New details on Overwatch Role Queue Beta before Season 18

Published at 27/08/2019 at 05:53 By Clémence "Idril" Lemoal

Overwatch Season 17 ended earlier than expected on August 13, and then Role Queue arrived on live servers. The official Blizzard blog has made it possible to see a little more clearly how long it takes for players to reach Season 18, and to clarify the role of these two weeks of "beta".

New details on Overwatch Role Queue Beta before Season 18

August 27 update

On the official Overwatch forum, Scott Mercer — senior designer at Blizzard Entertainment — gave some details about the Role Queue Beta. In the first release,, there was every reason to believe that the results of this Beta would not be used later in the calculation of your MMR. If they will not appear in your profile and career, they will be used by matchmaking systems for Season 18.

The results of your matches in the Role Queue Beta are not being thrown out and will be used by the matchmaking systems to help determine your skill in season 18.

What the blog post was trying to explain is that the Role Queue Beta season’s stats in your player profile will only be available for a limited time, and they will not be added to your career competitive totals that you can see when you choose “ALL COMPETITIVE SEASONS” in your career stats.

Scott Mercer

As announced a few days ago, Season 17 Overwatch stopped "suddenly" — 18 days before the theoretical end to be precise, seasons lasting about 45 days. If this decision had not been explained immediately, the reasons were explained by Blizzard. In concrete terms, Season 18 will only start on September 1 and the two weeks before this date are used as the "beta phase" of the Role Queue (or 2-2-2).

This official post also specifies some important data concerning the performances achieved by the players during these two weeks:

In an effort to give time for additional testing and feedback, we’ll be running the two-week Role Queue Beta Season from August 13 to September 1. Players can earn Competitive Points similar to other competitive mini seasons and qualify for Top 500 Leaderboards during the beta season. However, beta season stats will only be available for a limited time and will not count toward a player’s permanent Competitive Season stats. (Note: Competitive Season 17 will be shortened by approximately two weeks in order to accommodate the Role Queue Beta Season.)

Role Queue will be fully available for Quick Play and Competitive Play beginning on September 1 for the start of Competitive Season 18.

Blizzard on Role Queue beta season (Source)

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