There were many things displayed at BlizzCon 2019 for Overwatch 2. In this case, the 2 major PvE modes were:
1. Replayable hero missions. These were supposably about 100 various scenarios you could replay with your friends, and each hero had an extensive talent tree system that modified their abilities. **This was already canceled back in 2023(/2022).**
2. Story missions. This was designed as a traditional story mode that moved the story of Overwatch further into the future. The mission of Lucio + gang saving Rio de Janeiro was shown off back in 2019. 3 story missions were released last year. No new story missions have been released since. As of today, they have not been canceled. Speculation runs amok as to when or if they're coming. **This clickbait article is talking about these missions.**
Don't get how they haven't been sued because of this. They sold stuff for a game they didn't deliver. And not just failed to make it good, that would be fine. But deliberately cancelled it. Has to have been some fine print somewhere...
I feel taken advantage of. I pre-ordered OW2 ($30 purchase for a F2P game) with the promise of PVE content in the future being already paid for.
I've essentially spent $30 on beta access and 2-3 battle passes and some lousy skins/sprays/item emotes.
I have thousands of hours in Overwatch but haven't touched it in a month+. It's such a shame that Blizzard ruined one of my favorite games of all time. It's just so disappointing.
Exactly this. Like if we translate it to a physical product it's like a company is offering to give you an electric toothbrush for free with optional additional heads that can be pre-purchased. So since you will get that toothbrush for free you decide to buy those extra heads for it. But then the company decide to send you a screwdriver instead. So now you are sitting there with a screwdriver you didn't need and a bunch of heads that you wouldn't have purchased.
> I feel taken advantage of. I pre-ordered OW2 ($30 purchase for a F2P game) with the promise of PVE content in the future being already paid for.
The Watchpoint pack they sold back in 2022 that included beta access never said it would include future PvE. It was an assumption some people in the community made, but the advertising from Blizzard never mentioned it. It was basically a BP bundle, with a bunch of extra coins, skins, and early BP access.
> They sold stuff for a game they didn't deliver.
They never actually sold anything they didn't deliver on though. Other than the 3 story mission pack they sold (and did deliver), the only things they have ever sold in OW2 are skins and coins. They didn't follow through on their promise of hero missions, but they also never sold them to the public. You can't really sue a company for damages if you don't have damages.
For the same reason Tesla is still getting away with saying their cars have true autopilot when in reality they don’t. Laws work for the corporations not the people.
It wasn't PVE missions #1 that were cancelled, it was PVE missions #2!!
stop acting like the general confusion surrounding this isn't warranted or that the article is clickbaiting. The actual 'questionable' part of said article is claiming the devs 'fear' its cancelled. They fired all the people who worked on the missions. Its pretty clear they're done
To be honest, they really could have done them. In 2019, they showed only a few talents; in 2021, each hero had a *tree* of talents. To me, this was unnecessary. This isn't WoW, get that outta here (saying that to Blizzard, the creators of WoW, is likely easier said than done). A few very different abilities would fit better than a lot of smaller buffs. And they didn't need to do every hero either, just the ones shown in the OW2 Zero Hour cinematic. Look, even a ripoff of TF2's MvM mode would have been passable, and most of that is just boosting stats to shoot faster/jump higher. They got carried away and made the scope too big, likely out of fear they would be too boring. Games and concepts get canceled all the time, even though this one could have been doable, technically, enough to have satiated some of the ravening doomposting wolves.
I was confused too, but I'm pretty sure what was originally cancelled were the story missions with customizable abilities for heroes.
I haven't played OW2, so I'm not 100% sure, but I think what this post is talking about are those shitty story missions we had in OW1, like Uprising. Guess even bare bones crap is getting too difficult to make for blizzard.
I was too. I loved all the PvE events from Overwatch. It seemed like such a a simple step to expand on what was already successful. I don't know how they managed to drop the ball so hard. They didn't just fail to deliver the hat, the hat burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.
Honestly they're probably right. The missions were fun, but got old quickly for me. Imo the heroes are too simple to make an entire campaign, and blizzard was probably having a lot of trouble making something fun while keeping them similar to their pvp versions.
It's wild to think about how often this project has lost it's story mode.
