’re already working on heroes planned for a year-and-a-half into the future, with a tank and two supports planned for the first couple of seasons. The upcoming heroes include both characters we’ve seen hints of – that fox is a safe bet – and folks we’ve never seen before.
With that sort of update cadence, how many heroes is Overwatch 2 actually going to get? “There’s obviously a lot of production issues, like how fast we make heroes, be happy with them, and make sure they’re something we really like,” Lead Hero Designer Geoff Goodman tells press in a Q&A session. “But also, there’s other questions like – let’s look at ourselves 10 years from now. How big should the roster actually be?”
Goodman points to the massive rosters of fighting games and MOBAs as examples of genres that can handle massive rosters. “There’s a lot of different games that do handle it in different ways. And I think a lot of that is just whatever feels right for the game.”
Ultimately, Goodman suggests that the roster will continue to expand as long as people keep playing. “As long as people are playing the game and loving it and wanting new heroes, we’re definitely down to make more. So if we end up in a situation and we have 150 heroes, and people are still jazzed to play and we feel like we can still make really cool heroes, then we’ll keep going.”
Check out our Overwatch 2 guide for everything you need to know about the game.