Editor’s note: Ryan Smith is a graduate of East Carolina University and has been an avid gamer since the early and mid 90’s. A fan of Blizzard titles since Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness. Other favorites include BioWare and Bethesda RPGs, Dark souls, Total War titles and various MMORPG’s and Shooters.
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RALEIGH – Amid a sea of controversies over the last few years, Blizzard Entertainment (a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard) has also seen a massive player count drop in their pillar title World of Warcraft. Their RTS(real time strategy) titles, formerly among their best and most popular, are either relics of their former selves in the case of StarCraft 2, or abysmally received upon launch such as the case with Warcraft 3: Reforged, now infamously one of the worst reviewed games of all time.
However, they did enter the world of First Person Shooters for the first time in 2016 with a massively popular title known as Overwatch. Incorporating team based tactical shooter gameplay, with objective based game modes similar to other popular titles like Team Fortress 2 by Valve. It also brought in “heroes,” where each player gets to choose a single hero to control, with various abilities, weapons, art styles, voice lines and much more. This is the most important aspect of the game in my opinion, every hero has a distinct playstile so that not only does the fast paced gameplay ensure every match is a different experience, but every hero chosen can vastly alter one’s experience to ensure nearly endless replayability.
Watch a video of the action here.
More video
Watch the launch trailer here.
This hero system is very similar to ones found in games such as League of Legends and Dota 2, which are MOBA(multiplayer online battle arena) games which, ironically, largely found their starts in Blizzard’s original Warcraft 3 custom game modes, which were community driven.
Overwatch 1 was incredibly successful, with player counts starting in the Beta test at over 10 million, and rising to over 50 million by the time it was shut down on October 3rd of this year. This was a very controversial decision Blizzard made, to shut down Overwatch 1, a game typically with a price tag of $40 over most of its lifespan. It is now no longer playable.
The changes
This brings me to the changes Overwatch 2 brings.
If you enjoyed Overwatch 1’s 6v6 matches, unfortunately those are now gone. Overwatch 2 has changed to a 5v5 format. Personally, as a casual Overwatch 1 player (only playing occasional quick matches with my friends over the years) I prefer the 5v5 format so far. It is less chaotic, and the change from 2 tanks to 1 has proven enjoyable as well. Tanks historically in Overwatch provide your frontline, they are tough to take down but usually not able to dish out as much damage as the DPS(damage per second) type heroes. Now with only a single tank slot, they have given Tanks more damage capabilities, tweaked some of their kits to be more mobile, and overall just a lot more fun.
Video update
Here’s an update on game action
Overwatch 2 has also introduced 3 new heroes, with another controversial decision. Rather than being $40+, Overwatch 2 is FREE, with a large caveat. Some heroes, including a new healer at launch, are locked behind a “Premium Battlepass.” A common feature in contemporary games, it is a subscription, usually lasting 2-4 months, that opens up premium content to the player. In this case, the newest hero is one such premium feature. Contrast this with the original Overwatch where the game had a single upfront cost of $40(or less over time) and any new heroes introduced into the game by Blizzard, were available to the player. Now you can play Overwatch 2 for free, but you have to pay $10 for this new hero(as well as other unlocks that become available during the premium battlepass season 1 timeframe). This raises the worry to some players that over the many seasons of the game, to get each battlepass and any new heroes, the game may end up costing much more than $40.
But controversy aside, how does the game actually play? Well, I think it’s great. That is, if you can even get into the game.
Blizzard suffered from a barrage of DDoS attacks at time of Overwatch 2’s recent launch, with a myriad of other server stability issues affecting players’ ability to get into games at all. I had a full squad of friends ready to go, but over a 3 hour period only 4 of us were able to get into games with each other, and we had multiple instances of players being kicked, and forced to wait into multiple 30,000 player queues. Ultimately I decided to call it a night when I was forced out of a match and had to sit yet again in a 30,000 player queue.
Since the game is free(if you don’t care about unlocking every single hero), it is absolutely worth a try.