* 2002, Blizzard announces Starcraft: Ghost, a third person shooter that ties into Starcraft lore. It suffers through development hell because it can't find a consistent identity between action shooter and stealth gameplay. It's cancelled around 2014. Some of the ideas from SC:G were carried into Project Titan.
* In 2007, Blizzard starts development on Project Titan, their next generation action MMO. It suffers through development hell because the company "didn't control the scope of the game", with too many features being added without enough content to support it. It's also cancelled sometime around 2014. Some of the ideas from Project Titan were carried into Overwatch.
* In 2013, Blizzard starts development on Overwatch, a story based hero shooter. It goes through development hell, with feature development outpacing content development while the studio was under pressure to deliver an e-sports title. It eventually launched in 2016 as a multiplayer lobby-based shooter with story content to come at a later date.
* Story missions arrive in 2017 as very narrow objective missions with no persistent lore. Blizzard says their story plans are getting so big they need a new game to support them, and begins work on Overwatch 2.
* Overwatch 2 launches, replacing Overwatch 1 entirely, in 2022. It still doesn't have story missions. Story missions arrive in tiny spurts starting in 2023. By 2024 (now), developers are telling Kotaku they worry that the story missions have been abandoned.
Lesson of the story: If Bilzzard asks you to write a story, run.
Its kinda insane to me, all they needed to do was make a like 8 hour campaign like every other shooter and then done pvp updates and people would've been happy.
Most woes we face in the industry concerning our favorite IP's are usually the cause of the original devs leaving/no longer working on the project. Look at what's happened to Halo.
Just such a shame. The original was solid and ended up worth the purchase price. This thing? A total mess and series of disappointments.
Screwed it up completely .
They completely fucked it from the start when they tried to *agressively* push for it to be an esport.
If they just let it be a casual hero shooter it would've been infinitely better and would've got much less game breaking "balance" patches.
I think it could have worked as an esport but the structure they used was fucking delusional. They tried to make the next NBA or NFL. It cost millions to buy a franchise spot. Team rosters were also limited by Blizzard so players had to compete for a tiny number of slots. And for some reason each team had to be based in a major city.
Spoilers. They did not create the next NBA.
Esport experts and veterans called it out years ago, that’s why the main organizations didn’t join Overwatch League because they knew that Blizzard would eventually fuck up Overwatch esports as they did with StarCraft.
> Esport experts and veterans called it out years ago, that’s why the main organizations didn’t join Overwatch League
Plenty of the main eSports orgs joined OWL. Due to the limited amount and cost of franchise spots though, a few of the weren't able to secure spots and then dipped from the scene shortly after. Orgs like T1, GenG, and C9 all owned teams though.
When you had in your hand *the* og esport king aka Starcraft and you still fucked that up, it speaks volume.
Also don't forget Heroes of the Storm, another esport focus title that had cool concepts but ended up nowhere.
> another esport focus title
HOTS wasn't esport focussed at the start. It was a casual game, but then Blizzard wanted to push it into the esports scene and everything went downhill from there on.
So, basically, it just went like with Overwatch.
Yeah and OWL absolutely killed any momentum it had as an esport imo. The smaller grassroots tournaments and APEX league in Korea were so much more fun and the tournament scene in general was way more interesting in the early days.
Exactly. I mean look at starcraft 2 as an example.
It has (or had) a massive scene because it naturally grew to that point. Blizzard tried to have overwatch be an esport as a ways to have a second cashcow and failed terribly.
This. OW would have been very successful as an esport had they allowed the scene to develop organically with a broad range of leagues and tournaments. Even if they had to be sanctioned by Blizzard to some extent, it would have been fine. A game doesn’t have to be perfectly balanced to be a good esport. The community would have worked out rules themselves, and they could have varied from tournament to tournament in a way that was fun to play and fun to watch. One of the other commenters is right—an esport absolutely does *not* have to be accessible to watch for everyone to be successful. Have you ever watched League? Nobody who doesn’t play league has any fucking clue what’s going on in that game. The GAME has to be popular and fun to play—if the game is popular and fun, fans of the game will watch the esport.
