Blizzard’s Blunder

By Mitchell Nolan and Zakary Kimble

The latest in Gaming News, as of October 4th, 2022, the 2016 hit Overwatch has come to an end. This marks the beginning of a new era for Blizzard, as they prepare for the launch of Overwatch 2, but does the community agree with such an aggressive change in the gaming scene?

Overwatch, the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) hero-shooter, released by Blizzard in the spring of 2016, had as many as 9 million players in the month of September, but was taken offline Monday to make way for the launch of the sequel, Overwatch 2.

Overwatch has been the topic of various discussions since its debut 6 years ago, issues extending from loot boxes, bug fixes, character balancing, and nowadays smurfing (having multiple accounts to play against lower level players). Blizzard’s attempts to combat these problems over the years have been met with much resistance. Complaints levied against Blizzard cite the company failing to do a good job at addressing these problems, while increasing their final payout.

Many players in the Overwatch community are concerned over the state of the game with it now being free to play, the game requiring players to spend money to unlock new characters, whereas in the previous Overwatch all characters were free and instantly unlocked for everyone to enjoy. 

Another great mystery is the competitive scene with Overwatch 2’s new 5 v 5 system, causing members of the community to potentially cut other members of their competitive 6 person teams that the old Overwatch encouraged. This change was brought about for seemingly no reason, as most of the player base was shocked when they heard of such an antagonistic change to this hit classic. The big question now is, who plans on dedicating their time to this brand-new game?