Hundreds of thousands of hopeful Overwatch players gathered around their respective gaming apparatuses on October 4th, 2022, anxiously awaiting the launch of Overwatch 2. It was a crisp Tuesday afternoon, and fans were so excited to finally experience what new changes Blizzard had added to Overwatch 2. Debates had been raging across social media for months over the new 5v5 gameplay, the updated progression and cosmetic systems, and the various hero reworks.Then the game launched, and players united hand in hand against a common enemy: the Overwatch 2 servers. Players were met with ridiculous, never-ending queues just to log in to the game. Players that did eventually get to play, were almost immediately disconnected mid-match and sent back to the title screen, where another long queue of 40,000 people awaited them. Since then, Blizzard has been hard at work trying to repair the servers, while fans are having fun at their expense, posting wonderful memes all over Twitter.
8 Making The Best Of A Bad Situation
Not all Overwatch 2 hopefuls were left saddened by the server attacks, as some players took the unfortunate outages as an opportunity to make new memories. A 4th place showing at trivia night has to feel a lot more rewarding than going negative in Round 1 just to disconnect in Round 2, all while not playing the desired role.
Additionally, this guy now has a cool new friend and a nice story to go along with it. Though, friends could have been made during the Overwatch 2 launch, as long as two people were able to team chat long enough to trauma bond over their login queues.
7 The Lucky Few
There were a select few players lucky enough to have a decent experience with the game's launch. Either by shifting their severs over to another location, or by sheer honest luck, these players were even posting their ranked placements on launch day for those stuck in queue to see.
The dedicated queue tribe was probably fairly upset seeing these posts at first, wishing they could be just as fortunate. Though after a while, it seemed nice to get to live vicariously through those touched by the hands of Athena. It became more of a light at the end of the tunnel, just passed the long, arduous queue highway.
6 Community Of Clowns
Perhaps the queue times would have been shorter if the entire community climbed into one tiny car and tried to enter the game at once. They could distract the cyberattackers with their water-loaded flowers and endless pie-face gags. Who has time to ddos somebody when there's a clown honking its comically large, red nose in their face?
Clown material aside, the community definitely felt this launch hard. Games tend to launch in poor shape fairly frequently these days, but a game in poor shape is still better than a title screen simulator.
5 A Stone-Faced Community
Keeping with how this launch affected the community, many players were feeling numb to it all after the first few hours of trying to get game access. The question, "where servers?" is a genuine one, because at launch it seemed like they didn't even exist.
This led to neutral, emotionless dispositions from much of the Overwatch fan base, and that's a real shame for a game that so many love for its character design and gameplay mechanics.
4 A Garbage Launch
The Overwatch 2 launch was a genuine dumpster fire. This was a surprise to some dedicated fans, while others may say that they saw this coming from a mile away. There's a lot to be said about getting excited about a new game in this era, because the first few days, weeks, or even months in some cases are almost always troublesome.
Some games have such poor launches that it takes years and almost an entire rework of the game for it to even come close to success. One factor is that gamers are being more careful about what games they trust enough to pick up at launch. If a player decides to wait for post launch reviews, and they're overwhelming negative, then that player isn't going to purchase that game until something big changes.
3 Creative Threats
At a certain point, the anger shifted from the server issues to the attackers themselves, with many fans wishing all sorts of ill will toward those responsible. Scorpions and Legos are likely among the top of things people don't want to step on. Though, for whoever was responsible for ruining the experience of thousands of Overwatch fans, that punishment may be just.
Regardless of what changes the perpetrators disagree with, their frustrations shouldn't be taken out on those who still want to play and enjoy Overwatch 2.
2 Setting New Records
Typically, a player with 11 hours logged in a game has a decent understanding of its mechanics and maybe a few levels of progress. If this launch was this player's first experience with Overwatch, then they certainly aren't on that track, to no fault of their own.
11 hours is a long time to wait for a game to log in, and that's probably not even the longest wait among the community. Fans could binge-watch an entire show, and then watch a full movie, and still not be playing Overwatch 2.
1 Potato Servers
The answer, finally revealed for all to see, is potatoes. The unnamed boogeyman devastating the Overwatch 2 servers, likely overloading them with starch. It's easy to see why Blizzard would want to run the game off of potatoes, as this would give them the record for "most popular game to be powered by spuds."
Until Blizzard tosses these taters out and replaces them with fully functioning game servers, Overwatch 2 players will have to continue waiting through long queues, late-night maintenance, and infuriating disconnects.
Overwatch 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.