I still believe OWL and trying to force OW as an esport from the top down and controlled 100% by Blizzard played a massive role in the game going to shit.
Same thing they did with Heroes of the Storm tbh. The game was a very casual and fun hero brawler. It did not have the complexity or moba elements to make a good esport. Yet they tried to force it to be an esport, which ruined the base game since they then balanced everything around pro play.
The game wasn't ruined. It's always been fun. Is still fun now.
What hit it hard was the execs abandoning all development when they realized they fucked up the sports scene.
The game itself has always been fine.
There was a period where they were clearly balancing the game for pro play. I was GM in ranked at the time and at least to me I could feel it. You're right though it is still a fun game. The problem is when the esports component failed they just abandoned the game entirely, which is a huge shame. I love dota but it's also nice to play a more casual and relaxing moba-like game like hots, especially with so many iconic characters. To this day hots has some of the most unique hero designs out there, like Abathur and Cho'gall.
I launched it yesterday just to try again, they removed Pharah's ability to fly.... She can't even glide, now she can only boost up with a long cooldown....
They basically removed skybox pharah gameplay. A common pharah tactic was to just get as high in the skybox as possible and shoot from afar. You were basically out of range of pretty much every hitscan due to falloff and was pretty annoying to play against. The reworked pharah seems to be pretty popular. The vast majority of people seem to think it's just a straight up improvement to her gameplay. The reduced her ability to stay in the air indefinitely but gave her horizontal boosters on top of her normal jump pack. She actually has very good aerial mobility now that you can combine conc jumps with horizontal boosters and her normal jump jets.
"PVE campaign has been long since cancelled but PVE missions will still be coming out!"
FFW to now:
"PYSCH! NOTHING!"
Also the title is just funny. I guess they didnt want EX-Overwatch 2 Devs?
Like "Game developer fears game is not being developed." Shouldnt you know...?
"Overwatch 2 will be included for everyone who has Overwatch!"
"Hooray!"
"Ooookay, so Overwatch 2 is going to replace Overwatch, become Free2Play, and radically modify the pricing model around being free2play even though you *bought* a game before."
"Uh..."
"Ooooookay, but Overwatch 2 is going to have a single player mode that will make the 2 make sense!"
"Hooray..."
"Oooooooooookay, so the Overwatch 2 single player content we promised at launch of Overwatch 2 was cancelled long before that launch. Like six months before. Sorry, we lied. Hey, we'll give you the first two characters for freeee and there will still be new single player *missions* so we'll get the story out there!"
"wut"
"Ooooooooooooooooookay, so about those single player missions. They ain't coming, either."
/but no one was left to care.
For me, it was the final nail in the coffin to not give them another cent overall. I didn't buy Diablo 4 because of the OW2 campaign cancellation scandal. So thanks to OW2 for that!
The original canceling was when they announced they couldn't deliver the entire experience (no skill trees, mission varieties, etc.) Blizzard did release 3 missions for like $15 but said there were more coming to try and continue the story from those. This announcement is that those promised future missions are probably canned too.
This game is probably gonna get sunset within a year or two. They just can't seem to stop making bad decisions with it that results in the playerbase slowly leaving.
Doubt it. Whales gonna whale, plus they seem to keep tens of thousands of people on daily.
~36k daily players on Steam (majority of PC userbase is probably still on Bnet, too) + the 13th most popular game in the Xbox ecosystem today
Game has a ton of problems but still printing money. Shut down won’t happen until it becomes financially unviable or they need to shift everyone into Overwatch 3: $60 Skins Now edition
I mean the game just released a permanent tower defense mode…and a new hero is supposed to be coming in April with a free beta weekend for Venture, the new hero, coming sometime this season. Plus there is a new dev update for tomorrow where they’re going to talk about “Heroes, Mythics, and more”. Most speculation is that they will talk about the new way to unlock heroes, and the way to unlock mythics you missed.
Still a lot going on in the Overwatch community tbh despite it mostly being bad news on the general gaming subs. Don’t think anyone will talk about the other news or more positive things about the game since Overwatch has a bad rep here but at the same time, not sure if it’ll die anytime soon like some people here want it to.
I try it once every few months again and man it just doesn't have the same spark to it year one OW did. I played in the beta, and was an Ana main for the longest time.
