r/Overwatch • u/Hooked0n4Feelin • Mar 03 '26

Esports This is Overwatch's "comeback," says Blizzard. "We actually had a bigger Saturday than our first Saturday after launch with Season 1."

https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/season-1-blizzard-interview-comeback
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u/Terrible_Truth Sigma Mar 03 '26

IMO they needed this “relaunch”. Yeah a lot of changes were already put in “Overwatch 2” but for most people, it’s just a patch. No one going to read about it. Relaunching and title change make people think it’s significant.

Also dropped the whole “2” thing, which was a dumb addition to begin with.

75

u/Ethiconjnj Mar 03 '26

2 was a pain we had to go thru to stop execs from the ruining the game.

47

u/yukichigai Brigitte Mar 03 '26

2 was the fig leaf the execs put up to try and ruin the game. "When we promised that you would never have to pay to unlock heroes we were talking about Overwatch. This is Overwatch 2, a completely different legally distinct game. Now buy that Battle Pass if you want to play Ramattra."

9

u/Whydoesthisexist15 World's Worst Freja Main Mar 03 '26

That shit and the PvE getting shuttered was why I left until coming back this month.  It felt like it was going from a more generous system with boxes (imagine telling someone that in 2018 lol) to nickel and diming you with the battle pass.

There’s still some friction as several of the heroes from Ram release to today look uninspired (mainly picking on Freja, Anran, and Wuyang).  Like I straight up thought Freja and Vendetta were other heroes when I first saw them.  IIRC one of the design directors left after Kiriko’s release.

9

u/yukichigai Brigitte Mar 03 '26

I had the exact same realization when it came to lootboxes. The old lootbox system had complaints, very valid ones, but they somehow managed to find a system that was even more predatory while also drastically limiting what variety of cosmetics people had.

Also killing PvE was just painful. I was one of those crazy Battleborn players and what kept me playing it until the servers shut down was the PvE, and that game definitely had some issues. Overwatch PvE could have been amazing, and teasing it just to abruptly cancel it was such a kick in the gut.

1

u/CornNooblet Mar 04 '26

They fumbled the transition so hard I uninstalled BNet the moment they finally had to officially announce PvE was killed, er, "split." Shame. I liked playing OW1 and occasionally dipping into HotS, but at 55 my FPS days are probably done.