When it comes to Blizzard, they used to be known for being one of the best content-rich developers out there. But over the last several years, they’ve made choices that have backfired against them in various ways and have left fans frustrated. One of the biggest blunders they’ve made recently was the launch of Overwatch 2. From the literal launch of the game, the title has had problems, and fans have been very vocal about those problems. They didn’t like many of the gameplay changes, didn’t appreciate how long it took to get into matches, etc. It’s bad, and it’s only gotten worse.
But don’t take our word for it! Instead, why not take Blizzards? They dropped a quarterly report commenting on their various games and the engagement around them. When it came to their team shooter, things weren’t looking good:
“Blizzard continued to engage the Overwatch and Warcraft communities with live operations in the second quarter. While engagement and player investment in Overwatch 2 declined sequentially in the quarter, the Overwatch team is looking forward to the August 10 release of Overwatch 2: Invasion,” Activision Blizzard noted in the report. “This will be the largest seasonal update yet, planned to include new PVE Story Missions, a new game mode, and a new hero progression system as well as an additional hero.”
While they sound excited and seem to think things will “work out how they hope,” gamers aren’t as optimistic. For example, that PVE content that they talked about? That’s not free content. Blizzard has altered their path and not only canceled certain PVE content but put it behind a paywall. That’s contrary to their initial promise that the whole game would be free outside of microtransactions.
Gamers aren’t happy with that paywall, especially since they’ve already lost massive amounts of content within the sequel, and more changes are likely coming. It’s true that they’re still adding things like new heroes, but as the sales data shows, it’s not enough. Gamers aren’t going to check out the “new character on the block” if the gameplay still isn’t up to par. Blizzard needs to make sweeping changes to their sequel if they want to return it to the pinnacle they had before.
Adding to their woes is the fact that the Overwatch League might be going under soon, further showing how their sequel hasn’t spurred interest in the gaming community. We’ll have to wait and see what the publisher does next.