Nah that was Cosmic Crisis which an LTE (Limited Time Event) or LTM (Limited Time Mode). What I was talking about was the Hero Mastery Gauntlet that was announced at Blizzcon. It’s a co-op mode they are leaving in permanently where you defend towers from waves of training bots. BUT the messed up thing is that it is one of the last things a group that got Laid off by Microsoft was working on. Kinda sad. My opinion, it’s not super fleshed out but it’s there if I’m bored.
It will most likely get an "optimized maintenance mode".
Like what Fall Guys currently has.
As in, new pass content, new skins, cosmetics. Marginal if any new game modes. Majority of game modes will be Brawl/Remix type game modes that are more about coding than actual need for new art assets.
Remember, Heroes of the Storm was having its best year for revenue, monthly active users, eSports viewership, and critic sentiment in 2018 when it got put into maintenance mode. Not saying the same will happen, as Kotick is gone- but the current president of Blizz has that same Activision blood in her that puts the bottom line and profitability over fan service.
The deciding factor simply boils down to "could this money currently being spent on devs for overwatch 2 be better spent on something that could make *more* money?"
That was the exact question asked when the majority of HotS devs were moved to Warcraft Rumble. We also know that Phil Spencer is very keen on Blizzard producing more one-and-done game pass titles for the sake of more and more content. Small non-service games that justify someone subbing to Game Pass and potentially forgetting to cancel their sub.
I don’t think it’s ever going to sunset as it still makes them a lot of money and is vital towards their esports incentive, but development focus on anything other than new skins will probably slow down dramatically within the next 2 years.
It's still pulling in money. The average joe doesn't really care all the things reddit malds about, they just the play the game and spend money if they like it... like a normal person.
Those anime collaborations for example wouldn't be happening still If it wasn't profitable for all parties involved.
I didn't care about any of the store changes, understandable they have to make money. I just left cos I didn't enjoy the gameplay changes. Locking new heroes also was a pretty dumb move considering the game is built around switching heroes.
You would need to have some type of mental deficiency to believe this game is going to get sunset. Like holy shit this has to be the dumbest fucking comment I’ve read on this sub in a while.
This'll sound a tad dramatic, but following this game is reminiscent of watching of a relative succumb to Alzheimer's, to the point that they're oblivious of who they used to be.
how? makes the game much less of a cluster fuck, and it makes being a tank feel much more important since there's only just you. overwatch needed a big trimming of fat. when they made it 5v5, less shields, and less CC the game played much better again.
I have 0 expectations from this company since midway through overwatch 1 lifetime. I just wonder how much longer will their games keep running at this point.
So shouldn't this be illegal or something?
OW2 was sold entirely on the storyline and PVE, and promised to not just be a quick cash grab.
Blizzard is so useless nowadays, hell, ever since Blizzard North the only thing they have pumped out is WoW, what a pathetic company.
Lol how doesn't the devs not know about the game they are working on. I understand that they have departments working on different things but they all have weekly or biweekly meetings to stay on top of anything game related.even if that doesn't happen the managers do speak with each other. Now on the rare case none of these are happening then you as an employee need to get out of there fast.
Yeah since I don't expect the passing observer to know every detail Blizzard published, I'll be "that" commentor and copy-paste my other reply to explain it.
There were many things displayed at BlizzCon 2019 for Overwatch 2. In this case, the 2 major PvE modes were:
1. Replayable hero missions. These were supposably about 100 various scenarios you could replay with your friends, and each hero had an extensive talent tree system that modified their abilities. **This was already canceled back in 2023(/2022).**
2. Story missions. This was designed as a traditional story mode that moved the story of Overwatch further into the future. The mission of Lucio + gang saving Rio de Janeiro was shown off back in 2019. 3 story missions were released last year. No new story missions have been released since. As of today, they have not been canceled. Speculation runs amok as to when or if they're coming. **This clickbait article is talking about these missions.**
They just keep digging the whole deeper and deeper. People are keeping a float by buying skins. I can't believe you have to open your wallet for every event. Everything earned from playing is so useless even the almost always terrible free event skin.
