Blizzard’s start of Overwatch 2 on Tuesday did not go as prepared. A lot of players who tried to engage in the revamped Overwatch professional long queue situations, have been subjected to server mistakes, ended up disconnected from games, and had progress and items not have above from the authentic match — that is, if they could hook up to Blizzard’s activity servers at all. On Wednesday night, Blizzard apologized for the state of Overwatch 2’s start and declared a important coverage change: It will no lengthier have to have a cell phone amount to be connected to a Fight.net account for “a bulk of existing Overwatch gamers.”
“We have produced the final decision to take out cellular phone variety prerequisites for a bulk of present Overwatch gamers,” the Overwatch team claimed in a article on Blizzard’s forums. “Any Overwatch player with a connected Fight.net account, which consists of all gamers who have played since June 9, 2021, will not have to present a cell phone range to participate in.”
Blizzard said it designs to modify the mobile phone selection prerequisite for Overwatch 2 for existing gamers by Friday.
Regardless of lifting the mobile phone selection necessity for a great deal of its player base, an initiative it named SMS Safeguard, the developer “remain[s] committed to combating disruptive habits in Overwatch 2” and mentioned that “accounts that were being not linked to Struggle.net as very well as new accounts will continue to have to fulfill SMS Guard specifications, which will help to make sure we’re safeguarding our neighborhood versus dishonest. If a participant is caught partaking in disruptive habits, their account may be banned whether they have a new account or not.”
Blizzard’s decision to require a cell phone selection for Overwatch 2 — and more restrictions about which forms of cellular phone quantities would fulfill its requirements — was a controversial a single. Some players who experienced pre-compensated mobile phone ideas uncovered by themselves locked out from enjoying Overwatch 2, which means some prospects who purchased the first Overwatch, which was replaced by its sequel wholesale, could no more time perform their copy of the sport. That issue was exacerbated by the timing of Blizzard’s announcement of the plan: one particular 7 days ahead of Overwatch 2 launched, and properly following the developer started taking pre-orders for include-ons for the recreation.
As for the position of Overwatch 2’s on line participate in, Blizzard reported it is nevertheless working to enhance balance for the game’s on the web services.
“Today we have patched a server that is significant to the login practical experience, and this improve has improved login reliability,” the Overwatch team said. “Beyond queues, we’re in progress with another server update that will minimize the occurrences of players currently being disconnected as soon as they’re presently in sport.”
Blizzard claimed it has “made modifications to simplify the queuing course of action,” and expects players to see much more streamlined queue occasions, and is performing to handle gamers remaining dropped from queues.
In Wednesday evening’s update, Blizzard also addressed challenges with account merging and missing player objects, and incorrectly locked heroes, all of which it said is becoming investigated and worked on. Blizzard once again observed that Overwatch 2’s launch concerns “were exacerbated by DDoS attacks,” which have evidently abated since Tuesday.
Blizzard reported updates will be posted on the official Overwatch Twitter account (and presumably its boards) as they come in.