A new year is upon us along with a new Overwatch Lunar New Year to coincide with the actual Lunar New Year, which is a celebration of the incoming year across various Asian cultures. The team at Blizzard greets players with a slight twist on the same event every year and will almost assuredly continue this trend for the Year of the Pig. So when is the Overwatch Lunar New Year release date? What skins will be in it? Here’s everything we know about the Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019.
Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019 release date
The Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019 will begin on January 24, 2019. It will celebrate the Year of the Pig, so Roadhog fans can likely prepare for a new skin to be given to the hero.
The first Lunar New Year event started on January 24, 2017 and ended on February 20, 2017. The second one started on February 8, 2018 to March 5, 2018. This year’s actual Lunar New Year starts on February 5. This means that the Overwatch Lunar New Year release date lands slightly ahead of this event.
Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019 end date
The Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019 end date will be February 18th, 2019. This gives players 25 days to get all their skins together and enjoy the annual Overwatch celebration.
Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019 skins
Unlike past events, there have not been any leaks hinting at what skins may be in the event. But it is the Year of the Pig, which means we could see some prime Roadhog skins aside from the Bajie already in the game. In the classic Chinese novel, “Journey to the West,” Bajie was a celestial being that got turned into a pig after drinking too much and flirting with the moon. Roadhog’s pig-like qualities do make him a good candidate for another hog-like skin.
There are not any great signs to point to as to who gets a new skin, given the randomness of last Lunar New Year events. Some fan spreadsheets try to make predictions based on who has gotten what but those are just educated guesses at best.
The only substantive cosmetic leaks refer to datamined Wrecking Ball voice lines that will likely be part of the event’s loot boxes. These would be voice lines that would play from a pool of different clips regarding luck much like one of Orisa’s voice lines already in the game.
Overwatch Lunar New Year 2019 modes
But there have been leaks about the modes even if it’s unlikely there will be any new ones. The achievements for the mode came out and are based around Capture the Flag, which was temporarily introduced during the first Lunar New Year but came around later in the regular arcade. The second Lunar New Year even brought the first map made exclusively for CTF.
There are two achievements which popped up on the PTR. “Delivery Interruption” unlocks when you kill an enemy as they capture the flag and “Captured” requires that you just capture a flag yourself. These will come with as yet unrevealed sprays.
Blizzard has not been adding much to any of the most recent events to the game, which makes it even more probable that Capture the Flag will not see many drastic enhancements. Instead, the company has stated back in September 2018 ahead of the Junkenstein Halloween event that it was not going to tamper much with the special event game modes.
Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan stated in a developer update that the team is more focused on hero balance updates and quality of life changes. According to him, it’s a “focus shift” for the team and small changes like the colorblind options and “What’s New?” tab would not have happened if the developer reinvented the game modes every time.
