For years, Overwatch had an infamous player toxicity problem. A few years after its successful 2016 debut, the problem became especially bad whenever a new hero was added to the game, and that was an issue Blizzard wanted to solve. How did it do that? By simultaneously dropping five heroes into the game earlier this year, as part of Overwatch 2’s rebuild.
Alongside the game’s first year-long story arc, The Reign of Talon, this gamble paid off when Blizzard discovered that toxicity within the player community dropped significantly as users focused more on curiosity and experimentation.
“[At the] start of 2026, we announced 10 heroes, and five of them launched in Season 1,” game director Aaron Keller said to GameSpot at BlizzCon. “People were like, ‘how do you how do you play all these heroes, you know, like what’s this game, what’s the meta going to be, what’s it going to turn into?’ We even saw toxicity went down measurably in the game when those five heroes went in, because people were just having fun trying to experience all of that.
“This year also we’re releasing a new hero every single season, so you get that moment again where there’s a little bit more to learn. [The] start of this year, we had a big moment. We have these little ones over the course of the year, and then we’re going to do it all again at the start of 2027, and we’re just going to like keep going that way in the future.”
Overwatch’s next hero, Doctrine, was revealed during the BlizzCon opening ceremony. Described as a techno-vampire from Zimbabwe who wields a scepter, he can heal players, buff them, and unleash a swarm of bat drones to push back enemies. For more on Overwatch, you can read up on how Tracer almost had a completely different design, which heroes are considered to be the best in Overwatch according to Blizzard, and how two veteran heroes are being overhauled.