With the Winter Wonderland event up and running in Overwatch, fans have taken early, hard-hitting concerns to Blizzard’s forums – namely involving Mei’s hideous new outfit. Though she now totes her own Snowball Offensive mode, the character was largely overlooked in previous events held earlier in the year.
One such complaint comes from a user clearly disgruntled by a seasonal winter coat worn by Mei. A lumbering red coat garnished with fluffy white trim and bright green embellishments, the outfit is boisterous to say the least.
Fortunately, for heated gamers distressed by Mei’s gaudy wardrobe, game director Jeff Kaplan actually issued an apology for the controversial new skin. Yes, that’s how bad it is, apparently.
“Sorry you are disappointed with Mei’s winter skin,” Kaplan wrote. “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.”
Amusingly enough, Mei’s winter coat has incited rage, if only because of its status as a “Legendary” skin. While players expect these designs to be particularly edgy and cutthroat, this one is actually kind of fun-loving — merry, one might say.
“Our reasoning for [the skin] being Legendary was that we completely redid the visual effects for Cryo-Freeze (we turned the ice block into a snowman),” Kaplan elaborated. “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.”
Nevertheless, if you were expecting this to be the last of Mei’s Legendary attire, Blizzard is aiming to turn things around with “something pretty awesome” slated for early 2017. Beyond that, the company hasn’t specified what exactly is in store for dedicated Overwatch players.
However, one thing’s for sure: a Santa hat need not apply.
