After recently promising to do so on social media, Overwatch 2 developer Blizzard Entertainment has finally addressed the topic of bringing the game back to its original 6v6 format in a new Director's Take blog post posted on Thursday afternoon. Penned by game director Aaron Keller, the article goes over the benefits and drawbacks of both 5v5 and 6v6 in great detail, and confirms that the studio is "exploring how we can test different forms of 6v6 in the game to gauge the results" starting in Season 13.
The post is extensive and warrants a full read, but the TL;DR is that while 6v6 had high highs with a stronger emphasis on teamplay, creative tank synergies, and less pressure on individual players, the removal of a tank from each team when Overwatch became Overwatch 2 was intended to foster more active and satisfying FPS gameplay, reduce the prevalence of and need for crowd control stun abilities, and improve Overwatch's infamous tank queue problem. Data shared by Blizzard shows that the overwhelming majority of players in the game matchmake as a damage or support hero, leading to lengthy queues as the system tries to find tanks for games.
