'Overwatch' Christmas Skins: Mei's update disappoints, but Blizzard promises a solution

When the seasonal Winter Wonderland event hit Blizzard's multiplayer Overwatch shooter on Tuesday, players were excited to see what cosmetic items the character Mei would get. Not only is she the game's most inherently wintry character — what with her ice-based abilities and all — but she was also one of the few characters who had yet to receive any special skins in Overwatch's first two seasonal events.

As Polygon reported, many fans were underwhelmed by her "Mei-rry" skin, which some thought looked like a lazy recoloring of her basic outfit with the addition of a Santa hat. What really seemed to irk fans, though, was its classification as an item of "Legendary" rarity, the most expensive tier for cosmetic items. In addition to its basic appearance modification, Mei's new skin also changes her Cryo Freeze ability to look like a snowman, but the most vocal fans don't seem to think that's enough.

Overwatch Christmas skins: Blizzard responds

In a post on Blizzard's forums, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said the team's reasoning for its classification as a legendary item, while promising some new goodies for Mei on the horizon to appease those who aren't satisfied with what she's got so far.

Here's what he wrote, in full:

Hi there. Sorry you are disappointed with Mei's winter skin. 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. 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). 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 didn't say whether Mei's upcoming "awesome" item — or items — would be tied to a specific event, but the Chinese New Year in 2017 is Jan. 28, so it's possible it will coincide with that.

Once Blizzard says more, Mic will let you know.

More Overwatch news, updates, tips and tricks

For more on Overwatch, read our guide to the new Mei-centric brawl, check out all the updates in patch 2.01, read the fandom's reactions to that Zenyatta Nutcracker skin, uncover the hidden details in the Winter Wonderland event and check out all the other unlockable goodies you can earn for Overwatch's other characters.