Blizzard’s launch of over watch 2 Tuesday did not go as planned. Lots of players trying to play the remastered one over watch experienced long queues, suffered server errors, got disconnected from games, and progression and items didn’t carry over from the original game — that is, if they were able to connect to Blizzard’s game servers at all. On Wednesday evening, Blizzard apologized for the condition surveillance 2and announced an important policy change: It will no longer be necessary for a phone number to be associated with a Battle.net account, “for the majority of existing ones over watch Player.”
“We have made the decision to remove phone number requirements for the majority of existing ones over watch
Blizzard said it plans to change the phone number requirement for surveillance 2 for existing players until Friday.
Despite lifting the phone number requirement for much of its player base, an initiative called SMS Protect, the developer, remains in place[s] is committed to combating disruptive behavior in surveillance 2‘ and noted that ‘accounts that were not connected to Battle.net, as well as new accounts, must still meet SMS protection requirements, which helps ensure we protect our community from fraud. If a player is caught engaging in disruptive behavior, their account may be banned whether they have a new account or not.”
Blizzard’s decision to provide a phone number for surveillance 2 — and other restrictions above what types of telephone numbers would meet his requirements – was controversial. Some players with prepaid cell phone plans have been banned from playing surveillance 2so some customers who bought the original over watch, which was replaced by its sequel Wholesale, became unable to play their copy of the game. This issue was exacerbated by the timing of Blizzard’s announcement of the policy: a week earlier surveillance 2 launched and long after the developer started taking pre-orders for add-ons for the game.
As for status surveillance 2
“Today we patched a server critical to the login experience, and this change has increased login reliability,” the Overwatch team said. “Beyond queues, we are working on another server update that will reduce the frequency of player disconnects when already in-game.”
Blizzard said it has “made changes to simplify the queuing process” and expects players to see tighter queue times and is working to fix players being dropped from queues.
In Wednesday night’s update, Blizzard also addressed account merging issues and missing player items and incorrectly banned heroes, all of which are being investigated and addressed. Blizzard has noted this again surveillance 2The startup problems were “exacerbated by DDoS attacks,” which appear to have eased since Tuesday.
Blizzard said updates will be released on the official Overwatch Twitter account (and probably its forums) as soon as they come in.
