Beginning since launch on October 4th, 2022, Overwatch has had an endless stream of problems. This stream just doesn’t seem to end. Day one was seen with long queues, DDOS attacks and since, account issues, inabilities to login, SMS protect connection issues and more. But Overwatch has had issues long before launch, with last year’s Jeff Kaplan leaving, Bobby Kotick overworking and mismanaging the dev teams.
If Overwatch players recall, we were initially promised, by Jeff Kaplan, a separate game. This game was suppose to be cross-play with Overwatch. Two separate games with Overwatch 2 getting the potentially single player game mode, PVE. Unfortunately, Jeff Kaplan left last year in April, 2021, leaving Dev teams unshielded from Activision. Bobby Kotick then proceeded to send the dev teams to work overtime on countless projects, only to cancel them. This got the Dev teams to leave, citing Bobby as the reason for the quits, according to Producer Tracy Kenndy. She also blames Kotick for the months of delay in Overwatch 2’s development. Is it possible that Bobby Kotick’s interference, is the reason for all the problems at launch?
On top of all this, Blizzard was also dealing with sexual harassment of their staff. Women working more than the men, and the men doing whatever they pleased. It was truly a dark time for Activision Blizzard employees. Then of course the sell to Microsoft.
This was then followed by News that everything that was promised in Overwatch 2, by Jeff Kaplan, was not what we were getting. Suddenly it was no more loot boxes, Battle Pass system and not to mention, Overwatch 1 was never going to exist ever again. The very game that many people paid for was no longer a paid product, but rather a Free to Play experience. Shortly before launch it was also announced, you had to activate SMS Protect in order to play Overwatch 2. This meant no prepaid phones or VOIP numbers could be used.
Fast forward to launch day. Overwatch players were waiting and we got hit with long queues ranging from a few hundred ahead, to over 40k ahead. It was a long wait, but pretty soon people were in. Only to get kicked out and put back into a queue that didn’t change for hours. Activision Blizzard got hit with a DDOS attack. Little did the community know, it would only be the first of MANY problems.
Once the DDOS attack was dealt with, they got a single server to launch, and put everyone into a single queue, while they dealt with the rest of the servers. While the login was smoother, there were other issues. Accounts that merged did not show the merge for console players. If you purchased the watchpoint pack, it was not appearing as purchased on many accounts. Those who had Overwatch 1, had heroes locked out in regular gameplays.
Players were also experiencing server disconnections. Some were getting disconnections because they hadn’t merged accounts because the merge account option was not available. Blizzard announced that many issues regarding the watchpoint pack, and locked heroes was due to their FTUE (First Time User Experience). They also state that items that haven’t transferred, say it takes time for them to fully transfer over.
Blizzard has made a compromise, regarding SMS Protect. The compromise was that if you played Overwatch 1 at any point after the required connected Battlenet account, would not need a phone number to play. If you lose your account, get banned what have you, You will need a proper phone number in order to play, on that new account you have to make. This was announced on the 5th of October, but was not fully implemented until October 7th.
Since then, Overwatch has been shut down almost every day since launch due to bug fixes, fix crashes etc. sometimes even twice a day. The shut downs are only about an hour long, but now Overwatch has another issue. In light of the recent Bastion bug, they greyed out the mortar robot from the hero select screen. At the same time, they also removed Torbjorn from all modes except quick-play. With this change, heroes are now locked once again, lining up with the FTUE heroes.
Even today they have many known issues, like Endorsement Reward Battle Pass XP amount not displaying correctly, but the proper XP is rewarded. Purchasing Kiriko’s Tanpopo skin, unlocks the Fuji skin instead. While they fix that they are processing refunds. Numbani, Necropolis, Illios CTF and Temple of Anubis are temporarily disabled while they fix map related bugs with them. Hero unlock challenges may fail to progress in total Mayhem.
Remember that friends playlist bug in Overwatch 1? It has returned for Overwatch 2, many people reporting that they have no friends list. The only known “fix” for this is still logging out and logging back in.
With the continued problems that arise, and fewer getting solved as more appear, they still haven’t even implemented the PVE, not until 2023. All the problems they have now, is it a sign of what to come for when they drop PVE? Perhaps Activision Blizzard has killed Overwatch and what it once stood for. Only time will tell, but this does not look good for the game so far.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/overwatch-2-known-issues-october-10-2022/694774
Mom of three, enjoy videogames, board games and phone games. I typically am playing Simulation games or FPS games.
