Lucio Ball – not to be confused with I Love Lucy star Lucile Ball – stands to this day as among the most popular Overwatch Brawls ever, if not the most popular. But, in the here and now, Lucio Ball is unplayable, as it was only available for a limited time during Overwatch's Summer Games event.
True to its name, Lucio Ball was a game mode in which every player played as a slightly modified Lucio in a large soccer arena trying to score goals with a giant soccer ball. If this description isn't obvious enough, this game mode is essentially Overwatch's Rocket League.
This game mode was so popular that game director Jeff Kaplan once responded to a laudatory Overwatch thread asking to bring back Lucio Ball, saying "We'll figure out a way to bring it back."
Of course, that post was at the end of August, and Lucio Ball still lies in the museum of Overwatch history, not even available in the brand new Arcade Mode's "All Brawls" selection. Granted, the All Brawls is 6v6, where as Lucio Ball is 3v3, so that would be difficult to implement, but the growing conglomerate of fans clamoring for its return have seen several opportunities pass by without satisfaction.
Another such opportunity is on the horizon with the still-unannounced winter holiday event, audio files from which were leaked a couple weeks ago. As with the Summer Games and the Halloween-themed event Halloween Terror, there will likely be a brand new game mode. While I don't think anyone wants this game mode to be the main attraction, they might as well throw in older, popular brawls, such as Lucio Ball, if they're going to be messing with the Arcade anyhow. It could be the Lucio Yule* Ball. Eh?
But the more important question is "will Lucio Ball ever be back?" Is it really fair to hold someone to a knee-jerk reaction to positive reception after his game's first seasonal event, a reaction, I might add, on which neither he nor anyone at Blizzard has doubled down? Probably not, and it's very likely that we've seen the last of Lucio Ball.
And then there's even a better question: should it ever be back? When it comes down to it, it's just Rocket League, and it hardly takes advantage of everything Overwatch has to offer. That being said, if boring, flat brawls such as "We're All Soldiers Now" have a place in the Arcade, why not Lucio Ball?
