One of many largest video games of the 12 months is off to a rocky begin, to say the least. Overwatch 2 — the follow-up to 2016’s colorful multiplayer shooter — is reduce from the identical fabric, extending the lifetime of Blizzard’s mega hit with out reinventing the wheel outright.
However ever since Overwatch 2 went reside on Tuesday, it’s been beset by issues, together with a DDoS assault that cratered launch day play. “Sadly we’re experiencing a mass DDoS assault on our servers,” Blizzard Leisure President Mike Ybarra confirmed yesterday on Twitter.
Even gamers who managed to get into the servers had issues, together with getting dropped from matches and different kinds of launch day instability that made enjoying difficult if not not possible.
Blizzard’s Overwatch Recreation Director Aaron Keller issued an replace on Twitter Wednesday, however issues weren’t trying significantly better. Based on Keller, a second DDoS assault is within the works and servers nonetheless aren’t steady.
We haven’t performed the Overwatch sequel but right here at TechCrunch, however as soon as the problems get settled out we’ll dive into it correctly and see how the revamped recreation feels. Overwatch 2 will hit the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Sequence X/S, the Nintendo Swap and PC and can supply cross-play so you may workforce up with associates it doesn’t matter what platform they’re on. A clean multiplayer expertise has all the time been one of many issues Blizzard does finest and Overwatch traditionally isn’t any exception.
Anybody who’s performed Overwatch — like, ahem, myself for a whole bunch of hours manner again in winter of 2016 — will see a couple of notable adjustments in its successor. For one, groups are actually comprised of 5 heroes as a substitute of six, altering up workforce compositions. New heroes and high quality of life options are additionally on the best way, together with the controversial option to make Overwatch 2 free-to-play. After all, free-to-play is a double-edged sword — you don’t have to fork over a month-to-month sub payment or something to play the sport, however you could be positive Blizzard can be luring gamers to pay for a Fortnite-like battle move that gates off some characters, cool perks and cosmetics (that we gained’t wish to need however we will).
We’ll reserve judgement on all of that till we even have an opportunity to dive into Fortnite’s colourful hero-driven battlefields, dusted with just a touch of narrative right here and there. These video games final for ages — Overwatch itself made it a strong six years. Some launch day chaos isn’t ultimate for Blizzard (notably given its own messy corporate chaos) however there’s loads of time to get all the things smoothed out for probably the most iconic multiplayer and esports titles of the technology.
