This week, an ad campaign leak revealed that Blizzard Entertainment Inc’s much-hyped team shooter Overwatch would be releasing on May 24, and now the studio has officially confirmed that this release date is correct.

Blizzard first unveiled Overwatch over a year ago to an audience of cheering fans at BlizzCon 2014, and since then the hype for the game has only continued to build, partly due to the high expectations Blizzard has set for the game.

“You guys know that with Blizzard games, what we like to do is find genres that we’re in love with and game types that we’re in love with and take the best elements of those and really amplify it and bring that out,” Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said on stage when the game was announced at BlizzCon. “You saw us do it with the real-time strategy genre (Warcraft, StarCraft), the massively-multiplayer online game (World of Warcraft), and most recently the collectible card game (Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft).”

So far, Overwatch has certainly seemed to live up to Kaplan’s promise, with a heavy focus on constant action and a cast of nearly two dozen unique heroes. The closed beta for Overwatch has been running for several months now, and during that time Blizzard has continued making both small and large tweaks to the gameplay and the balance between the various heroes.

The studio has also kept a close watch on what the beta testers have been saying about the game, and last month Kaplan even personally responded to one player’s long list of suggested changes to the game.

Pre-orders get an Open Beta head start

Because Blizzard has been fairly stingy with beta invites so far, a number of fans have started referring to the game as “Onlywatch” since their only experience with Overwatch is through watching other people play it on sites like Twitch and YouTube.

However, Blizzard offered some good news today for fans tired of watching the game from the sidelines, as the studio has said that players who pre-order the game will get a two-day head start on the Open Beta.

If you pre-order Overwatch either through Blizzard or through a participating retailer, you will be able to start playing in the beta on May 3. For those of you who still aren’t quite sure if you want to pre-order or not, Blizzard will also make the beta completely open from May 5 through May 9.

Image credit: Overwatch courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.