A NEW ERA DAWNS FOR BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT’S TEAM-BASED SHOOTER WITH OVERWATCH^® 2

Upcoming sequel brings players into the story of Overwatch as the world’s heroes stand together against a global Null Sector attack

Level up and customise your heroes with supercharged abilities as you undertake a wide range of cooperative Hero Missions around the world

Team up in a new era of Overwatch’s world-class PvP competition with new heroes, maps, and more

SYDNEY, Australia—2 November, 2019—More than 50 million players^* worldwide have teamed up to capture objectives, push payloads, and fight for the future in Overwatch^®, Blizzard Entertainment’s acclaimed team-based shooter. Today, before a sold-out crowd of BlizzCon 2019 attendees and millions watching online, Blizzard Entertainment revealed Overwatch 2, a supercharged sequel that will send players deeper into the world and story of Overwatch and build upon the original game’s critically acclaimed foundation of world-class PvP competition.

In Overwatch 2, players will take on the roles of the world’s heroes in cooperative missions that challenge them to team up, power up, and stand together against an overwhelming outbreak of threats around the globe. Players will also battle each other in the next evolution of competitive Overwatch play, which carries forward existing players’ accomplishments and loot collections, and features the current complete Overwatch roster, a new generation of heroes, new internationally recognisable maps that widen the scope of the world, a new Push map type, and more.

“With Overwatch 2, we’re building the cooperative, narrative-driven game experience that players have been asking for since the original—and that we’ve wanted to make for a long time,” said J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re looking forward to telling the next chapter of this epic story in-game, and we’re excited to give players a whole-new kind of co-op experience built around progressing and customising their favourite heroes—all while providing even more of everything they love about Overwatch today.”

In the sequel’s action-packed cooperative Story Missions, players will experience the advent of a new Overwatch as Winston, Tracer, and other members of the original Overwatch join forces with a new generation of heroes. Players will take an active role in the Overwatch saga as a new global crisis unfolds through a series of intense, high-stakes four-player missions. As the story progresses, players will team up as different sets of heroes and fight to defend the world from the omnic forces of Null Sector, uncover the motives behind the robotic armies’ attacks, and come face-to-face with rising new threats around the globe.

The battle continues in Hero Missions, where the Overwatch team will be called upon to go beyond their limits as they deploy across the planet, defending cities against robot invasions, taking on elite Talon agents, and battling the villainous forces laying siege to the world. In this highly replayable mode, players can level up their favourite heroes and earn powerful customisation options that supercharge their abilities in co-op play—such as altering Reinhardt’s Fire Strike to ignite nearby enemies or modifying Tracer’s Pulse Bomb to cause a devastating chain reaction—granting the extra edge they need against the overwhelming odds.

To help realise these missions, the sequel also introduces significant engine upgrades that support larger maps for co-op (PvE) play, as well as the wide variety of new enemies and factions that players will encounter on their missions. The game also introduces visual enhancements designed to bring players’ favourite heroes—and their new looks for Overwatch 2—to life in greater detail.

Overwatch 2 also represents the beginning of a new era for the series’ world-renowned competitive 6v6 play. In addition to carrying forward all of the original game’s heroes, maps, and modes—as well as existing Overwatch players’ accomplishments and loot collections—the sequel adds multiple new playable heroes to the ever-growing roster; widens the scope of the world with even more maps and locations; and adds a new Push map type, in which two teams compete to make a robot (that happens to be pretty good at pushing things) push the map’s objective to their opponent’s side.

Overwatch 2 also renews Blizzard’s commitment to continue supporting the existing Overwatch community. Current Overwatch players will battle side-by-side with Overwatch 2 players in PvP multiplayer. In addition, current Overwatch players will be able to play Overwatch 2 heroes and maps, ensuring the core PvP experience remains dynamic and vital for today’s community in the Overwatch 2 era. More details on Blizzard’s plans, including some of the new heroes joining the fray, will be announced in the future as development continues.

