For those who invested entire days of their lives into the original Overwatch’s addictive gameplay, trying to dive straight into the sequel on launch day to start racking up kills and wins was an easy decision.
Indeed, it seems that, despite the game having received some criticism for its monetisation practices and for locking some of its heroes away behind a wall of grinding, hordes of prospective players still lined up to play it on launch day.
However, many of these would-be Winstons were left disappointed after an apparent series of DDoS attacks left the game’s servers unable to handle admitting players into it.
Were you one of the frustrated players sitting in the Overwatch 2 queue last night?
This led many gamers and games journalists desperate to get their Overwatch fix to take to social media and lament their inability to overcome an endless parade of loading screens and error messages.
Thankfully, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra was quickly on the scene to thank people for their patience and offer an explanation for some of the problems, tweeting: “Unfortunately, we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage (this).”
Overwatch 2 Game Director Aaron Keller provided another update on the situation several hours later, revealing: “We’re steadily making progress on server issues and stability, as well as working through a second DDoS attack. We’re all hands on deck and will continue to work throughout the night.”
Sadly, while the game’s servers now look to be able to let most players in, another potential headache also seems to have arisen, with many players suggesting that progress and outfits that they earned in the original Overwatch don’t seem to be transferring over the new game successfully via an account merge.
While it looks as though this new problem might be unique to consoles, with PC players seemingly being unaffected, it likely still means that the work of developers at Blizzard to get the game up and running as intended isn't over yet.
Regardless of whether you’ve had to grapple with any of these issues as you try to kick off your Overwatch 2 adventures, make sure to follow us for regular updates on the game’s status and guides to the new content that’ll be arriving in it down the line.