Fans and avid gamers alike have witnessed the exponential growth of the gaming industry over the past years - from the wide spread online streaming of playthroughs to the expansive development of the Esports industry. As such, Next Generation Esports has recently announced an upcoming major tournament for Blizzard's "Overwatch" game. Moreover, critics review the recently reworked character, Symmetra, according to sources.

It was recently reported that Next Generation Esports (NGE) has announced a multi-month tournament called the Overwatch Winter Premiere, Dual Shockers learned. It will feature the highly-acclaimed team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game "Overwatch."

It was stated that the Overwatch Winter Premiere will be available for all North American Overwatch teams. As such, these teams and organizations may register their participation online. The online open qualifiers was said to kick-off on Dec. 10 that will run for four days.

After the online open qualifiers, the top eight teams will then qualify and face off against one another in a Double Round-Robin group play for three weeks. The Overwatch Winter Premiere will then culminate with a two-day live finals event to be held on January of 2017.

The source also went on to highlight that the current prize pool for the multi-month tournament is already at a hundred thousand US dollars. The entirety of the tournament will have an online coverage via NGE's official website.

CEO and co-founder of NGE, Andy Vander Woude, stated that the organization's philosophy is to discover the most ambitious Esports partners and collaborate with them to elevate their shows. As such, Woude mentioned that they are excited to be working with Blizzard.

In other news, Blizzard has recently reworked one of its "Overwatch" characters, Symmetra, Yahoo! Esports reported. It was mentioned that one of the biggest changes made to her was the inclusion of another ultimate ability.

Apart from her ability to create a Teleporter, Symmetra can now alternate between that or dropping a Shield Generator, which would distribute shields to her allies in a large radius. The source noted that this will definitely make Symmetra continuously relevant in all phases of a game.

Moreover, it was stated that her old targeted shields are now modified and replaced with Photon Barriers, a moving wall of energy that can block incoming damage. Lastly, Symmetra can now carry around six Sentry Turrets that she can quickly drop simultaneously without having to wait for a cooldown.

All in all, it seems that "Overwatch" fans have a lot in store for them in the future.