Blizzard has released a forum post addressing the issues that have hampered the launch of Overwatch 2. It addresses four of the most common known issues plaguing the game and how it is handling each issue.The first 24 hours of Overwatch 2 have been rough for players and engineers at Blizzard alike. Aside from the biggest issue of suffering a mass DDoS attack, players have reported trouble with merging accounts, issues with the SMS Protect security feature, missing items, and more. Since Overwatch Game Director Aaron Keller and Head of Blizzard Mike Ybarra made statements regarding the DDoS attack and server issues, there has been silence from the company. That silence is now broken as it has finally released a statement through a forum post and is telling fans how it's addressing the issues.In a forum post shared Wednesday night, Community Manager Jodie apologized to fans on behalf of Blizzard and went into detail regarding the biggest issues that have hampered the game so far. The first issue addressed was SMS Protect. The security feature was intended to curb toxicity and ban dodging from players that had multiple accounts with the intent to disrupt. Due to issues that players were having activating their accounts without a usable phone number, this requirement will be rescinded. This change will go into effect on October 7.
In regard to the server issues that saw players wait in seemingly endless queues, Blizzard stated that its database is being overwhelmed. It explained what exactly is going on in the forum post and has done a server update that will help login reliability. This change should address seeing the "500 waiting in queue" and then change to "30000 waiting in queue" message when trying to log in to Overwatch 2. From the forum post, it sounds like this issue will be an ongoing problem until things stabilize further.
Overwatch 2 players that merged their PC and Console accounts in Battle.net have reported missing items that they've earned. They are also seeing locked icons appear in the game on inventory items like skins and sprays. Blizzard says this issue is caused by one of two things. Some console players did not get the account merge prompt when signing in thus the lock icons were still visually present. There was a partial fix to the UI (user interface) but Blizzard is still working on a proper fix. The other issue is said to be caused by the account updating the inventory list in Overwatch 2 slower than intended. In both cases, Blizzard assures its players that no inventory items have been lost.
There is a visual glitch that Blizzard says is separate from the account merge issue that has locked Kiriko from returning Overwatch players but presents itself the same way. They would still have Kiriko as a playable character, but the lock would still be there on the Battle Pass. Blizzard says leaving and logging back into Overwatch 2 would resolve this visual glitch, but given the state of the login process, players would be admittedly shy to try this fix.
As detailed as the forum post is, it seems like the opening act in the Overwatch 2 experience will be handicapped heading into the weekend, at minimum. As the days go on, hopefully these issues will be resolved.
Overwatch 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Blizzard Entertainment