With Blizzard Entertainment officially unveiling "Overwatch" as its newest game in 17 years, here are some tips gamers need to know about the new franchise. 

"Overwatch" was unveiled during the recent BlizzCon event, which was attended by nearly 25,000 passionate fans. The company plans to capitalize on one of the most profitable genres in the gaming industry and has created its first shooting game.

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With many game developers already crowding the shooting genre - EA's "Battlefield," Activision's "Call of Duty," Microsoft's published "Halo" and Bungie's "Destiny" - Blizzard wanted to stray away from typical first-person shooters and instead stick to its roots of user interaction in the fantasy genre.

"Overwatch" is set 60 years in a future where robots turned evil and caused some sort of global crises - kind of like action films "Terminator" or "The Matrix." A mix of soldiers, scientists, and adventurers must work together and restore peace.

Blizzard has implemented 12 different characters all with different abilities and purposes. The company feels teams of six on six fits gameplay the best. They said that with larger teams it was easy for a player to feel like they weren't having an impact, and on the other hand was easy for smaller teams to lose when one player is struggling.

While each character has unique abilities and plays a specific role, all characters will fall under one of four categories: Offense, Defense, Tank and Support. 

n addition, gamers who have already selected a character before the match begins won't be limited to that one character during the whole match. Each life, players will have the opportunity to switch to any character they'd like.

According to Game Director Jeffrey Kaplan, "Overwatch" will not have a Deathmatch game mode. Blizzard wants to focus the new franchise on what players can achieve together through objective type gameplay, rather than how many kills a team can rack up.

Two objective-type game modes have been unveiled so far - Payload and Point Capture.

Payload consists of one team trying to move a bomb to a delivery point while the other team tries to defend and hold off the assault until time runs out. Point Capture consists of one team starting in control of all objectives on the map and must defend while the other team attempts to capture each objective.

Not much more details on "Overwatch" were announced by Blizzard. At this point it's unknown what platforms the game will be available on, but people who attended the BlizzCon event will be able to try it out on PC.

Although Blizzard hasn't announced a specific release date for "Overwatch" either, there will be a Beta test available sometime in 2015. Gamers can sign up for the Beta on their official eu.battle.net websiie. 

TagsActivsion, Blizzard Entertainment, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, PC, Shooting games, Blizzcon, Gaming