Blizzard: Overwatch

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Antarius

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Surprised that this doesn't have a thread yet.

Blizzard trademarked the term Overwatch last week. Possibly the reworking of Titan, One of the many leaks about Titan is that it was Genre Bending and "not a traditional mmo"?

Maybe they scrapped their mmo in favor of a more traditional FPS with RTS elements? (ala 1998's Battlezone?, It's one of the few genres of games that isn't played out right now, and would certainly make executives drool about being able to sell a game to 2 of the biggest audiences.) Overwatch certainly implies some kind of top down level perspective over a battlefield. In their job listings for "announced title" they've been advertising for 2d level designers as well as 3d artists.

Maybe they got the idea from watching the division gameplay trailer and saw someone playing a game on their tablet flying over a battle while other people sat at a console participating in the battle and/or EVE: Dust, both of which kinda appeared around the time that they "scrapped" whatever it was that Titan was originally going to be.
 
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Column_sl

shitlord
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People say it's for Starcraft.


Overwatch is a map that was used in the foreign BroodWar scene. It first appeared in the SBWI Summer Tour of 2013 and was later used for the first SBWI Teamleague. Due to the prevalence of Protoss and Zerg on the map it was updated to Neo Overwatch before the STL1 playoffs to make it more feasible for terran..
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A

Antarius

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Column_sl said:
People say it's for Starcraft.
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Overwatch tipped as Blizzard's next multiplayer gaming title - SlashGear

Now, I know that a company would probably just be thorough for the sake of it.

Blizzard's listing with the USPTO covers a massive number of possible identifications, including downloadable computer game programs, electronic games software for wireless devices, computer game software, and computer game disks.
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I'd have a hard time believing a map for a 16 year old title would receive that many patent/trademark filings even if they were "just being thorough"

I'd think it be much more likely that someone on the team heard the name and liked it (possibly subconsciously), at the same time they were trying to come up with a name for their new title.

I was recently reminded from the Diablo 3 thread that Jay Wilson still works at Blizzard, and has been working on an unannounced title for just over a year (january 2013). I can't imagine it would take a HUGE team to come up with a remake of Battlezone, and would be in line with his experience as a project lead working on an RTS style game (dawn of war).
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Spectator mode update for SC2 sounds like a reasonable explanation, similar to dota2 where you can buy tournament tickets, prize pool increasing from ticket sales, replays available for every match, maybe cosmetics like portraits and what not. Maybe a more general thing though, like a "battle.net spectator mode" compatible with various of their games(wow arena spec mode, hearthstone spec mode, SC2 spec mode all seem like good things they could add and then tie in with heroes of the storm spec mode). From your battle.net client you can just click to spectate whatever you feel like, cross game tournament promotions and whatever.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

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HotS and SC2 run on the same engine right ? It could be a shared feature and observer mode would be long overdue, although they will have hard time competing with Gameheart.

I expect them to give a preview of LotV to the press before summer, to get people hyped for Blizzcon.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Why does this give me visions of Blizzard doing something like Space Hulk?

Man that would be awesome - sure there's no chance though.
 
Sulrn

Sulrn

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When the dev house working on the Jagged Alliance reboot previewed their work on Space Hulk for their kick starter I felt it was the weakest part of their pitch. The alpha gameplay looked horrendous from Space Hulk.
 
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Tenks

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Zaphid_sl said:
HotS and SC2 run on the same engine right ? It could be a shared feature and observer mode would be long overdue, although they will have hard time competing with Gameheart.

I expect them to give a preview of LotV to the press before summer, to get people hyped for Blizzcon.
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I expect it would be an observer only client for HotS & SC2. So it wouldn't really try and compete with Gameheart per-se.
 
Dandai

Dandai

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One thing we can say for certain is that it isn't derivative of the work they did on Titan. They've been hiring for various "unannounced projects" since Hearthstone really took off though.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

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Dandai_sl said:
One thing we can say for certain is that it isn't derivative of the work they did on Titan. They've been hiring for various "unannounced projects" since Hearthstone really took off though.
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I imagine Hearthstone isn't raking in WoW's numbers, but for the amount of people on the team, it must be very profitable. Enough to let them pursue similar F2P titles and experiment outside their Starcraft/Diablo/Warcraft franchises.
 
Dandai

Dandai

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Zaphid_sl said:
I imagine Hearthstone isn't raking in WoW's numbers, but for the amount of people on the team, it must be very profitable. Enough to let them pursue similar F2P titles and experiment outside their Starcraft/Diablo/Warcraft franchises.
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You don't need to rake in WoW numbers when you don't have WoW's overhead.
 
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