Blizzard keeps pouring gasoline on Overwatch 2 dumpster fire
In the context: Launches of high-profile games sometimes don’t go according to plan. Cyberpunk 2077 is a good example. These problematic releases make developers struggle to fix things, and usually they do. However, the launch of Blizzard Overwatch 2 was a disaster, which was exacerbated by the developer himself.
On Monday, Blizzard said that pulling two characters – Torbjorn and Bastion – from some game modes due to issues that needed to be fixed. Kotaku noted that players can use Bastion to spam opponents with his ultimate ability. Similarly, players could use Torbjorn’s Overload ability twice in a row.
These serious issues can ruin the game for players fighting these two heroes, and Blizzard rightly removed them while they worked on a fix. However, about a third of the other heroes ended up being locked after these two characters were disabled. First some players complained loss of access to half of the heroes, but the reports could be exaggerated.
the bastion buff in OW2 is wild pic.twitter.com/UXuwP4oIoU
— Brandon Larned (@A_Seagull) October 8, 2022
At least 12 heroes became unavailable to players who unlocked them, including Doomfist, Sigma, Wreckball, Ash, Echo, May, Sombra, Symmetra, Zenyatta, Kiriko, Batista, and Bridget. Players have reported that restarting the game and resetting their consoles did not resolve the issue.
Of course, this caused outrage. disturbance all over Twitter as angry players rush at Blizzard demanding their characters back. The issue persisted until Blizzard shut down the entire game for “emergency maintenance” last night. It returned to the network around 12:00 ET and the line-up was restored.
“The team is aware of a new issue that prevents players from accessing all of their heroes.” – Blizzard. notified players in a forum post about known bugs. “This is caused by an issue with our servers that track player progress. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
Blocked out of 18 from the list in Overwatch 2 after purchasing the Viewpoint Pack to unlock them all. Sigh. pic.twitter.com/ca1BeORBkX
— Tiffany Bunny (@tiffbun) October 11, 2022
The lockout doesn’t seem to be related to the removal of Torbjorn and Bastion, but the timing was terrible. After Blizzard acknowledged the issue, it took the developers two hours to restore the roster, but players have been complaining about it for over six hours. These issues are just the latest in a long list of unforgivable bugs since Overwatch 2 launched a week ago.
First, it suffered numerous DDoS attacks on launch day, causing players to stand in long lines to get in — that is, if they were lucky enough not to time out or get a login error. Then there was a lot of hype around Overwatch 2’s mandatory two-factor authentication system. SMS Protect that limited players with prepaid phones from the start of the game. Then the chat bug started charger players randomly for skins without confirmation of purchase. And those are just the issues that Blizzard has already fixed.
Perhaps most infuriating is that Blizzard shipped Overwatch 2 before it was ready. This becomes apparent when reading all the “known launch issues” that the QA team indicated before the game was in the queue of players to download. It was a very sloppy release, and Blizzard’s attempts to fix things have in some cases created new problems or brought more serious ones to the fore.
There are still many problems to be solved. Many of them are beta testers informed already in May.
