On October 23rd, Blizzard announced a greenlight for their European Beta serves of their highly anticipated, competitive team-based shooter game Overwatch.  With the completion of American and Euro Beta, the way is paved for the Closed Beta Testing launch in a few days time on October 27th–meaning time still remains to throw your hat in the ring!

Blizzard openly stated online the end goal for Closed Beta Testing is to gain as much constructive and articulate feedback on Overwatch’s gameplay as possible.  As such, the CBT will sadly only allow a limited number of players, with the progression of more players joining in over time. These lucky players will have access to 18 Heroes and 7 maps. Beta Testers will also be assigned into two differing groups, and deployed on various missions given from Blizzard. Targeted feedback developers are aiming to receive from Testers regard the game’s “balance, feel, and fun” in order to “hammer the heck out of” kinks and ensure Overwatch performs its best on a broad diversity of systems. Game Developer Jeff Kaplan stated that the Beta is “less of a promotional event” and more of an opportunity to update the game, further reminding fans that Blizzard is unafraid to make “drastic changes” if the game is heading in the right direction (remember in Cataclysm when they flooded Thousand Needles? Yeah…)

Additionally, Blizzard will be hosting Beta Test Weekends, reported to occur when it’s time to “break out the big guns” and “open up the floodgates,” welcoming as many players as feasible. These large scale events will take place over a small window of time (thus the topical title “Test Weekends”) and are meant to stress-test the games hardware and serves. Heroes, maps, and modes are hampered during this time, but feedback is always encouraged by developers. The first BTW is purportedly to be scheduled after Blizz Con takes place on November 6th-7th.

With all these announcement pouring out of Blizzard, rumors of Voice Chat are also circling, making fans hopeful it will extend to other games, more here.

If you’re signed up for Beta Testing, make sure your computer is running on Windows, as it is the only OS the Beta will run on, and also that your Battle.net desktop app is installed before the Closed Beta launches in two days, on October 27th.