Not played Overwatch yet? You can do so for free next weekend

By Rich Edmonds
published

Blizzard has announced plans for an Overwatch Free Weekend between November 18-21. If you've yet to try out the popular title, prepare to stock up on energy drink and book the couple of days off work. This upcoming promotion covers not only the PC community, but PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well so everyone can get involved.

The company will be unlocking Overwatch's full roster of 22 heroes, as well as 13 maps to try them out on. Players will be able to gain access to a variety of game modes, which in all will serve as a way to see if the game is worth picking up. As an added bonus, it'll also be possible to level up their account, receive loot boxes, and unlock customization.

Should you opt to purchase the title after giving it a test run, all progress will be saved and carried across. The free period will kick off on November 18 at 2p.m. ET / 11a.m. PT / 6p.m. UTC and close on November 21 at 7p.m. ET / 4p.m. PT / 11p.pm. UTC. More details can be found in the announcement post.

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

38 Comments
  • Ready to Play it!
  • Why does a right handed shooter have an eye patch over their right eye?  Is it the same reason pirates wore them?  For being able to see better, she flips it up when lining up a shot in the scope?  That seems inconvenient and unlikely.
  • That eye is trained and done tuned to perfection. It cannot be used for everyday sight seeing. You dig?
  • lol, yeah, I'm sure that's it.  If I didn't have a child induced backlog of games already, I would definitely try this out over that weekend.  As it is, I have Halo 5, Master Chief Collection, and Arkham Knight to play through... My wife says it's inappropriate for me to play shooting/combat games with the 4 and 1-1/2 yr olds while she's at work in the evenings.  Such a buzzkill, lol
  • Well, she might be more okay with Overwatch then - it's got a more pixar-ish art style, and even though you're shooting each other, there's no blood or gore. It's great fun, and I would recommend at least giving a try during the free week.
  • Maybe it's time to make the children some eye patches so they don't see the "violence" lol
  • My children are in bed by 8pm. 9 year old at 8pm. 4 year old at 7pm. Abd my 18 month old 630 pm. I don't understand children being used an excuse these day.
  • My son is in bed around 9:30, my daughter, whenever we can actually get her to fall asleep.  Neither are lacking for energy on that schedule.  If we put my daughter to bed at 6:30 she'd be up at 10pm for a few hours, then back up at 4 am.  Not all kids sleep the same.  My wife works evenings, so that we don't have to pay for daycare.  Basically, any free time I have during the week is used for chores.  And I get up at 5am every day, so I'm not playing when they go to bed.  Weekends are always booked up, and typically used for maintaining my house and my in-laws farm. So my kids are only part of my "excuse", but basically my TV/gaming time is when they're around.
  • Woah. Hahaha. I never had a problem with anyone of my 3 kids. As a kid I had to be in bed by a certain time. I made sure my kids do the same. From 8pm every night the TV is mine and the wifes. The earliest they wake is 7am.
  • haha i feel your pain, i just do it anyway heheh
  • She is right handed, but another overwatch character, Widowmaker, shot her through the scope, blinding her and seriously injuring her but not killing her.  So now I suppose she just moves her head over a bit to use the left eye but keeping all her other mechanics. It is inconvenient, but not unheard of.  I am right handed but left eye dominate so when I shot I tilt my head a bit further then you normally would.
  • I am a right handed shooter - I aim with my left eye.
  • She has the eyepatch on because, lore-wise, she got shot in the eye and severely wounded years before, whilst on a mission. 
  • Can we pre download it?
  • Seems like u have slow broadband just like me
  • I don't think it would take more than 30mins on my Internet. But I would like to quickly start playing after coming from office and not wait for it to preload.
  • Paladins anyone ? :D
  • It'll be kinda hard to get to my PS4 to try this out, seeing as that entire time I'll be too busy playing Pokemon Sun and Moon.
  • it's amazing that Blizzard hasn't brought out Starter Edition to this like Starcraft II, they should do same, you only get to choose certain characters and won't level up, and put other restrictions ,but play game.
  • The game is new and still selling extremely well. It's worth it to them to only due free weekends, otherwise people would just stick with the starter edition like they do for starcraft. I'm sure that they will do one for overwatch, like they did for starcraft, but it will be a while. The starcraft starter addition didn't come out until after the first expansion I believe, which was two years after the release of SC2.
  • yeah it might take some time but shouldn't be long, Starcraft II WOL was released in 2010 and Starcraft Starter Edition was released in 2011 Heart of the Swarm was released in 2013.
  • Oh really? Ok then, my timeline was messed up. Don't remember it until after HOTS, but I only really played WOL and LOTV
  • Oh really? Ok then, my timeline was messed up. Don't remember it until after HOTS, but I only really played WOL and LOTV
  • Yeah ,I play Starcraft II everyday,soon as Starter Edition was out I got my neighbors to try out while I had WOL,now we all on LOTV from HOTS
  • Yeah ,I play Starcraft II everyday,soon as Starter Edition was out I got my neighbors to try out while I had WOL,now we all on LOTV from HOTS
  • Nice. I haven't played in a while because school. Watched the championships last weekend, incredible as usual. Need to finish the campaign. Very interested to see where blizzard takes it from here, if they're going to be continuing starcraft or just leaving it be.
  • It's ok at best. It's a very unbalanced. But that is due to the heros. The game is basically a game of choke points. At which when you know how to defend you will ALWAYS win as a defender. It's really an incredibly average FPS multiplayer game. It is in no way for competitive gamers at all.
  • THANK YOU, exactly what i thought - and then you read everywhere that it is soooo phenomenal. Personally don't get it
  • No its not amazing. The only people who drool over it are Blizzard faithful. Everyone I know who swears by OVERWATCH are WOW players. Or were. Or love some sort of Blizzard game. If you look at OVERWATCH it is designed to appeal to the same mentality as WOW does. LOOT BOXES. Earning this and earning that. But the actual gameplay and design of the game is pretty poor. Essentially Blizzard have copied the Chinese type games of the same vain. HERO FPS. unbalanced and casual.
  • I never played any other Blizzard game, except Overwatch, and I  think it's amazing. Some characters do have some abilities that need fixing, but as far as I've been playing, they actively work to fix those abilities. And the point about choke points is absolutely not true, from the lowest to the highest level of play. 
  • Choke points is exactly what its playstyle is about. Every map I played they are designed so that at certain points on the map there's only 1 or 2 ways through. Of which you kist set your defense strategy at those points. After the first week of playing and learning it, I have never lost playing defense since. It desperately needs a team death match mode. Because the small selection of maps and modes gets mundane very very quickly. There are much better competitve multiplayer shooters on the market. Halo 5, Titanfall 1, Unreal Torny, Quake Arena to name some that beat it easily.
  • And how exactly would you "balance" it? So everyone would have an equal 1v1 chance? Yeah that would just turn into into another lame cod.
  • Many games are balanced brilliantly and play nothing like cod. Halo 5, Titanfall 1, Unreal torny, Quake Arena to name a few. All these titles play very differently and have an amazing balance.
  • And NONE of those are character-based team shooters! All of those games you mentioned have 1 character, so yeah I can see why they're "balanced" lol.
    ​If you're talking about THAT kind of balance, then you don't understand this game at all.
  • I played on the last trial, not a bad game, pretty fun... Too many games to play right now but, I have some family who plays it so I might download it again.
  • I thought this was free to play already.
  • It was a few weeks ago...Just for a extended weekend, like now...
  • One free weekend was enough to not grab my attention. The game felt more boring than the BF1 Beta, if that were possible.