We’re a week into the Overwatch 2 beta and it’s been a mixture of excited fan reaction and brutal wider gaming takes. Blizzard would need to work a miracle to get a positive reaction to just about anything after the past couple of years it had, but it’s still been taking a bit of a kicking for the similarities between Overwatch 1 and 2, and the years of hype that lead up to it. In a new developer blog, first of what’s intended to be weekly, some of those criticisms are addressed and assurances made, while also promising new bits and pieces.
The core message comes down to something along the lines of ‘still a beta, mates, calm down’ which, to be fair, is probably a decent point. Blizzard are running this remarkably similar to the original Overwatch beta way-back-when – minimal features, basic gameplay in place, lots of tweaks at a fast rate. Based on some of the language in this post, it’s also likely this beta will go offline at some stage and come back, much like the original Overwatch beta did over Christmas 2015.
It also addresses concerns about the lack of new content indirectly by talking about upcoming “new heroes, maps, and features” as well as visual upgrades such as “menu screens, player profiles, multiple time of day conditions for classic maps, and the full set of hero 2.0 looks.” It also makes mention of UI and UX upgrades a-plenty. Reaction has been fairly positive in places like the Overwatch subreddit.
That said, in wider gaming, the reaction has been much more negative. There’s nothing the gaming community enjoys more than kicking a company while it’s down, more so if they’ve been on top. Blizzard was on top for a long time and has now been down for a while so, well, you can guess the sentiment. Here’s the highest rated post on r/Games for the last week, basically saying it’s Overwatch 1 but worse. Popular YouTuber dunkey’s four-minute slaughtering of the game has garnered more than 3 million views in two days. You see the point.
Developer blogs like this will help, but new, high-quality content, delivered quickly is going to be the real winner. The Overwatch League also restarts tomorrow, with players using the Overwatch 2 beta for it. Plus, there’s that eventual PvE mode, which is fast approaching needing to cure all the world’s ills to live up to its hype for the community. We’ll see how things develop over the coming weeks and months.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.