Overwatch Classic

Overwatch was an online team-based game generally played as a first-person shooter. The game featured several different game modes, principally designed around squad-based combat with two opposing teams of six players each. Players selected one of over two dozen pre-made hero characters from one of three class types: Damage heroes that deal most of the damage to attack or defend control points, Tank heroes that can absorb a large amount of damage, and Support heroes that provide healing or other buffs for their teammates.

Each hero had a unique skill kit, defining their intrinsic attributes like health points and running speed, their primary attacks, several active and passive skills, and an ultimate ability that can only be used after it has been charged through dealing damage to enemies and healing allies. Players could change their hero during the course of a match, as a goal of Overwatch's design was to encourage dynamic team compositions that adapt to the situation. The game's genre has been described by some journalists as a "hero shooter", due to its design around specific heroes and classes.

The backstory to Overwatch is described through animated shorts and other information distributed by Blizzard in promoting the game.

Overwatch was set sixty years into the future of a fictionalized Earth, thirty years after the resolution of what is known as the "Omnic Crisis." Before the Omnic Crisis, humanity had been in a golden age of prosperity and technology development. Humans developed robots with artificial intelligence called "omnics", which were put to use to achieve economic equality, and began to be treated as people in their own right. The Omnic Crisis began when the worldwide automated "omnium" facilities that produced them started producing a series of lethal, hostile robots that attacked humankind. After individual nations' efforts failed to ward off the omnics, the United Nations quickly formed Overwatch, an international task force designed to combat this threat and restore order.

Overwatch was developed by Blizzard Team 4 and published by Blizzard Entertainment. The game came about in the aftermath of Blizzard's decision to cancel the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Titan in 2013, a project that had been in development for about seven years. While most others assigned to the project were transferred to other departments within Blizzard, a small team of about 40 people, led by director Jeff Kaplan, were tasked to come up with a new concept for a game in a few months. After some brainstorming, they came onto the idea of a hero team-based shooter, building upon the success of games like Team Fortress 2 and multiplayer online battle arenas. They started with assets developed for Titan to demonstrate the proof-of-concept and were greenlit to build out the full game, the first new intellectual property that Blizzard had developed since StarCraft.

The intra-company experience of Titan's cancellation served to help drive the narrative and setting. They created an optimistic vision of the near-future, some decades following the Omnic Crisis and the formation and collapse of the peacekeeping Overwatch group. This allowed them to create a diverse cast of characters, including non-human ones, and colorful settings from around the globe.

Before its release, Overwatch experienced a period of pre-launch attention not typically expected; Game Revolution noted that "[Overwatch's] reputation has quickly permeated through cyberspace, attracting attention from people who may not traditionally put down $40 to $60 each time a new first-person shooter releases." The game's open beta, which attracted 9.7 million players, was very heavily covered by the media.

Overwatch received "universal acclaim" upon release, according to review aggregator Metacritic. IGN's Vince Ingenito praised the game's characters and maps, writing "Overwatch takes just about every possible opportunity to make its cast and locales seem like people and places rather than puppets and scenery." Ingenito added that the game has a "strong online experience that gets you into games quickly and reliably."

Overwatch's fan base has been noted to be generally kind and supportive; Daniel Starkey of Wired wrote, "where many fresh games struggle with an endless stream of player complaints and developer-prodding, Overwatch's community is vivacious and jubilant." A gamer with cerebral palsy publicly praised the game's customizable controls, which let him make his first snipe in a video game. One of Blizzard's artists, Roman Kenney, drew concept art based on one player's daughter's original Overwatch character design. Blizzard altered one of the game's maps to include a tribute to an avid Chinese fan of the game who died from injuries while trying to stop a motorcycle theft on the day before the game's public release.

Blizzard has encouraged fans of Overwatch to make artistic content based on the game. To support this, Blizzard released the hero reference kit before release, providing official colors and costume and weapon designs for all 21 heroes present at the game's launch. Fans have used these, the game's animated media, and other assets to create a large amount of content, including art, cosplay, and anime opening-style music videos.