Overwatch Winter Wonderland Christmas Event Reveals New Mode, Christmas Skins

By Edwin Kee
Overwatch Christmas Wonderland details
Christmas comes early for Overwatch gamers with the Christmas Wonderland update that offers new Christmas skins and a new mode. Blizzard

How has your gaming experience with Overwatch been so far? If you love the game and wished that there was more than meets the eye, then you're in for a treat this holiday season. Blizzard has just revealed a slew of goodies with their Overwatch Winter Wonderland Christmas event, where it is all set to deliver a new mode in addition to a bunch of Christmas skins to help you get into the mood of the season, over on three platforms where Overwatch is on: the Xbox One, Sony PS4 and PC.

Do take note that the Overwatch Winter Wonderland event will not be there always, but rather, it is a seasonal thing. This particular limited time addition will be valid all the way from December 13 through to January 2, so do take advantage of this time window in order to get your Christmas skins on in Overwatch for some holiday fun. Of course, other than a bunch of new skins as well as a new game mode, there will also be changes introduced with the Overwatch Winter Wonderland event which will be detailed below.

Limited time event
Blizzard has announced in their blog post, "Starting today, all in-game Loot Boxes have been replaced with our impeccably wrapped Winter Loot Boxes, and they’re filled to the brim with over 100 new cosmetic trimmings! As with previous events, Winter Loot Boxes can be earned or purchased, and each will contain at least one item from our 2016 Winter Wonderland collection—including profile icons, sprays, victory poses, emotes, highlight intros, skins, and more! While the contents of each seasonal Loot Box are random, you can unlock a variety of these cordial customization options in the Hero Gallery throughout the event’s duration. Once you've unlocked an item, it will be yours forever, which means you can get into holly jolly hijinks all year-round. The collection will be dashing back into the vault on January 2, however (when the event concludes), so be sure to fire up your favorite gaming machine and celebrate before it’s too late!"

A new game mode in Overwatch
As for the brand new game mode that has been introduced, it will be known as Mei’s Snowball Offensive. I like the touch of how it blends in an Asian-sounding name with that of what is normally associated with a Western tradition, and Mei's Snowball Offensive is set to be a hugely hilarious and noisy 6 vs. 6 situation. This will be made all the more fun since it will be a single elimination affair as players go about sending snowballs in the direction of one another while trying to avoid being eliminated.

All it takes is a single hit in order to eliminate your opponent. However, if you miss your shot, you end up vulnerable to attacks, and will need to continue hunting for the next snow pile in order to "reload". Blizzard offers additional explanation on Mei's Snowball Offensive by sharing, "Once your weapon is empty, your enemies will have the advantage as you search for the nearest snow pile to reload, so don't forget to cover your retreat with ice walls and cryo-freeze to block their attacks—and when the battle starts to heat up, you can activate Mei's Ultimate, which turns her blaster into a semi-automatic snowball launcher, allowing you to fire continuously as your enemies scatter."

Update 2.01 patch notes
For the rest of the details concerning the Overwatch Winter Wonderland event, you will be able to check out the full list in the update 2.01 patch notes here.

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