The Overwatch Open Beta Won't Be Ending Tomorrow After All, Get The Details

Blizzard is extending the open beta for Overwatch on all platforms by an extra day. Originally set to end on May 9, the Overwatch beta has been extended to run through May 10 for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Game Informer picked up the news from over on the Overwatch forums, where one of Blizzard's resident community managers, Lylirra, explained that they've had a huge outpouring of support from the community and lots of “invaluable data” to help improve the game. So as a way of saying thank you, they were extending the beta...

They plan on making further improvements to Overwatch based on the beta reports filed by users. I imagine certain characters will get heavily nerfed leading up to the May 24th release to help maintain balance during the game.

While I didn't have much time to play the Overwatch beta, one thing was certain: Reaper was the most over-powered character in any match where he was present. I was almost thoroughly convinced before playing the game that Tracer was going to be the most over-powered character in the game, but other than being difficult to track and hit, she was a fairly balanced character. Reaper, on the other hand, seemed to be fairly popular with a lot of players and racked up kills rather quickly thanks to being able to float into an advantageous position and take down foes quickly with his special. He seemed to be the opposite of McCree, who was rather disappointing to play and a lot weaker than I thought he would be.

Nevertheless, most of the other characters were decently balanced, and could be thwarted with some well time shots or teamwork.

But this is the good part about the beta... you can get a lot of feedback and make minor adjustments here and there to better balance a game ahead of release.

Blizzard has been holding beta tests for Overwatch since last year, constantly introducing some new modes or features to help give gamers a thorough idea of what the game is like and how it'll play. In this latest beta gamers can experience the loot boxes, the various game modes, 21 different heroes and get in some in-depth play time with the AI, which wasn't too bad as far as behavior was concerned, but the difficulty of the AI opponents was rather low. One thing I did think was interesting is that both the AI and real human players in Overwatch grouped together in their attacks, which made the AI eerily identical to how real humans played. Blizzard did some fine work on making sure the bots mimicked real play-styles from real humans to help bring the AI opponents to life in a convincing way.

You can experience the bots or real humans for yourself in Overwatch by checking out the beta, for free, for the rest of the weekend and up until Tuesday, 10am PST, by downloading the client for the Xbox One, PS4 or PC. The colorful new team-based shooter is set for release on May 24.