Did you have a Blizzard account many years ago and now you want to use your PlayStation name? Pay up!
Overwatch crossplay has finally gone live after a couple weeks of being a beta stage after the announcement. With it comes the excitement of playing friends (or foes) on opposing consoles or PC, and for console players a lot of new social changes.
One of the bigger changes I noticed as a PS4/5 player was open chat rooms and the ability to message people in-game. We were not able to do this before crossplay, and it may have opened up to make things slightly more fair since PC players could do it which would create some unfair team tactics. The typing is a bit slow for me on a controller, but it is being nice calling out throwers or asking for a person to help counter the other team. Plus it’s always fun being able to trash talk at the end of the game, there I said it.
One odd thing about the chat though is that there is a “general chat” that appears on the main menu. Instead of being region based it seems to be totally random. I have had my spouse sitting right next to me while in the same party and yet she was viewing a totally different chat. There also seems to be some region changes for players as well, as Activision has moved players regions for no specific reason due to crossplay.
One big social change that isn’t very fun though is that the game now forces you to utilize your Blizzard account name. Everyone must register a Blizzard account now, regardless if you’re playing on PC or not, or they won’t be able to play. What sucks is your PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo name no longer shows up on the game, and instead is listed as a “sub-name” when people find you in the recently played. I figured it would at least show it to people on the same console, but it doesn’t.
What really sucks about it is that a lot of people may not even realize they linked their account many years ago, and may have changed their name for a different game or simply accepted a Blizzard name when they did sign up. If you did this then Activision will charge you 10 dollars to change your name, not cheap at all. I personally reached out to Blizzard to ask if there is any way to avoid this considering I didn’t want to utilize my WoW account name and they said no, the only option is a 10 dollar fee. Not all too surprising with how much loot boxes in Overwatch cost, and premium skins normally costing upwards of $20 to $30. But it does kind of suck to go from a rather tight nit community to a bunch of random names everywhere now. I would personally like at least the option to “view” PlayStation tags over Blizzard names.
Some other changes that have come with crossplay are hit or miss with players. All players that are not on the same system will simply show the cross play logo, there is no way to tell if they are playing on another console or PC, it just shows they are elsewhere. Another change is that when console players do manage to get stuck in a game with PC players then all aim assist is turned off, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Supposedly PC players will only play with console players if they share a party though, so there is some type of barrier in place to prevent it.
Overall the crossplay has for sure made the game a little bit more active, so that is welcoming.
