I talked about this a bit on Ashe site, but essentially, from launch until October 2022, the reward for playing competitive in Overwatch was a currency you could spend on getting gold weapons. The gold looks good with everything. Some characters get more gold for their buck, as it were, depending on the number of weapons they individually have. It's a proficiency thing as well as prestige, usually; it says to people you know enough about this hero to play them relatively well, that you play them a lot. You like playing as them! You wouldn't get a gold for them otherwise.

I ended OW1 with nine gold weapons: I now have fifteen. Three of those are thanks to drives - where, if you succeed at winning games and making it to thresholds that keep changing in requirement every time we have another drive event (cough), it's a guaranteed gold weapon... or jade. Or galactic. Because we have more competitive weapon skin colours now.

Jade, the 2024 colour, looks terrible btw. It does not match with anything. Galactic, this year's colour, is interesting; it's a purple overlay. But it tends to eat weapon textures and their details, the galaxy part is not as good as other already existing galaxy textures and is more like a flocked effect, and worse still, only works for a handful of specific combinations because, again, it does not match the majority of existing purples already found in the game... but I feel somewhat inclined to invest in a few of these, maybe. I haven't fully decided.


(purple line equals maybe galactic)
I have reached a point I did not expect to ever get to, in that I now have a gold weapon for all of my mains. Every single one! If I were to get any more golds, it would either be for a new hero I bond with, or one of the following things:

• Widowmaker, because ouihaw (I cannot play her. This would absolutely be a thing I get but don't equip or use or ever see. But I know I have it. For the ship.)
• maybe Orisa and Cassidy. I play Orisa very infrequently, but I have like, 90 hours on her, she was my shield tank of choice back in OW1 days, I feel like I owe her it?? Cass is for similar cowperson set reasons as the Widowmaker option, except I can play him, sort of (and Deadlock Cass gold gun... Ashe crumbs...).
• I go hard on "set" and make it my mission to get a gold weapon for every female character in the game irregardless of if I play/can play them or not because I am staunch advocate of women and we have 21 women in this game and they deserve to be celebrated since they were what drew me in in the first place. I have 13 already what's 8 more. This is very valid of me I think.