Since the release of Overwatch 2 on October 4, the game has been plagued by issues. Thousands of players complain that they cannot play. However, a trick has been discovered that can bypass queues and more. One region seems to be unaffected by the problems.
What is this trick? You can select a game region in Overwatch, at least on PC. To do this, click on the globe icon next to your game version in your Battle.net client. By default, Europe should be set here.
However, if you switch the version to Asia, you should henceforth be spared from the enormous queues and server problems. Players report that while there may still be wait times, they are drastically shorter than in Europe.
Blizzard is currently suffering from DDoS attacks. Since the Asian servers are not currently affected by issues, we assume that the attacks are mainly focused on Europe and America.
A region switch for Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch is not possible according to our information.
Blizzard released a video on hope at the launch of Overwatch. Many players have “hoped” for a better connection since:
What is the downside? Connecting through Asian servers means your connection will take longer. This means: your ping is higher. In our tests, we achieved the following values:
- on European servers about 25-30 ms
- on Asian servers between 40-50 ms
You will thus have a ping about twice as high, which can be noticeable under certain circumstances, such as when you and an opponent encounter each other at the same time. However, the connection is still good enough that you should only notice minor effects in normal cases.
If you play a lot, you will definitely have to get used to the slower connection. The “feeling” is simply different and deviates enough to be perceived as disturbing.
Players Warn: “This will get flooded”
The trick has partly circulated in the community, although it has largely remained undiscovered. There are a few posts on reddit and in the official forum that point to the region switch.
There, users warn: “Now that you have said this, these servers will also get flooded” and players residing in Asia are now fearing longer wait times. Moreover, the Asia region was not completely spared from queues.
Since some players have switched regions, it has also become more frequent that people have to wait when logging in to Asia. The queues, however, are reportedly still significantly shorter than here.
The problems, by the way, have nothing to do with your status as a “normal player”, as many angry users on reddit and elsewhere occasionally claim. We, too, as journalists, find ourselves standing in queues, and the biggest streamer in the world is having connection issues:
