Overwatch 2 Game Director Aaron Keller has revealed how the team will be analyzing the upcoming 6v6 tests and how well OW Classic performed in Season 13.
Season 14 of Overwatch 2 is set to begin on December 10 and it’s finally bringing back 6v6 in the first of what will be many limited-time tests to determine the future of the game.
The 6v6 role queue event will go live on December 17, 2024, and run through until January 6, 2025, with special balancing due to teams having two tanks each again.
The results of these tests will ultimately decide which direction the team decides to go with going forward, as many players have wanted to see OW revert back to its 6v6 days after being unhappy with 5v5 gameplay.
In a post on X, Game Director Aaron Keller provided a framework to which the 6v6 tests will be judged by revealing how well OW Classic did during its first run.
Overwatch Classic results revealed ahead of 6v6 tests
According to Keller, the team analyzes player engagement in different ways, but two of the bigger sets of criteria are the percentage of the audience in a mode and the percentage of hours played.
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“When Classic launched, 36% of all player hours were in that mode! This is high for an event mode,” he revealed. “After 3 weeks of play that number had dropped to about 4%. This is pretty standard for an event mode at the end of its run.”
With Overwatch Classic's first run over, I wanted to give a glimpse of how it did – and give a framework for analyzing upcoming 6v6 tests.We look at player engagement in different ways, two of the bigger ones are the % of our audience and the % of hours played in a mode.
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) December 7, 2024
The Director further noted that 71% of all players tried the mode at least once on launch day, but that number fell to 11% by the end of the event. Still, with 11%, it was the fourth most popular mode before being taken offline.
The other metric, percent of players, saw 71% of all players try the mode at least once on launch day. This number fell to about 11% by the end of Classic. This falloff is normal, but having 11% of players continue to engage made this our 4th most popular mode at the time.
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) December 7, 2024
“Overall we’re really happy with how well Classic did. And we’re excited to bring it back in S14 with a different time period from the original game highlighted,” he added. “We’re not quite ready to talk about the exact date, but expect it… soon.”
Keller is referring to the Moth meta, as revealed during the Season 14 trailer. In it, Mercy was the most powerful hero on the roster thanks to her over-the-top ultimate and resurrection.
For the Overwatch 2 devs to view 6v6’s return as a success, it’ll need to approach the same numbers that they saw with OW Classic. Essentially, they will need numerous players to participate, but stay invested in it over the weeks it’s available.
