Overwatch Christmas Event and New Mode Leaked, Symmetra's New Shield Broken

A bunch of Overwatch hero interactions and sound effects have turned up on Reddit, one of which hints rather strongly that a holiday-themed event is on the way. That seasonal Overwatch festivities are likely to happen is probably one of the least-surprising things you'll hear all day, but Blizzard hasn't announced anything yet and so for now, speculation is all we've got.

Official or not, the Christmas theme song perfectly fits the part. Give it a listen below—you can almost hear the bells jingling in the background, while icicles twinkle in the snow-lit night. The rest of the audio clips are somewhat less overtly festive, but still fun in their own right: Tracer expresses a wish that Sombra would "just disappear forever," while Reaper warns Sombra to "stick to the plan," and Reinhardt finally beats Zarya at arm-wrestling. (She heard it was his birthday, though, so she went easy on him.) There's also a reference to "entering the Arena," along with seemingly-related proclamations of "Challenger" and "Gladiator," made by Winston's AI Athena, perhaps suggesting that a new mode is in the offing.

I don't expect that Blizzard will confirm that these clips are authentic (I'll let you know if it does), but short of Mike Morhaime tweeting a double-thumbs-up selfie, this is as close to a sure thing as we're going to get until an official announcement is made. Blizzard said in its third-quarter financial results that the Summer Games event "drove record engagement and participation in in-game customization items," while the Halloween Terror event "drove even higher engagement and participation." And Morhaime said in a follow-up call, via Gamerant, that players "should expect to see more events" like those in the future. A future that I would bet we'll be hearing about any day now.

On other news, Symmetra overhaul is live on the game’s PTR, and people are really putting her new kit through its paces.

Thanks to the magic of custom games, Overwatch players have taken to spawning as many Symmetra shields as possible and watching as they sail into the sky like celestial frisbees. Until they collide with something, they never de-spawn. On the upside, it looks really cool! Case in point: this video by PCBangBros:

On the downside, it causes a horrible noise, excruciating lag, and eventually crashes the game’s servers. Observe, in this video by PV Plays:

Here’s another by CrossGameMedia:

That’s not the only questionable aspect of Symmetra’s holographic crockpot lids. Apparently Reaper can teleport on top of one and then, well, fly. Here’s a video of that by Aigey:

I implore you to watch the last portion of that video, starting at 1:16. It’s so magnificent that I almost hope Blizzard doesn’t fix the glitch.

Oh, and then there’s this, which just seems cruel:

http://sumrallmind.tumblr.com/post/153539663534/so-the-shield-got-stuck-and-we-took-advantage-of

On the upside, I think Symmetra’s gonna seriously shake things up once Blizzard irons out the kinks. Watching players use her to tank, block D.Va ults, and embarrass McCrees brings a tear to my eye and a song to my heart. Have you gotten a chance to try video game character and definitely not male enhancement pill Nu-mmetra? What do you think?