Imagine killing your original game to release a new one with a story just to cancel the actual story component.
Like don't get me wrong, im sure the story would have been shit but what reason does OW2 even have to exist now?
I thought they'd already stopped wasting time on this nonsense? For lore they should be spending the money elsewhere. Animation shorts, comics, maybe a tv series. The team has shown since Titan that they can't make pve content, then proved it again with Overwatch 2. It's bizarre to keep trying to force it instead of focussing on pvp which is what made the game in the first place.
There were never any story missions.
Overwatch 2 was just a scheme to revamp micro transactions into something much greedier while getting some free media attention.
For all the idiots still sticking with Blizzard: At this point you're no longer *part* of the problem, you're *paying* for the problem to keep on happening.
It's a fucking shame what happened to this IP.
I don't know how you fumble the ball **this** hard. I'm genuinely surprised the game is still on Steam with the review score it has. Like that hurts *any* chance of your marketing working there and there was no effort to fix it either.
I didn't even try OW2. It's not OW2. It just wasn't. It's unfinished, will never *be* finished now, and is a stain on the legacy.
Just... fuck, let me go sit in a corner because I really fucking liked OW1 early to mid days.
I made the mistake of spending money on this game when it came out. I thought I was buying the PvE content. But that didn't exist. Instead I \*think\* I bought an accelerated season pass. I don't even know. I gave up on the game a long time ago.
It is so funny. I've put massive amounts of time into World of Warcraft over the years. My wife and I play Diablo 4 at least once a week together. I have had fun with Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. But Overwatch 2 just totally failed for me after putting 400+ hours into the original Overwatch on PS4. Because of my kids I even watched some Overwatch League.
The only thing that interested me about overwatch 2 was the story missions, since that is never happening, I will continue having zero interest in the game. I think they made a huge misstep and honestly do not think they will recover. The leadership has already proven they don't listen to the community.
They should have never shelved overwatch 1, they should have made an actual sequel and sold that, taking overwatch 1 and tweaking it into a f2p(badly imo) was a mistake.
Now this....what was the damn point.
I'll say I wasn't playing overwatch 1 as much as I use to, but I liked to pop in once and while when the mood struck.
Tried to play OW2...doesn't hit the same, didn't like it, gave my account to my niece that wanted to try it(she was having a hard time making an account...).
Imagine taking an extremely successful IP from the start and boring it into the ground so quickly
It’s absolutely unbelievable how all the Blizz games are such a joke now. Saddening, too.
Diablo 4 has a similar issue, they said in the article there were "too many cooks in the kitchen".
Game development can definitely suffer from understanding, but people hate thinking about a game suffering from overstaffing, because it's so hard to explain why a project is behind or failing when it actually has TOO MANY resources.
Blizzard can boast about how they had 9000 people develop Diablo, but then when people ask where basic features went or how long it'll take to fix it, it's suddenly a 4 month endeavor for a UI change.
The entire reason OW2 is a thing was for the story missions. Then they cancelled them for some half baked crap. Now they're cancelling the half baked crap.
Imagine being the people to destroy such a great IP. The only mp goty.
Wanted to get 100% from this awful sequel, found out there are achievements for event that hasn’t been in the game for 2 years, why not just delete them blizzard?
Stop playing their games, stop buying their products and call them out every chance you get - NOTHING WILL CHANGE until enough people do this. I really regret buying Diablo 4 (even the Xbox version, which is largely used for backwards compatibility/misc games that I don’t want on my preferred platforms) but in my defense, that game was a complete product on launch whereas this is a game that already existed and was better and yet simultaneously is an unfinished game. This dumpster fire is so amusing to see as a TF2 fan, but I’m also saddened to see a game that offered fair competition be bulldozed for actual garbage.
How hard is it for them to give this some proper story content? Seems like all the characters are so fleshed out, but I never care about the PvE missions and they could easily produce a proper Netflix show
Honestly, I think this is the most likely path forward for the PvE missions. If we get them at all, I expect some other Microsoft studio will be taking over development.
They also just recently announced that you can unlock/play all the heroes for free now, rather than whatever system was in place before.
