It’s been about a week since Blizzard’s release of their new game Overwatch 2, which is free to play for everyone. With server manipulation and long queue times the most impactful, the release week of Overwatch 2 has been quite chaotic and challenging for all players.

I didn’t play it on release day because I expected the servers to be extremely full, but even after I waited 2 days, queue times still took over 2 hours, and it was only to get into the actual game where I had to wait for match queues, but they were reasonable to deal with. 

However this is where the server manipulation comes in, during the first few days, people would attack those playing through distributed denial of service or DDoS. With these attacks, people who were playing the game would be logged out immediately, making them restart the waiting process. This happened to me 2 out of the 3 times I tried playing so I just left the game alone for a few days.

So Overwatch 2 definitely seemed unplayable on release with all these server problems, but I still stuck around, and so far, I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve gotten to play.

I’ve been learning the ways around the tank role and DPS role, maining the new characters, JunkerQueen and Sojourn the most, and just been able to have a refreshing experience with my friends.

I have noticed that Sojourn is extremely powerful and sometimes a bit overpowered especially when paired with boost effects from other heroes, but hopefully they’ll balance that.

Also, for compensation of the bad release of Overwatch 2 and players having to deal with all these issues, they’ll be giving free rewards and double experience weekends throughout October and early November.

As a new player, Overwatch 2 offers refreshing gameplay and I think it will find its footing in the coming weeks, hopefully not too many people were pushed away because of the release problems.