
One problem that fans have responded to that Blizzard has already partially fixed in Overwatch 2 is the phone number requirement to access the game. Related: Overwatch 2: Every New Confirmed And Speculated Upcoming Character These systems have pros and cons, and players will have to wait and see how Blizzard responds to this initial feedback. New characters, starting with Support hero Kiriko, will need to be unlocked through the battle pass, forcing non-battle pass owners to reach level 55 to unlock them. Most of these changes were made to prevent cheaters and smurfs, and while long term they will probably help with that, it hurts the new player experience. All of this means that if one is entirely new to Overwatch 2, a lot of grinding awaits before being able to play the game to its fullest. Along with that, unlocking the competitive mode will require players to win 50 quick-play matches. New players must play to fully unlock new Overwatch 2 characters like Kiriko and old characters, which will take around 100 quick-play matches to complete. Blizzard has come out and confirmed that no player data was ever deleted.įor previous players and battle pass owners, Overwatch 2's Battle Pass is just a new cosmetic system, but for new players or those who do not own it, it's an irritable grind. Over the days since launch, more items have returned to the game, and players will soon see all their cosmetics. Any missing cosmetics were due to delayed account merges and the items from the original game taking longer than Blizzard expected to transfer to Overwatch 2. Luckily for the latter, the solution is restarting the game, which is helpful now but not on the initial day, where restarting led to another long wait in the login queue. The other major technical problem players experienced was missing cosmetics, as all the first Overwatch's cosmetics have been priced at $12,000, and heroes were being incorrectly locked.

Queue times are still semi-lengthy, but increasing server stability has made them more manageable and left the game stable.

Luckily the DDoS attacks have been suppressed, and once in the game, players have been able to stay in. This would make players have to sit in the queue again, and even if they did get back in, another disconnect could always happen.

Those who got into the game faced another problem in mass DDoS attacks on Blizzard servers that would randomly force players out of the game. To make matters even worse, sometimes fans would be stuck at a screen saying there are zero players ahead of them in OW2's queue, but they would still have hours of waiting ahead as this turned out to be a visual bug that led many to restart the game and be put farther back in the queue. Players loading into Overwatch 2 for the first time were left sitting in queues of 20,000 to 30,000 people. Despite all of this, the consensus opinion seems to be that the gameplay of Overwatch 2 is exceptional. Even returning players have their faults with the game in phone number requirements and overpriced cosmetics. Fans of the franchise are also worried about Blizzard's fundamental changes to Overwatch 2, with many new players feeling their experience is soured by the battle pass grind and reworked systems. As disappointing as it is, video game fans are used to popular games having long queue times on an opening day, and adding mass DDoS attacks on Blizzard's Overwatch 2 servers only worsens the problem. Overwatch 2's shaky start with server instability and data transfer failures is disheartening. Related: Overwatch 2 Final Preview: Kiriko's Support & Battle Pass Explained

However, it would seem that for every good change Overwatch 2 is making, there is a controversial design element that is countering it. Overwatch 2 comes with a handful of new changes, including being free-to-play, a battle pass system for cosmetics, reworked UI and sound design, a new game mode, new maps and characters released every other season, and a transition to 5v5 matches (down from teams of six). Overwatch 2 arrives as the sequel to the successful predecessor of the same name, a little past two years since Echo was previewed in Overwatch.