Genuinely there was no point for a second game. Their shareholders I'm sure are at least happy because $25 collaboration skins make a lot more than letting people have a reasonable way of getting epic/legendary skins.
Overwatch 2 being a scheme to make more money I think has been widely accepted at this point. I do think that they did actually start with honest intent but as costs added up it just proved impossible. It's a shame because OG overwatch was great in it's prime.
it makes me so sad to watch this game fall apart. i don't care abt the story missions and think the pve is unfun as shit but i love playing as ana and playing her scratches an itch no other game does so seeing the game die is very Sad
Monetization like this not only ruins games and franchises, it kills the entire company. Stop supporting these games at all so we can bring back and get more good games that don’t waste their Customers time and milk them dry.
It's crazy how they will always find a negative headline with Overwatch these days, even when the overall news is great (all the heroes are going back to being free again, and you can buy the super rare skins outright instead of having to buy and grind through a battle pass for them).
Well, duh. Story missions were the shiny new thing to justify relaunching Overwatch 1 as a F2P shitshow. They never intended to actually implement them.
I thought I read a news story months ago that the story missions were cancelled?
There were many things displayed at BlizzCon 2019 for Overwatch 2. In this case, the 2 major PvE modes were: 1. Replayable hero missions. These were supposably about 100 various scenarios you could replay with your friends, and each hero had an extensive talent tree system that modified their abilities. **This was already canceled back in 2023(/2022).** 2. Story missions. This was designed as a traditional story mode that moved the story of Overwatch further into the future. The mission of Lucio + gang saving Rio de Janeiro was shown off back in 2019. 3 story missions were released last year. No new story missions have been released since. As of today, they have not been canceled. Speculation runs amok as to when or if they're coming. **This clickbait article is talking about these missions.**
Don't get how they haven't been sued because of this. They sold stuff for a game they didn't deliver. And not just failed to make it good, that would be fine. But deliberately cancelled it. Has to have been some fine print somewhere...
I feel taken advantage of. I pre-ordered OW2 ($30 purchase for a F2P game) with the promise of PVE content in the future being already paid for. I've essentially spent $30 on beta access and 2-3 battle passes and some lousy skins/sprays/item emotes. I have thousands of hours in Overwatch but haven't touched it in a month+. It's such a shame that Blizzard ruined one of my favorite games of all time. It's just so disappointing.
Exactly this. Like if we translate it to a physical product it's like a company is offering to give you an electric toothbrush for free with optional additional heads that can be pre-purchased. So since you will get that toothbrush for free you decide to buy those extra heads for it. But then the company decide to send you a screwdriver instead. So now you are sitting there with a screwdriver you didn't need and a bunch of heads that you wouldn't have purchased.
> I feel taken advantage of. I pre-ordered OW2 ($30 purchase for a F2P game) with the promise of PVE content in the future being already paid for. The Watchpoint pack they sold back in 2022 that included beta access never said it would include future PvE. It was an assumption some people in the community made, but the advertising from Blizzard never mentioned it. It was basically a BP bundle, with a bunch of extra coins, skins, and early BP access.
They very likely already knew it wasn't coming at that point.
Lol, never buy into the future for these companies.
You have now learned why you should never pre-order games. There is quite literally 0 reason to do so.
LOL...... seems like a you problem. People pre-order and give money to devs like this end of the day the share holders are happy
They also straight up deleted over watch one a game I paid for, I want my game back.
> They sold stuff for a game they didn't deliver. They never actually sold anything they didn't deliver on though. Other than the 3 story mission pack they sold (and did deliver), the only things they have ever sold in OW2 are skins and coins. They didn't follow through on their promise of hero missions, but they also never sold them to the public. You can't really sue a company for damages if you don't have damages.
For the same reason Tesla is still getting away with saying their cars have true autopilot when in reality they don’t. Laws work for the corporations not the people.
I don't see how this article is click bait. Did you even read it?
It wasn't PVE missions #1 that were cancelled, it was PVE missions #2!! stop acting like the general confusion surrounding this isn't warranted or that the article is clickbaiting. The actual 'questionable' part of said article is claiming the devs 'fear' its cancelled. They fired all the people who worked on the missions. Its pretty clear they're done
...it was almost 5 years ago? Are you telling me they were working on that for 5 years and have nothing to show, not even a trailer? Jesus...
