On April 12, Blizzard announced that the Overwatch beta will open up to a much larger number of players by invite only this weekend (April 15-16). This expansion is being done in order to complete another round of stress testing on the game and the game's servers prior to the game's open beta. The areas that the beta will be expanding its player pool into will be "the Americas, Europe, and Asia,".

This will be the final closed Beta Test Weekend before the game launches on May 24. Blizzard has said they will be flagging accounts for the Beta Test Weekend starting in the afternoon Pacific Time on April 14. Once you get flagged, you should download and install the beta client so that you can start playing the moment the game opens for you, which will be 9:00 a.m. PDT on Friday. You'll get a notification on your Battle.net account as well as an email to whatever your registered email is.

The Beta Test Weekend won't feature everything the game has to offer, or even everything the past betas have offered. This weekend you will be limited to three maps (Hanamura, Route 66, and Nepal) and you will not have access to Weekly Brawl! or Competitive Play (to find out how Competitive Play works, click here). All twenty one heroes will be playable however, so you can start to find out who your favorite heroes to play with are.

Blizzard says that they are mainly interested in technical feedback on how Overwatch performs on different systems and how the servers hold up when tons of people are playing. They have also set up dedicated feedback channels for different types of feedback. Stress Test Feedback will be for comments on heroes, game features, systems and more related to actual gameplay. Stress Test Bug Report will be for in-game bugs that you run into as you play. Lastly, Stress Tech Support will be for technical issues you run into while playing.

If you haven't already opted-in to the Overwatch beta all you need to do is go to your Beta Profile Settings in Account Management, check the Overwatch box under "Beta Tests I'm interested in" and then click "Update Preferences." Blizzard has a posted a Q&A with this announcement for any concerns you might have about this weekends test, so check it out if you've got any questions not answered for you already here. Also, don't forget there will be an open beta for Overwatch for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 from May 5th to the 9th.

Are you planning on taking part in the Beta Test Weekend? Are you still waiting to hear if you'll get into it? If you've already been playing in the Overwatch beta, how has your experience been so far?