Even Blizzard has admitted that Overwatch 2’s launch has not met anyone’s expectations. In a brand new submit detailing the most recent standing updates for the sport’s rollout, the corporate has apologized to its gamers and mentioned the prolonged record of points it is needed to face because the first-person shooter went stay. One of the largest updates it is making to the sport is eradicating the necessity for for legacy gamers to hyperlink their cellphone numbers to Battle.web to have the ability to play. So lengthy as they’ve a related Battle.web account, which covers all gamers who’ve accessed the primary Overwatch since June ninth, 2021, they’re exempted from the requirement.
Blizzard initially made SMS Protect, which requires gamers to hyperlink a cellphone quantity to their Battle.web accounts, a requirement to entry Overwatch as a option to make it more durable for folks to cheat or to troll others. It would not at all times work with numbers related to pay as you go plans, although, and therein lies the issue. While some Mint clients have been in a position capable of hyperlink their numbers to SMS Protect simply nice, gamers on Cricket appear to be utterly locked out of the sport. As Kotaku studies, followers really feel like they’re being punished or shamed for “being poor.”
The developer is eradicating the requirement in response, and it expects the change to go stay on October seventh. Blizzard stated, nonetheless, that it stays “dedicated to combating disruptive conduct,” which is why new accounts and previous ones that had by no means been related to Battle.web earlier than will nonetheless have to fulfill SMS Protect necessities to have the ability to play.
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The firm additionally made adjustments to simplify the queueing course of, so gamers will not see their queue numbers soar from lots of to tens of hundreds and vice versa. Plus, it is engaged on making logins extra secure to stop gamers from being dropped from queues or from having the ability to login in any respect. A server replace that is additionally in progress will cut back the possibilities of gamers being disconnected as soon as they’re already within the recreation. As for folks’s lacking gadgets, Blizzard defined that the difficulty is brought on by incomplete account merging or by gadgets merely taking longer to switch over from the previous recreation.
These points, Blizzard stated in its announcement, have been “exacerbated by DDoS assaults” upon the sport’s launch. While the assaults did not instantly trigger any of them, they made “the setting wherein [the team works] on these points more difficult.” Overwatch 2 recreation director Aaron Keller stated the group was working via a second DDoS assault late on launch day, but it surely sounds just like the attackers have backed off. Blizzard stated it has “not suffered any additional assaults,” which hopefully means it will probably now resolve points extra shortly.