Competitive Overwatch players may have noticed that the online multiplayer shooter's Role Queue Beta is back. That's despite both the Role Queue Beta originally being scheduled to end, with Season 18 beginning. However, Blizzard has made the decision to postpone Overwatch's Season 18 after a particularly nasty bug cropped up. There's no word on when Blizzard expects to have Season 18 back up, but it's likely to be at least several days.
Given the nature of the bug, most Overwatch players will likely understand why a delay was the best option to take. According to Blizzard, a bug was effecting players Skill Rating values in dramatic fashion. Players were being matchmade into games that were well off where their SR should have placed them. Overwatch tech support noted that the variance in SR from match to match would be considered "severe."
There's also a secondary reason explaining the decision to postpone Season 18 that's also likely to be understandable. In the USA, this is a 3-day weekend for the Labor Day holiday. Since Season 18 started on Saturday, the weekend was in full when the bug was discovered. Hopefully, Blizzard chose to revert back to the Role Queue Beta rather than bring in a full team to fix the bug on a 3-day weekend. A similar situation is happening with Epic Games and Fortnite, where BRUTEs have been disabled due to a bug.
For the time being, Overwatch will revert back to its Role Queue Beta period. Season 17 ended in mid-August and Blizzard has spent the time testing the new Role Queue Beta on Overwatch's main servers. The beta introduces the new 2-2-2 role queue, which allows players to queue for a specific role. Team compositions are then made up of 2 Tanks, 2 Supports, and 2 Damage-type characters.
The decision to delay begs the question as to whether Season 18 will be further truncated. Players were already expecting Season 18 to be short, due to the Role Queue beta taking up a longer period of time than usual. Seasons traditionally last three months long, though two-month seasons aren't uncommon either. It will be interesting to see how Blizzard decides to schedule Season 18 as a result of both the Role Queue Beta and the new delay.
Expect more information regarding Overwatch's Season 18 delay and its restart in the days to come.
Overwatch is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.