The release of Overwatch 2 was overshadowed by issues that excluded many players from the new shooter. While some fans suspected a failure on Blizzard’s part, the cause appears to be an external attack.
This is how the launch went: Overwatch 2 was released nearly an hour before the planned release time and was playable from around 8:00 PM German time on Tuesday, October 4th. In our special, you will find all the information about the launch of Overwatch 2.
At first, the servers were largely stable and many were able to log in. However, shortly before the official release at 9:00 PM, there were increased queues and server connection issues. Over 40,000 players wanted to enter the game simultaneously.
Fans were greeted with long wait times and repeated connection drops. Some even joked that this was the “secret subtitle” of Overwatch 2 (via reddit). In addition, many players were missing a ton of cosmetics from Overwatch 1, and the shop was not functioning properly.
Blizzard itself published a list of known issues in the official forum.
Here you can find the most important information about Overwatch 2 in a concise 43-second video:
This is what the boss says: On Tuesday evening, the new Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra spoke on Twitter. It was said that the Overwatch team is working on the issues and later:
Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. The teams are working hard on a mitigation/solution. This is causing a lot of losses and connectivity issues.
A DDoS attack, short for “Distributed Denial of Service,” usually occurs when perpetrators deliberately overload a network with too many requests. This can happen through botnets.
The affected service, in this case the Overwatch servers, cannot keep up, resulting in slow connections, lags, or connection drops. Such attacks are often simply motivated by malicious intent without any goal other than to disrupt.
Second DDoS attack on Wednesday: “We are working on it”
This is the current status: On this Wednesday, October 5th, there were queues of over 5,000 players again early in the morning at 8:00 AM. Those hoping to game a bit before the evening will likely have to continue waiting.
Aaron Keller, the Game Director and successor of Jeff Kaplan, explained in a tweet at 6:30 AM that a second DDoS attack followed. He stated they are making progress and continue to work on a solution, but he asks for patience.
This is what the players say: The news of the attack apparently has not reached all players yet, and there are still complaints about the queues. However, in the corresponding thread on reddit about the DDoS attacks, there is mainly anger towards the hackers.
The user Mjolnir17 summarizes the mood of many fans: “Why are people like this? I don’t care whether you like the game or not, but why ruin it for others?”
Whether the issues can be resolved throughout the day, we cannot say for sure yet. However, if you want to prepare for your first rounds, we have compiled some tips for you:
Overwatch 2: The most important tips before starting in the checklist
