Even Blizzard seems to have admitted that the launch of Overwatch 2 didn’t meet anyone’s expectations. In a new post detailing the latest status updates for the game’s release, the company apologized to its players and discussed the long list of issues the first-person shooter game has had to face since its release. One of the biggest updates it has made to the game has been to remove the need for legacy players to link their phone numbers to Battle.net so they can play. Announced they’ll be exempt from the requirement as long as they have a linked Battle.net account that covers all players who accessed the first Overwatch since June 9, 2021.
Originally, Blizzard offered SMS Protect, which required players to link a phone number to their Battle.net account, and the feature was a must for accessing Overwatch as a way to make it harder for people to cheat or troll others. However, this system did not always work with numbers associated with prepaid plans, and that was the problem. While some Mint customers can link their numbers to SMS Protect just fine, players on Cricket seem to be completely out of the game. As Kotaku reports, fans feel “punished” or embarrassed for being poor.
The developer is removing the requirement in response and aims for the change to go into effect today. But Blizzard says it’s committed to tackling disruptive behavior, so new accounts and old accounts that haven’t been connected to Battle.net before must meet the SMS Protection requirements to be able to play.
Queuing is also simplified
The company has also made changes to simplify the queueing process so players no longer see queue numbers go from hundreds to tens of thousands and vice versa. It’s also trying to make entries more stable to prevent players from falling through the queues or not being able to login at all. An ongoing server update will also reduce the chance of players being disconnected after logging into the game. As for people’s missing items, Blizzard says the problem is due to incomplete account merge or items transferred from the old game taking longer.
In its announcement, Blizzard states that these problems are exacerbated by DDoS attacks that took place after the game’s release. According to the statement, although the attacks did not directly cause any of these problems, they did make the environment in which his team worked on these issues more challenging.
Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller said the team was working on a second DDoS attack late on launch day, but the attackers backed off. Blizzard says it has “no further attacks” and hopefully this means issues can now be resolved more quickly.
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