But our princess is in another castle!
On Wednesday July 14th, 2010, after an entire year of development behind the scenes, Overwatch was released to 25 members of our community, and what better way to celebrate its one year anniversary than with a release met with tons of positive feedback!
The response has truly been great. Our players have been posting first impression threads, gameplay videos and plenty of ideas and suggestions to help us improve our game. Community member Ranma even wrote a nice, detailed post of his first impressions playing as both the Resistance and the Overwatch. All in all, Overwatch was very well-received and we extremely psyched about it!
Thanks to our talented developers and hardworking playtesters, only a few very minor bugs managed to slip through the cracks and make their way into v1.0.0. They have already been addressed and the fixes will be released alongside next Wednesday's update.
Aside from Overwatch's first patch, next Wednesday will also be marked by a second, much larger wave of invites. Most (if not all) active community members will get access to the game and even be able to invite some of their friends. If feedback remains as positive as it has been and no major issues creep up, we are even considering having our open release much sooner than originally planned!
In sadder news, we decided to forgo using Desura at such an early stage, packaging Overwatch in an installer instead. We want to keep Overwatch's distribution method as simple and accessible as possible, and as much as we love Desura and believe it to be an amazing platform, it is still limited to only a few beta participants. We will definitely keep working alongside the Desura development team and, as soon as Desura is released to the public, we will make sure Overwatch is available to its users.
On a final note, we have a few surprises planned for you next week, including a random contest and a live appearance on Podcast17's 93rd episode! William and Patrick from P17 were some of the first few to play Overwatch and we are looking forward to discussing their first impressions live on the air.
Hold on to yours hats!
Played with excellent execution. I look forward to the podcast.
will this go to every tracker?
Of course!!! This is good news. Why not?
Win!
why do you not make it open for everyone???
Probably because they don't have enough servers open yet. Or because the game isn't completely polished and finished, as seen from the textures of the map. I think they would rather release something that everyone will love, and not something where people nitpick over something like unfinished textures.
This is all good news!
I'd like to play it myself. :(
me too ...
One littl eting I'd like to ask: will you keep designing maps like FPS maps or move to RTS map design style?
Becouse from gameplay vid I saw it was designed primarly for resistance(fps) players, while the combine commander had to endure looking at black spots all over the map, this will put back plenty of players form trying out the combine commander role.
Huh? That doesn't mean it's primarily designed for resistance. Why would the commander need extra non-sense that the commander can't send units to, and the resistance can't go to? By keeping the map to what is actually playable (with I'm sure some parts of a skybox or some outer area details) the commander can focus on what's important and not what he thinks the resistance can use. Also it's only in alpha.
As NullSoldier said, we're not designing maps for one side only.
We'll be looking into ways to make the "black spots" stand out less, but aside from making all of our maps in open areas like a desert or forest, there is no way to eliminate them completely (at least not while sticking to the HL2 universe).
wow amazing news, however when can we expect to see a full public release?
If everything keeps going as well as it has been, it'd only be a matter of weeks.
Though I know it won't happen for balance reasons, it'd be nice if the Overwatch player could command gunships and the like.
We're actually testing that to see if it would fit in.
Now THAT is awesome. I suppose the biggest problem is balancing the weaponry/ammo requirements for the Rebels with the spawn frequency of the gunships.
Looking foward to the following updates greatly, and will see if i can help William for your arrival if possible. I must say your mod is different some how. It gives me a feeling black mesa source didnt.