Activision-Blizzards highly anticipated Overwatch sequel has been launched today, sporting a new monetization model that aims to increase player count and revive the feel of the original.
Overwatch 2 is a free-to-play team-based shooter that has replaced the original game, with the promise of more consistent updates. With the change, teams have dropped from 6 to 5 a side, and new characters have been added.
“We wanted to broaden the reach of the franchise, and one way to do so is bring down financial barriers to accessing the game,” said Overwatch general manager Walter Kong.
“We also wanted to address the demands of existing players. We had heard for years that content flow is important to engagement. With Overwatch 2, one of our large goals was to make sure our organization could be sustained in the long-term to keep that going.”
The original game exploded with widespread success upon release in 2016, with 60 million users having purchased the game and the franchise being worth over $1 billion USD ($1.54 billion AUD) in its debut year.
However, players lost interest due to a lack of content updates that left the game feeling stale.
With the release of Overwatch 2, Activision-Blizzard hope to regain a following in a year of rather slow releases, with Diablo: Immortal receiving mixed reviews due to it’s blatant pay-to-win model. Alongside the release of the new Overwatch, the company has released a content roadmap, showing players what to expect.
The company has also been under fire for the last few years, with reports of sexual harassment and discrimination. Activision-Blizzard reached a settlement of $18 million USD ($27.7 million AUD) in March.
Whilst the game is free to play, the financial model sees Overwatch 2 adopt a similar approach to games such as Fortnite with the addition of a battle pass, allowing users to access new content by playing, with the best content hidden behind a paywall.
“The original game was released as one big box. The majority of the revenue came early on,” said Game Director, Aaron Keller.
“We want to develop a model that caters to what our players are asking for, which is to continuously be developing new content for the game over a frequent and consistent and long-lasting period of time.”
As great as this sounds, the content hidden away behind the battle pass includes three original characters, which has led to quite a lot of backlashes from players online.
This will affect balancing when users aren’t given access to all characters from the beginning, meaning those who play more may have an advantage, something that could deter new or more casual players.
In adopting the battle pass system, the game has ditched the ‘loot crate’ system, which has been equated to a form of gambling, as the crates can be bought, and then opened for a random slew of cosmetics.
The battle pass system has proven to work with Fortnite, as analytics firm NewZoo reveals.
“There is a massive increase of (mostly returning) players. We also see an increase in the average daily playtime for the month following a new season release,” says Richard Hordijk, analyst at NewZoo.
However, for users looking to play Overwatch 2 this morning, it’s likely they have run into nothing but server issues.
Whilst originally believed to be an overwhelming influx of players putting pressure on servers, the company has confirmed that it is has become the victim of a distributed denial of services (DDoS) attack.
Unfortunately we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage. This is causing a lot of drop/connection issues. https://t.co/4GwrfHEiBE
— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) October 4, 2022
Overwatch 2 has had its hurdles, with the previous game director Jeff Kaplan leaving Blizzard, and the game being delayed, so the DDoS attack is just one more thing the company has to worry about.
The company has not given an ETA on when the servers will be back up, but its likely that with such a big launch, Activision-Blizzard will be putting all their resources into getting things back up and running.
Players have also noticed issues such as missing cosmetics, buggy camera angles and missing match histories, all of which are teething issues for such a massive launch of a popular online title.
Activision-Blizzard is currently being acquired by Microsoft for $69 billion USD ($106.2 billion AUD), which would potentially see titles such as Overwatch 2, World of Warcraft and perhaps even Call of Duty appear on the Xbox Game Pass.
Overwatch 2 is available for download now on the Activision-Blizzard launcher.
