Even Blizzard has admitted that Overwatch 2’s launch has not met anyone’s expectations. In a brand new put up detailing the newest standing updates for the sport’s rollout, the corporate has apologized to its gamers and mentioned the prolonged checklist of points it is needed to face because the first-person shooter went reside. One of many largest updates it is making to the sport is eradicating the necessity for for legacy gamers to hyperlink their telephone numbers to Battle.internet to have the ability to play. As long as they’ve a related Battle.internet 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 Defend, which requires gamers to hyperlink a telephone quantity to their Battle.internet accounts, a requirement to entry Overwatch as a technique 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. Whereas some Mint prospects had been in a position in a position to hyperlink their numbers to SMS Defend simply nice, gamers on Cricket appear to be utterly locked out of the sport. As Kotaku stories, 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 reside on October seventh. Blizzard mentioned, nevertheless, that it stays “dedicated to combating disruptive conduct,” which is why new accounts and outdated ones that had by no means been related to Battle.internet earlier than will nonetheless have to satisfy SMS Defend necessities to have the ability to play.
The corporate additionally made modifications to simplify the queueing course of, so gamers will not see their queue numbers soar from a whole lot to tens of 1000’s and vice versa. Plus, it is engaged on making logins extra secure to stop gamers from being dropped from queues or from with the ability to login in any respect. A server replace that is additionally in progress will cut back the probabilities 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the difficulty is attributable to incomplete account merging or by gadgets merely taking longer to switch over from the outdated recreation.
These points, Blizzard mentioned in its announcement, had been “exacerbated by DDoS assaults” upon the sport’s launch. Whereas the assaults did not straight trigger any of them, they made “the atmosphere by which [the team works] on these points tougher.” Overwatch 2 recreation director Aaron Keller mentioned the group was working by way of a second DDoS assault late on launch day, however it sounds just like the attackers have backed off. Blizzard mentioned it has “not suffered any additional assaults,” which hopefully means it might probably now resolve points extra shortly.
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