http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1738

From the article:

"We've been a little quiet for the last week as we've put the finishing touches on the Heavy update. We thought the Pyro pack was the biggest we'd be doing for a while, due to the large changes to the Pyro, but the Heavy update has turned out to be even bigger. In addition to the three unlockable weapons and thirty-five achievements for the Heavy, we've got a new game mode with five new arenas for it, a new Payload map focusing on more open spaces than Goldrush, and another popular community-made map. Throughout the rest of the week we'll be giving you the details on all this, and if all goes well, you'll have your hands on it shortly afterwards."

 All I can say is   and woot!

Seriously, the way Valve has handled this game has made me a fan for life. 

 http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/kgb.htm

boxing gloves for the melee weapon! a hit from one of them will mean 5 seconds of crits from whatever weapon you can get out that quick. I can see ubers being started off well with these. Uber into a crowd, one punch and then pull the shotgun out and blast away.

Gerard:

Uber into a crowd, one punch and then pull the shotgun out and blast away.

Just to speculate, I think this would be even harder to do. Even now... trying to punch people as a heavy is hard. To kill them... is harder. To kill them with a slower hit rate... is even harder. I like the balance of this. Its plausable, but only in the best opportunities is it effective.

A lot of the achievements seem to be related to ammo and/or medics... which is good. I was worried there would be a number of bizar achievements such as... cap three points in two minutes (obviously not easy for a heavy). If they keep the unlockables balanced and the achievements easy to achieve by simply playing this certainly is spinning up to be the best update yet.

Any word if there will be another free weekend?

I got the tip from tf2gather that you can actually right click and view the names of the images that gives you a better hint what the achievements are... i.e., heavy_kill_underwater

 I would imagine the slower swing speed isn't going to affect things much--pretty much like it doesn't affect anything with the ubersaw or axtinguisher. 

Like you said it looks like they made the achievements achievable, which is good as well. 

Free weekend rumored for 8/22

 http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/badwater.htm

New Payload map! Badwater. Man, I'm getting so stoked about this update. 

 Hopefully it has something special to offer. I won't judge it from the screenshots that make it look like just another map... a crossbreed between warpath and goldrush.

 http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/natascha.htm

 New Alternate mini-gun Natascha. I like the way they have learned from previous releases. This seems to be a great "alternate" weapon rather than a pure upgrade. 

 As long as it doesn't give the heavy + 100 health.  hahaha

 Arena game mode revealed with two never-seen-before maps, lumberyard and ravin. The three other maps will be badlands, granary and well which will be reworked to support arena. Looks like fun. I can guarantee a lot of snipers.

 The update is out now as of 5:30 EDT... the free weekend will be this weekend.

 Geez, I go away for little bit and everything old is new again...

-slipz-