Overwatch had a pretty solid 2017, with three new heroes, several maps, and other additions, but what will 2018 look like? The game is approaching its second anniversary, so will it be slowing down? Don’t count on it. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan just dropped his latest developer update, and it was chock full of 2018 teases. First up, some specific information about stuff happening in the near future:

　　“We're super fired up for 2018, and there's a lot of stuff we need to address. As we've mentioned, we have all those great Overwatch League skins coming soon. Plus, the start of the Overwatch League is going to be incredibly exciting. We're going to release Blizzard World very soon, and I think that map is one of our best. Not only is a gorgeous map with tons of great Easter eggs, but we're also trying a lot of different things with the gameplay.”

　　Okay, but what about stuff we don’t already know about? According to Kaplan, there’s plenty in the works, including a new hero, and multiple maps:

　　“I'm going to be vague about some of this, because I can't reveal everything that we're working on, but obviously one of the things that's most important to us are heroes. We are well along the path on hero 27. We think the hero is going to be awesome [and] very needed. We're not sure when the release date is. We have it in internal testing, and, so far, we're having a ton of fun, and we're making a lot great progress. We're also thinking of heroes beyond 27, as well. There's [also] some great new maps in the works, which you'll learn more about in the future.

　　Beyond that, we're going to continue to work on improving competitive play. As the year goes on, we want to evolve our plan for what competitive play looks like over the long term. We also want to continue the story development of Overwatch. We've been talking a lot about furthering the story we've been telling, Winston's recall, how different characters have responded to that. That's a continuing storyline we want to explore through our animated shorts and comics. Another thing we're putting a lot of time into is events. We're planning the next iteration of Uprising, the lore-based event we ran last year. We know Uprising should return, but we want to evolve it.”

　　Sounds like a lot of stuff when you run through it all at once, but is it? Hopefully we get more than one new hero this year. That said, with Overwatch League launching, I’m pretty confident Blizzard will continue to support the game strongly.

　　Looking forward to another year of Overwatch? What would you like to see Blizzard add?