Despite many issues in the first days, Blizzard is celebrating Overwatch 2 passing a remarkable milestone. The original Overwatch quickly became a massive cultural touchstone when it was released in 2016. It introduced a wide range of new fans to the first-person shooter genre, oriented FPS fans to MOBA-style hero shooters, and had a broad reach thanks to its diverse cast and fascinating world-building. Though the decision to create Overwatch 2 as a free-to-play game has been controversial for many, players have still shown interest.
Through the PlayOverwatch Twitter account, Blizzard announced that over 25 million players have logged on to play Overwatch 2. Blizzard did not share specifics on how it got to that number, but presumably, 25 million unique players have checked out the game at some point in the 10 days after launch. Commendable of the franchise to be able to pull that amazing number despite the many hurdles the game faced in its first week that threatened to discourage its fan base.
Things got off to a rough start as Overwatch 2 suffered through two DDoS attacks which compounded its widespread server queue issues. This became the game's most infamous issue in its first days which Blizzard technicians eventually fixed, but was only the tip of the spear when it came to problems the game has had. While things are much more stable, there are some who are still having account merge issues, a glitch where returning Overwatch 2 players were accidentally getting heroes locked behind the First Time User Experience, Xbox player achievement glitches, and other problems.
Throughout the whole ordeal of getting the game to work as intended, Blizzard issued multiple apologies with the most recent announcing a promise of free items and multiple double XP weekends in Overwatch 2 in the near future. Blizzard has also been monitoring gameplay throughout Season 1 for any game balance issues. Aside from game-breaking Bastion and Torbjorn exploits that led to their removal and a few things they are monitoring with Zarya, Genji, Sombra, and D. Va, Game Director Aaron Keller said the development mostly team is happy with the game balance.
While there are many elements that Overwatch 2 can be commended for, there are still many other issues that have yet to be fixed or addressed. Some hero skins feel incomplete like Orisa's javelin missing skin-related alternatives or Ana's Corsair skin lacking her parrot. There are also fans that have found the prices for in-game items frustrating with older items feeling strangely expensive, and some standalone Overwatch 2 skins cost considerably more than the bundle that features them.
Overwatch 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.