I write this in disappointment. Overwatch was my most played game on PlayStation, so much so that another game hasn’t topped the time spent in the game even though I haven’t touched it since OW2 released. And every time I hear about OW2 I just get more and more angry, sad, and disappointed.
Blizzard took what was one of the best team shooters and turned it into an action focused money hungry machine with no purpose. The game is now “free” with a giant star next to “free” because if you want any enjoyment out of it like we had with OW1 you better open your wallet multiple times. The progression system sucks, the loot sucks, the paywalls suck, and now the game sucks.
During an interview with GameSpot, Blizzard confirmed that the highly anticipated PvE modes that we expected to get with OW2 are now canceled. The ENTIRE purpose of OW2 releasing was to add story driven PvE modes, and now it doesn’t exist. At all.
The PvE modes were announced in February 2021 officially, but were long known about before then. It was at this time we learned about “Hero Mode” which would add character tree’s and perks to the roster along with player progression, and of course story driven missions to explore the lore of Overwatch. It looked stellar. Then Blizzard “switched gears” and said PvE wouldn’t release alongside the newly revamped OW2, and then went completely silent about it since. Fans have been desperately asking when we would get this, and it seems Blizzard chose to ignore the fans as they knew it was canned over a year ago. OW2 is currently heading into Season 6 which will finally have it’s first new PvE event that fans have been waiting for.
Instead of a full fledged Hero Mode, we now get copy paste PvE style missions that will be included in the games live service over the next few seasons. Blizzard already recycles events for Halloween and the holidays etc… so these missions will be very similar closed PvE missions with no depth at all, and most likely just be on a recycled schedule similar to these events.
Apparently the reason for all this is Blizzard somehow forgot they made a live service game. Their team couldn’t handle creating the depth for PvE missions, or make PvE missions for that matter, so they took the content, stripped it down, and are now releasing it over several seasons instead of all at once. Some of the missions won’t even be cannon to the lore….
Blizzard explains that they want to ensure new PvE content releases “as expected” while ignoring the popularity that say Lucio Ball has every time it releases, no matter how many times they recycle it. Again the whole purpose of Overwatch 2, and why it wasn’t just a simple expansion to the core game, was due to the added depth PvE was going to add. Instead all we got was a toned down OW1 and a bunch of microtransactions nobody asked for.
If I haven’t been rather blunt with my opinion on the team destroying Overwatch, well here goes. Their excuses for dropping the PvE side are totally bogus in every way. A multi-billion dollar studio couldn’t find the time to build out a PvE game? Right…. Just be honest, you couldn’t monetize it and the only option that came to the table was to strip the content down and hide it within the season releases so people (hopefully) buy the passes and keep playing the lousy game. Period. They made sure all the overpriced junk on the OW2 store worked on launch, and raised prices when people were already exclaiming how expensive it was to begin with. It’s all about money.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the content releases include locked new characters or enhancements of some kind, or have insanely long grinding sessions for secondary coins. I was one of the few original OW fans that played that game every day, and I played with the same dozen or so die hard people in every match, and it’s sad that Blizzard looked at us all and said “eh. Sorry.” Take the 2 off the name and go actually develop a game.
