Even Blizzard has admitted that Overwatch 2’s launch has not met anyone’s expectations. In a brand new put up detailing the latest status 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 stay. One of many greatest updates it is making to the sport is eradicating the necessity for for legacy gamers to hyperlink their telephone numbers to Battle.web to have the ability to play. As long as they’ve a linked Battle.web account, which covers all gamers who’ve accessed the primary Overwatch since June ninth, 2023, they’re exempted from the requirement.
Blizzard initially made SMS Shield, which requires gamers to hyperlink a telephone quantity to their Battle.web accounts, a requirement to entry Overwatch as a strategy to make it tougher for folks to cheat or to troll others. It does not all the time work with numbers related to pay as you go plans, although, and therein lies the issue. Whereas some Mint prospects have been ready capable of hyperlink their numbers to SMS Shield simply fantastic, gamers on Cricket appear to be fully locked out of the sport. As Kotaku reviews, 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Blizzard stated, nevertheless, that it stays “dedicated to combating disruptive conduct,” which is why new accounts and outdated ones that had by no means been linked to Battle.web earlier than will nonetheless have to satisfy SMS Shield necessities to have the ability to play.
The corporate additionally made modifications to simplify the queueing course of, so gamers will now not see their queue numbers bounce 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 with the ability to login in any respect. A server replace that is additionally in progress will scale back the probabilities of gamers being disconnected as soon as they’re already within the recreation. As for folks’s lacking objects, Blizzard defined that the problem is brought on by incomplete account merging or by objects merely taking longer to switch over from the outdated recreation.
These points, Blizzard stated in its announcement, have been “exacerbated by DDoS assaults” upon the sport’s launch. Whereas the assaults did not straight trigger any of them, they made “the atmosphere wherein [the team works] on these points tougher.” Overwatch 2 recreation director Aaron Keller stated the group was working via a second DDoS assault late on launch day, however it sounds just like the attackers have backed off. Blizzard stated it has “not suffered any additional assaults,” which hopefully means it may possibly now resolve points extra shortly.
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