BLIZZARD
Last year, we saw Overwatch first tease its Winter Wonderland event on December 6th.
We're only two days away from that date now, and fans all over the internet are expecting Blizzard's latest shooter to announce its winter event very, very soon.
Considering Overwatch has re-introduced other yearly seasonal events this year, it's not a stretch to imagine Winter Wonderland returning, too.
Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 Start Time / Date
2016's Winter Wonderland event began on Tuesday 13th December, and so far this year, Tuesday has been a pretty consistent day for resets and event launches, so we're expecting Winter Wonderland 2017 to be revealed this week and the Winter Wonderland 2017 start time to be scheduled for Tuesday 12th December.
Overwatch has also been setting its events live at 7pm GMT, which translates to 11am PT / 2pm EDT.
So you can probably expect the Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 start time to be 7pm GMT, Tuesday 12th December.
Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 End Time / Date
By the same logic of observing when last year's events began/ended, we can assume the winter event this year will end on the date of Tuesday 2nd January 2018.
This is because last year, the event finished on Monday January 2nd 2017. Monday this year falls on New Year's Day, and let's be honest, it's unlikely many people will be in the Blizzard offices then, right?
It is worth noting that this year's Halloween event did last one week longer than 2016's - whether we'll see a longer winter event or not remains to be seen, and whether or not that means it'll start earlier or last longer also remains to be seen.
We'll update the site with more information once Blizzard officially announces the event.
Overwatch Winter Wonderland Christmas Skins and screenshots
What is Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017?
Overwatch's Winter Wonderland event introduced a lot of new content - entirely for free - to the game in 2016.
You can see a summary of what was added in the gallery above.
Last year, Winter Wonderland added Mei's Snowball Offensive to the list of playable modes.
The event took place on an alternate version of Ecopoint Antarctica and saw teams of 6v6 partake in an elimination-style game mode with one-shot kills via apparently lethal snowballs.
You'd reload by locating piles of snow in various places around the map.
If the Halloween event this year is anything to go by, you can expect the same mode (maybe with minor updates) to be re-introduced this year.
We may also see other maps get the festive treatment, too: last year it was Hanamura and King's Row - will it be any different this year?
Last year, Blizzard also introduced 12 Skins, 3 Emotes, 7 Victory Poses, 23 Voice Lines, 51 Sprays, 2 Highlight Intros and 26 Player Icons.
This year you should be able to re-earn these items via festive loot-boxes if you missed them last year - and perhaps you'll even have chance to earn some new ones.
Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2017 - What to expect
Fans of the game over on Reddit are already theorising about what we can expect to see added to the game in 2017's version of Winter Wonderland.
"Winter Wonderland is guaranteed to return and we'll probably get a teaser next week," user CrisisShadow93 wrote last week.
"It would be the perfect time to give some heroes that had been neglected for the last few events a new skin, be it epic or legendary" the user continues.
The post continues to suggest Winston and Roadhog will likely get new skins, as they each received their last event skin back in January for the Lunar New Year.
The post also notes Reinhardt and Orisa got their last skins during the Uprising event, and finally, Doomfist hasn't had any additional items added to his cosmetic listings since launch.
These are all excellent points, and suggest that maybe we'll get just as much bonus content as we did last year.
The post also notes we could expect a new comic, too, since last year we received the Reflections episode.
Commentors on the piece state how much they'd like to see an Ugly Christmas Sweater version of Soldier 76, Roadhog and Winston - and we agree!
We'll keep you updated with any announcements as soon as they're official.