Role Queue finally comes to Overwatch Competitive Season 18 and Quick Play

Overwatch’s new Role Queue system went live in Quick Play on Tuesday, September 3, just before Competitive Season 18 started.

UPDATE 9/3 4:45 PM PT: Overwatch Competitive Season 18 has now officially begun with Role Queue included. Full story continues below:

Role Queue in Competitive was supposed to go live on August 31, but the release date got pushed back a week due to some serious bugs with matchmaking.

“Hey everyone, when Season 18 went live matchmaking values from prior seasons weren’t being respected,” Overwatch Developer Bill Warnecke wrote on the official forums. “We’re extending the Role Queue Beta Season while we work on a fix for this bug, we expect to be ready for Season 18 early next week.”

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/disabled-competive/396243/362

What’s different about Quick Play now?

With Role Queue now in Quick Play, players will have to choose between DPS, Support and Tank when they enter a game, just like in the Competitive Beta Season.

Regular old QP is still around though; it can now be found in the Arcade under the name “Quick Play Classic”. It’s sort of like Overwatch’s mini version of WoW Classic.

Role Lock was introduced by accident to Quick Play along with the massive August 13 Overwatch patch that brought Sigma and the new Competitive Beta Season into the game.

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The bug basically locked each role after two characters from the role was chosen. As Reddit user RetroBowser said, “It’s Role Lock Quick Play, but without role queue.”

Luckily, Blizzard fixed the bug only a few hours after it was reported by players and so far, the official Quick Play Role Queue release seems to be going much smoother.

When does Competitive Season 18 start?

Warnecke said in his post on the official Blizzard forums that he expected Competitive Season 18 to begin, with Role Queue included, “sometime next week” which was pretty accurate, because it began the same day as Quick Play – Tuesday, September 3.

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There were some excited tweets from Overwatch players due to a glitch that showed Season 18 on the Competitive Card earlier in the day, instead of the beta season – but it just turned out to be an early tease from Blizzard.

Overwatch players didn’t have to wait long for Competitive Season 18 to start and the Role Queue era to officially begin.