Ever since the first announcement of Overwatch’s closed beta, Blizzard has promised Test Weekends open to larger beta tester groups. The company has been very fond of the process of beta testing games before releasing them to the greater public. Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm had fairly long beta phases which helped shame these games’ user experiences and Overwatch seems to be following a similar path, but the developers have stated that they don’t want to use the closed beta as a promotional device.
Blizzard officially announced the very first Test Weekend on which they will allow more players to temporarily login to the Overwatch servers and during the extended weekend of November 20 till November 23. The greater number of users will get given beta access to help stress test the servers. Notifications of these invites will be sent out on the 19th, giving new players a chance to download and install the game so that they can start playing as soon as Blizzard give the go ahead.
During BlizzCon, the Overwatch developers stated that there will most likely only be one of these Test Weekends in 2015, with the second one happening early 2016. This Test Weekend will be the best test that the company ever do to test how their servers will function under heavier loads, and it will also allow them to get feedback from a higher variety of computer setups so that they will be able to monitor if Overwatch runs acceptably on some older computer hardware/software.
For more information on the Test Weekend, you can check it out at Blizzard official blog.
SOURCE: Battlenet