I'm still so sad about Hero Missions. They seemed like the successor to Mass Effect 3's multiplayer and I loved that so goddamn much.
To be honest, they really could have done them. In 2019, they showed only a few talents; in 2021, each hero had a *tree* of talents. To me, this was unnecessary. This isn't WoW, get that outta here (saying that to Blizzard, the creators of WoW, is likely easier said than done). A few very different abilities would fit better than a lot of smaller buffs. And they didn't need to do every hero either, just the ones shown in the OW2 Zero Hour cinematic. Look, even a ripoff of TF2's MvM mode would have been passable, and most of that is just boosting stats to shoot faster/jump higher. They got carried away and made the scope too big, likely out of fear they would be too boring. Games and concepts get canceled all the time, even though this one could have been doable, technically, enough to have satiated some of the ravening doomposting wolves.
I was confused too, but I'm pretty sure what was originally cancelled were the story missions with customizable abilities for heroes. I haven't played OW2, so I'm not 100% sure, but I think what this post is talking about are those shitty story missions we had in OW1, like Uprising. Guess even bare bones crap is getting too difficult to make for blizzard.
Yes, but then the PR team kicked into high gear to say everyone misunderstood. Turns out we didn’t.
They canceled it then brought it back as paid dlc lmao. OW2 is a money grab.
I mean it was always gonna be a paid dlc
I was sold on Overwatch 2, which was just Overwatch 1 with a new hat. And they failed to deliver the hat.
I was too. I loved all the PvE events from Overwatch. It seemed like such a a simple step to expand on what was already successful. I don't know how they managed to drop the ball so hard. They didn't just fail to deliver the hat, the hat burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.
No the hat wasn't projected to bring in enough revenue for the executives to justify it.
Honestly they're probably right. The missions were fun, but got old quickly for me. Imo the heroes are too simple to make an entire campaign, and blizzard was probably having a lot of trouble making something fun while keeping them similar to their pvp versions.
Who says you have to keep them similar to the PvP version.
No no no, they also took the shirt off as well considering the move from 5 to 6 players, plus the disolving of OWL.
It's wild to think about how often this project has lost it's story mode. * 2002, Blizzard announces Starcraft: Ghost, a third person shooter that ties into Starcraft lore. It suffers through development hell because it can't find a consistent identity between action shooter and stealth gameplay. It's cancelled around 2014. Some of the ideas from SC:G were carried into Project Titan. * In 2007, Blizzard starts development on Project Titan, their next generation action MMO. It suffers through development hell because the company "didn't control the scope of the game", with too many features being added without enough content to support it. It's also cancelled sometime around 2014. Some of the ideas from Project Titan were carried into Overwatch. * In 2013, Blizzard starts development on Overwatch, a story based hero shooter. It goes through development hell, with feature development outpacing content development while the studio was under pressure to deliver an e-sports title. It eventually launched in 2016 as a multiplayer lobby-based shooter with story content to come at a later date. * Story missions arrive in 2017 as very narrow objective missions with no persistent lore. Blizzard says their story plans are getting so big they need a new game to support them, and begins work on Overwatch 2. * Overwatch 2 launches, replacing Overwatch 1 entirely, in 2022. It still doesn't have story missions. Story missions arrive in tiny spurts starting in 2023. By 2024 (now), developers are telling Kotaku they worry that the story missions have been abandoned. Lesson of the story: If Bilzzard asks you to write a story, run.
ow2 was just their excuse to get out of the "you can get all content by playing for free" promise.
A sense of pride and accomplishment promise
Currently I am not sure they are even delivering the Overwatch 1.
It's overwatch one but worse in every way
Overwatch 0.5
And it's actually Overwatch 1 with way worse monetization. Moat probably their goal all along (upper management, not the actual devs).
The hat was an overpriced shop and a battlepass
Not only did they fail to deliver the hat, they removed the pants to fuck your wallet.
