cvaldesThe PC and gaming media has been heavily reporting on DDoS attacks on Blizzard servers that it prevent a large number of people from signing into the game. Go visit PCGamer, Kotaku, GameSpot, whatever, they all have reported on Overwatch 2's difficult launch.

There was also the initial requirement that users provide a cellphone number. This was exacerbated by Blizzard's exclusion of several prepaid cellular services like Cricket as a valid cellular service provider. The cellphone number requirement was apparently to combat cheating but Blizzard has backed on off this and now just require a verified Battle.net account.

Neither one of these primary complaints are about actual gameplay or content, they are problems with operational or administrative aspects of Blizzard's business.

64KIt seems to me that Blizzard should have a better grasp of how to run a multiplayer service. They have been running WoW for 18 years now. I just don't think they are making the necessary effort to make Overwatch 2 a success.

There is too much laziness by Publishers/Developers in the gaming industry imo.

cvaldesFor sure this Overwatch 2 launch week has not been Activision-Blizzard's finest hour.

That said, they are focusing on the three major issues: login wait times, missing cosmetics, and the mandatory cellphone number. With the complete shutdown of OW1 servers, OW2 will be a big live service cash cow for the next few years so they need to get up to speed quickly.

They have bled a lot of goodwill over the years with various changes to OW1, many unpopular with longtime players.

It's a shame the transition wasn't smoother but based on how this company is run, I'm not surprised they had so many problems. My guess is that they lost many of their most skilled employees in the recent years due to employee dissatisfaction. Typically the best employees are the first to leave since they have the brightest prospects elsewhere.

That sort of brain drain doesn't usually manifest while it's happening, it shows up at moments like this when the curtain is pulled back.

Vayra86They lost almost all of the initial dev teams for every franchise they run by now. They run the franchises like ongoing business, any half-sane talented dev wouldn't want to be found in such a dynamic. To me the most telling was Diablo 3. That, for me, was the first nail in Blizzard's coffin, alongside some small doubts given the endless development of WoW and the lack of other big titles while new IPs were taken to the fridge, the first experience of that, for me was Starcraft Ghost. From that moment onward, I think Blizzard was already redirecting resources to low-risk ventures and proven success.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft:_Ghost

Then we had some noise about some successor to WoW which never happened; just rehashing that MMO was enough, apparently, for many years, and still works.

After that, they went full on, but always too late, on whatever the hype was. MOBA after Dota and LoL, trading cards in digital format, etc. Any originality or real franchise/IP development of some cool world you'd want to lose yourself in, was exit. Its so strange to see from a company that was loved exactly for that last bit; captivating audiences with a two minute trailer you'd just watch over and over again; music scores that'd run shivers down your spine, so well placed and immersive, and lore/writing that had a typical mix of humor and fantasy or sci fi. They had something unique, and they threw it away. Its not going to come back, what they had was the exact thing called talented writers and devs, that can truly create things on their own. That is in the end what signifies the best games: not the amount of bugs they have or don't have, but what they are, their soul. I'd even daresay the best games have their peculiar flaws, and even that works out as a strength (DOTA has a great example: jungle creep stacking, which really is an exploit of the game timer/location check that happens at every minute since WC3, turned into a game feature).

And then we had Overwatch. Soulless to its core, a random mashup of wacky characters fighting in wacky worlds. Yay, but now we see how little true fanbase that kind of approach builds. Same thing goes for companies stepping into that poisonous diversity arena - you can only lose, stepping in there, its meme/outrage/troll territory and nothing else. Also, the gall, given the company's internal problems, to produce such a thing to begin with. Wow.