Overwatch Season 8 is set to start very soon and will include the usual ramp up in Competitive Play.
PS4, Xbox One and PC CP is currently offline, following the end of Season 7 and Blizzard instigating a few days break for in between events.
Season 8 is currently scheduled to launch on Sunday, December 31 at 4:00 p.m. PT (or Monday, January 1 at 00:00 UTC).
This will mean a midnight launch for those in the UK, with just a short time to go before everything begins again.
It should also be noted that this Competitive Play change comes in between the start and end of the Overwatch Christmas event.
The Winter Wonderland will be finishing up later this week, meaning a short window to grab the loot of your choice.
If you completed your placement matches during Season 7, you are now eligible to receive a special spray and player icon.
These will be unlocked automatically when you log into your account the first time after the season ends.
And If you are placed within the Top 500 players on your platform (and in your region) at the end of the season, you’ll receive an extra player icon and animated spray on top of the other seasonal rewards.
Aside from sprays and icons, you’ll also receive a number of Competitive Points based on the maximum skill rating you achieved during the season.
Here’s the Skill Rating (SR) to Competitive Point (CP) breakdown for Season 7:
- SR 1-1499 (Bronze): 65 CP
- SR 1500-1999 (Silver): 125 CP
- SR 2000-2499 (Gold): 250 CP
- SR 2500-2999 (Platinum): 500 CP
- SR 3000-3499 (Diamond): 750 CP
- SR 3500-3999 (Master): 1200 CP
- SR 4000-5000 (Grandmaster): 1750 CP
It follows Overwatch fans being treated to a new Christmas stream event, featuring Jeff Kaplan.
The Yule Log extravaganza on Twitch featured the Blizzard game director hanging out in a comfy looking chair on a pretty festive looking set.
And the loop pretty much contained about that much information for PS4, Xbox One and PC gamers, lasting over nine hours.
The featured clips of Jeff hanging out in the chair went on for hours, sometimes gathering an audience of around 30K+ people.
And while it was mainly devoid of much action – unless you’re into people reaching for cookies a lot – there was a tease of a new Overwatch hero being added to the game.
“To say a thank you to all of and make this an extra special holiday, me and the Overwatch hero team are proud and excited to announce the next hero is going to be…”
This then saw the stream breakdown, apparently hacked before any juicy info could be announced.
“Thanks for sticking it out and we think you are going to be as excited as we are, it’s going to be super fun, and we all know it,” Jeff added afterward.
“Thanks for sticking it out and we really appreciate you being here with us.”
The loop then continued afterward, with many users on Reddit enjoying the rather quirky event for what it was.
While it was likely that Blizzard were set to launch a new Overwatch hero after Moira, it seems we might hear more about it in the new year.