Overwatch 2 has risen from the ashes of 2016's first Overwatch installment, making the transition from regularly priced multiplayer hero shooter to free-to-play hero shooter in 2022. The new launch from Blizzard has been long in the making, and is now live on every major platform for free.
Overwatch 2 sees massive changes to the format that has existed since 2016, with the reduction of group size from 6v6 matches to 5v5, as well as the inclusion of a Battle Pass in lieu of an upfront cost and lootbox purchases.
Overwatch 2 brings new characters to the hero shooter as well, with the inclusion of Junker Queen, Kiriko, and more to be revealed as time goes on. The biggest change is how these new characters are unlocked via the battle pass system instead of players simply having access to them upfront, as was the case with its predecessor. It'll be interesting to see how this affects the meta as time goes on, especially as players will have varying amounts of characters unlocked for matches to fill out teams.
[#OW2] We're aware that some players are encountering an Unexpected Server Error message when attempting to sign in. This is actively being worked on. Thank you for your patience!
— Blizzard CS - The Americas (@BlizzardCS) October 4, 2022
Currently Overwatch 2 is also experiencing some queue issues, as is usual for live service launches, even for companies as large as Blizzard. Blizzard has tweeted out it's working on the "unexpected issues" causing the queues, so if you're planning on jumping into OW2, have a back up activity planned just in case the queue doesn't let up anytime soon.
While Overwatch 2 just launched, some sites were given early access to review the multiplayer shooter (we'll have our review in the coming days and weeks from launch as we put it through its paces). Currently the game is sitting at a comfortable Metacritic score of 81, with reviewers praising the games core loop while many also expressed concern for its Battle Pass model, as well as question it's place as an actual sequel.UPDATE: Blizzard has confirmed that the server issues are the result of a DDoS attack:
Unfortunately we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage. This is causing a lot of drop/connection issues. https://t.co/4GwrfHEiBE
— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) October 4, 2022
