Overwatch 2
Credit: Blizzard
The launch of Overwatch 2 has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.
The game was almost immediately hit by a massive DDoS attack when it came out on Tuesday, causing countless login and connectivity issues.
The game’s developer and publisher, Blizzard, was unprepared to deal with this attack, making many players’ first impression of the game little more than a loading screen coupled with intense frustration. (I was finally able to log into the game late Tuesday night after too much time waiting in endless queues, logging in again and again, and various other maneuvers).
But outside of the DDoS attack and the frustration of long queues, Blizzard required an extra layer of security: you had to enter a phone number associated with your account during the sign-in process in order to reduce “both disruptive behavior such as cheating” in the game.
Worse, if you had a prepaid phone (as many millions of Americans do) it wasn’t considered valid, making it impossible for countless lower-income players to log into Overwatch 2 and play, even if they had been playing the original game for years.
Even if you had an acceptable phone number, this requirement could prove problematic. I have accounts set up for me and my kids with different email addresses, but until now we didn’t have to include separate phone numbers. Fortunately, my kids are old enough to have phones now, but what if I didn’t allow phones in my house or they were too young? You need separate phone numbers for each player, including children (and Overwatch 2, in my humble opinion, is very kid-friendly!)
In any case, Blizzard seems to have relented at least to some extent. While the phone requirement hasn’t been completely removed, Blizzard has reduced the number of players required to have a phone associated with their account:
“Any Overwatch player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not be required to provide a phone number to play. We are working on making this change and hope to be released on Friday, October 7. We will update players once it is in effect.
“We remain committed to combating disruptive behavior in Overwatch 2: Accounts that were not connected to Battle.net, as well as new accounts, will still be required to meet SMS Protect requirements, which helps ensure that we are protecting our anti-cheat community If a player is caught engaging in disruptive behavior, their account may be banned whether they have a new account or not.
“As a team, we will continue to listen to ongoing feedback and make further adjustments in this area if necessary.”
Blizzard has also made the following changes:
SMS Protect
- Blizzard has removed the phone number requirements for most existing Overwatch players.
- Any Overwatch player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not be required to provide a phone number to play.
- Blizzard expects this change to take effect on Friday, October 7th and will update players once it is in effect.
Queue time and connectivity issues
- Blizzard is working on patching servers to improve stability and increase login reliability. They have addressed some issues and are in the process of addressing others, but players should still expect to see queues in the short term.
- Much more detailed information in the forum post.
Missing player items/data
- About half of reported cases of missing items are the result of players not yet completing their account merge, instructions for which can be found here. In the other half of the cases reported for this issue, things are taking longer than expected for items from the original Overwatch to transfer over and populate in Overwatch 2.
- Blizzard is exploring several fixes for this, detailed in the forum post.
- However, the most important thing is that in all cases no player data has been deleted or lost.
Heroes and items blocked incorrectly for existing players
- Logging back into the game will fix this problem in most cases.
DDoS attacks
- On launch day, the previous problems were compounded by DDoS attacks; although they did not cause any of these problems directly, they made the working environment for solving these problems more difficult.
- Blizzard has suffered no further attacks.
Again, this all feels like an unforced error that could have been avoided with proper planning and preparation. A major release like this should have the server capacity to withstand both a massive influx of players and a DDoS attack. And on a little more logical consideration, it seems pretty obvious that requiring a phone number (and excluding players with prepaid phone plans) would cause a huge headache and tons of backlash.
The right way to do this is to incentivize adding phone numbers instead of making it mandatory. Give away free skins or other goodies to anyone who sets up two-factor authentication, for example.
In any case, this has been a pretty bad release as far as AAA video games go, but at least Blizzard seems to be responding quickly to these issues and making changes.