Blizzard Talks Overwatch Legendary/Epic Skins After Fans' Disappointment With Mei's Latest

Overwatch's new Christmas update introduces a number of new skins. This includes a Legendary one for Mei that a number of players have criticized for being too similar to some of her existing skins. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has now responded, offering some insight into the skin-making process.

"Sorry you are disappointed with Mei's winter skin," Kaplan wrote on the Overwatch forums, referencing the skin pictured below. "We don't have a specific rule for what makes something Legendary or Epic. We just sort of make a gut call based off of what we think is cool. Coolness is very subjective, and based off of the community reaction it seems like our gauge was off on this one."

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Not all of the Winter Wonderland update's new skins are Legendary--Zarya's is an Epic, for instance. In this case, Blizzard felt the Mei skin warranted being a Legendary--the highest level of rarity, and also the priciest when purchased with credits--because of the added effects it features.

"Our reasoning for it being Legendary was that we completely redid the visual effects for Cryo-Freeze (we turned the ice block into a snowman)," Kaplan said. "We thought that was pretty special and we had done it specifically based on community suggestions from months ago when people were speculating that we might have a winter event. Apparently, lots of people don't agree with us and that's ok. It's all good feedback and we're learning something for future events."

Kaplan also said Mei fans who are worried they're in for a long wait before she sees another Legendary skin can rest easy. "We have something pretty awesome for her early next year," he revealed.

"Apologies that our 'cool meter' was off from yours on this one. We'll try to align better on future content," he concluded.

Overwatch's Christmas update runs from now until January 2. You can read more about its new features here, and check out all of its skins here.