Blizzard is very generous when giving out free stuff in Overwatch. This year's holiday season is no exception with this year's edition of Winter Wonderland. We discuss in this article how you could claim your free skins and loot boxes during the event.
Free Winter Wonderland Loot Boxes
Overwatch will have another set of skins in holiday motif through the Winter Wonderland loot boxes. You don't have to buy loot boxes to enjoy them because Blizzard is giving five Winter Wonderland loot boxes for free.
Simply logging in between now and the end period of the event will get you five Winter Wonderland loot boxes. These loot boxes may contain epic to legendary skins for your heroes. From these loot boxes, you could get cosmetics from the previous Winter Wonderland events.
Exclusive Winter Wonderland 2019 Cosmetics
However, there are also some cosmetics that you have to work for. There are nine total cosmetics for you to get, but the first six cosmetics are no longer available. The last three cosmetics are still up for grabs, all for the hero Mercy.
To get the Mercy cosmetics, you just have to win games in Quick Play, Competitive Play, or Arcade mode for a certain number of times. To get the Snow Angel player icon, you have to win three games. The Winter Spell Spray will be unlocked after six wins. Finally, the Snow Angel Mercy Skin can be obtained after winning nine games.
Holiday-themed Game Modes
Just like in previous events, Winter Wonderland also brings with it exclusive game modes for you and your friends to play. Returning from past Winter Wonderland events are Mei's Snowball Offensive and Yeti Hunter.
In Mei's Snowball Offensive, all twelve players play as Mei and go into two groups. Mei's attacks release snowballs at the opponent, with a single super-powered snowball being enough to take down an enemy Mei.
Meanwhile, Yeti Hunter is a 5v1 game mode where five Mei players have to take down one 'Yeti' character. The player controlling the Yeti will have access to the skills of Winston.
For this year, a new game mode called Snowball Deathmatch. The game pits eight Meis against each other, each one with a reloadable blaster with three deadly snowball ammo. From this game mode, you can earn new sprays for doing better than your opponents.
Grab Them While You Can!
Winter Wonderland features at least 35 skins, nine emotes, and five intros for players to collect during this holiday season. Although Blizzard has previously included older skins in succeeding events, there's no telling which cosmetics they'll be featuring again in the future. It's best to collect them now, while you still can.
With that being said, you should get yourself suited up to battle under the snowfall before the event expires. Winter Wonderland will be available until January 2, 2020, which will also be the last day when you could buy the Winter Wonderland loot box.
Extended Shelf Life
Blizzard will continue supporting Overwatch even though they've already announced Overwatch 2.
Blizzard is selling Overwatch 2 as a different experience compared to the original game. With more focus on story-driven gameplay for the sequel, people could expect the original to hang around for longer.
That's good news for fans of Overwatch who don't want anything more than what they're experiencing with the game right now. It's also nice of Blizzard not to force its community to migrate to the new game.
That being said, Overwatch 2's release date is still unknown. If it's not going to release anytime soon, then we could expect the developers to continue supporting Overwatch for the foreseeable future.
