Winston is all I really need, personally
When it was announced at BlizzCon that Overwatch is to be a full price title instead of being free-to-play as many had assumed, there were concerns that it would lead to a mass of community splitting microtransactions and paid-for DLC.
If that was something you were worried about, you can now rest easy. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has confirmed in a developer update video that all new heroes and maps released post-launch will be freely available to all players:
We have ideas for additional maps and heroes that we’d like to add to the game, so we’ve thought about this and decided the best way to add them to the game is to patch them in as free content and not as DLC.
Kaplan also states that while they do have ideas for future heroes (some of them even being hinted at through in-game secrets), Blizzard doesn’t have a definite timeline for when they’ll be coming.
This statement doesn’t entirely preclude microtransactions being in Overwatch, as things like skins or boosts could still be on offer. At the very least everyone will have access to the same characters and will be able to play on the same maps, which is a good thing.
It’s nice to see Blizzard directly addressing this, as it means the community won’t be split by who has access to what maps. Public statements that a developer plans to produce free content for their game following its release is always one that should be applauded in my opinion.