For more information on Overwatch 2, visit www.playoverwatch.com. For screenshots and other assets, visit http://blizzard.gamespress.com.

Diablo^® IV Revealed

Newest incarnation of Blizzard Entertainment’s genre-defining action–role-playing franchise returns with dark, visceral gameplay, robust customisation, deep loot, and infinite adventures

SYDNEY, Australia —2 November, 2019—An ancient evilthreatens to engulf Sanctuary in darkness, and new heroes have been called upon to face challenges the world has never seen before. Today, Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo IV, the highly anticipatednext entry in its genre-defining action–role-playingseries. The newest instalment of Diablo was announced during BlizzCon^® 2019, where attendees were eager to be the first in the world to play a public demo of the game.Diablo IV draws players into a grim story line and gives them the freedom to explore and forge their own path across the most expansive and intense vision of the world of Sanctuary—a bleak and shattered hellscape bereft of hope and beset by demons.

True to the franchise’s roots, Diablo IV will deliver visceral combat, gruesome and varied monsters, an epic hunt for legendary loot, and endless playability and progression. Players will find a lifetime’s worth of adventure scattered across a land rooted in unique ecologies and inhabited by dangerous new foes. They’ll delve into randomised dungeons packed with unpredictable adversaries and unimaginable treasures. While continuing to fully support solo and coordinated party play, Diablo IV will also provide opportunities for groups of players to encounter each other in the same shared world—whether to tackle bigger challenges… or possibly even slaughter one another in player-vs.-player combat.

“Sanctuary has been a home to Diablo players for more than 20 years, and it’s with our own deep passion for the series and a deep appreciation of the community that we announce Diablo IV today,” said J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re excited to be returning to the dark, quintessential Diablo gameplay that players love while expanding the world and story in new ways, and we can’t wait for more people to be able to experience it.”

In Diablo IV, players will attempt to bring hope back to the world by vanquishing evil in all its vile incarnations—from cannibalistic demon-worshipping cultists to the all-new drowned undead that emerge from the coastlines to drag their victims to a watery grave. For the first time in the series, Sanctuary will be a contiguous, seamless landmass comprising diverse regions ranging from the burning desert of Kejhistan, to the verdant werewolf-infested forests of Scosglen, to the harsh and rugged wilderness of the Dry Steppes.

At BlizzCon, Blizzard revealed the first three of Diablo IV’s character classes, all playable at the show:

• The Barbarian, known for their unparalleled strength and brutal melee combat,utilises a new and more powerful system in battle, Arsenal, which arms them with the ability to carry and rapidly switch between four different weapons at a time by assigning them to individual attacks.
• The Sorceress hearkens back to their Diablo II roots and shapes the elements to obliterate their foes by impaling them upon jagged spikes of ice, electrocuting them with bolts of lightning, or raining flaming meteors from the sky.
• The Druid is a savage shapeshifter whose updated playstyle empowers them to fluidly transform between werewolf, werebear, and human form to unleash the raw power of nature’s furyon the forces of the Burning Hells. 

These three iconic characters honour the legacy of the franchise and exemplify how Diablo IV builds upon the series’ history by preserving the core Diablo fantasy while allowing players to explore untapped gameplay possibilities with fresh inspiration. Players will be able to experiment and discover countless character builds through customisable talent trees and skills, a deep loot system filled with legendary and set items to collect, runes and rune word combinations, and even personalised mounts for traversing the open world. 

Diablo IV is being developed using modern technology that pushes the franchise to dark, new depths. This technology is at the heart of everything players will see, hear, and feel—delivering much higher fidelity and a more engrossing experience. It opens up countless possibilities for the Diablo series, from smooth character animations, such as the Druid’s fluid shapeshifting, to the seamless, vast overworld players will travel across in search of the next loot-filled underground dungeon. Ultimately, Diablo IV will ground players in a grittier and deadlier world.

Diablo IV is currently in development and will be coming to PC, PlayStation^® 4, and Xbox One. Brave souls can seek out more information at www.diablo.com.