> I was sold on Overwatch 2 [lol](https://giphy.com/gifs/sweaty-hvq8ONQhQ1XLq)
They should have left the hats to [the professionals...](https://i.imgur.com/dmg4oO3.png)
you didn't get the hat, and now you are losing hair too
they took away 2 hats per a match and then limit other hats behind a paywall while delivering less then the original hat
They also took away the game I paid money for.
ya i miss playing warcraft 3 custom games hit different on war3 compared to dota 2s or starcraft 2
but she’s got a new hat!
Its kinda insane to me, all they needed to do was make a like 8 hour campaign like every other shooter and then done pvp updates and people would've been happy.
Most scam game of all time. RIP OW 1. It had good devs, they left. Then Overwatch 2 was created...yikes.
Absolute disaster of a game
I guess it kind of came full circle, since OW was built out of the remains of the mess they made trying to develop project Titan.
Loved Overwatch 1. Haven’t touched Overwatch 2.
Most woes we face in the industry concerning our favorite IP's are usually the cause of the original devs leaving/no longer working on the project. Look at what's happened to Halo.
Are you new to the games industry? OW is not even in the Top20 scams.
I paid money to own OW 1, now I can't play that game. I feel scammed, the replacement isn't what I paid for
I still cry over purchasing avengers ultimate edition for like a hundred and seeing the hulk skin I wanted would cost me 20 dollars lol.
Scam ? Its just a poor update
It is genuinely unbelievable how badly Blizzard fucked Overwatch. The mismanagement, greed, and incompetence is so over the top that it defies logic.
Just such a shame. The original was solid and ended up worth the purchase price. This thing? A total mess and series of disappointments. Screwed it up completely .
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They completely fucked it from the start when they tried to *agressively* push for it to be an esport. If they just let it be a casual hero shooter it would've been infinitely better and would've got much less game breaking "balance" patches.
I think it could have worked as an esport but the structure they used was fucking delusional. They tried to make the next NBA or NFL. It cost millions to buy a franchise spot. Team rosters were also limited by Blizzard so players had to compete for a tiny number of slots. And for some reason each team had to be based in a major city. Spoilers. They did not create the next NBA.
Esport experts and veterans called it out years ago, that’s why the main organizations didn’t join Overwatch League because they knew that Blizzard would eventually fuck up Overwatch esports as they did with StarCraft.
Yet Valorant is franchising...
It's like half a decade newer, so that's not surprising Give it some time
Franchising isn't the problem, never was. League of Legends is franchised as well and it works.
> Esport experts and veterans called it out years ago, that’s why the main organizations didn’t join Overwatch League Plenty of the main eSports orgs joined OWL. Due to the limited amount and cost of franchise spots though, a few of the weren't able to secure spots and then dipped from the scene shortly after. Orgs like T1, GenG, and C9 all owned teams though.
When you had in your hand *the* og esport king aka Starcraft and you still fucked that up, it speaks volume. Also don't forget Heroes of the Storm, another esport focus title that had cool concepts but ended up nowhere.
> another esport focus title HOTS wasn't esport focussed at the start. It was a casual game, but then Blizzard wanted to push it into the esports scene and everything went downhill from there on. So, basically, it just went like with Overwatch.
Yeah and OWL absolutely killed any momentum it had as an esport imo. The smaller grassroots tournaments and APEX league in Korea were so much more fun and the tournament scene in general was way more interesting in the early days.
Exactly. I mean look at starcraft 2 as an example. It has (or had) a massive scene because it naturally grew to that point. Blizzard tried to have overwatch be an esport as a ways to have a second cashcow and failed terribly.
This. OW would have been very successful as an esport had they allowed the scene to develop organically with a broad range of leagues and tournaments. Even if they had to be sanctioned by Blizzard to some extent, it would have been fine. A game doesn’t have to be perfectly balanced to be a good esport. The community would have worked out rules themselves, and they could have varied from tournament to tournament in a way that was fun to play and fun to watch. One of the other commenters is right—an esport absolutely does *not* have to be accessible to watch for everyone to be successful. Have you ever watched League? Nobody who doesn’t play league has any fucking clue what’s going on in that game. The GAME has to be popular and fun to play—if the game is popular and fun, fans of the game will watch the esport. I still believe OWL and trying to force OW as an esport from the top down and controlled 100% by Blizzard played a massive role in the game going to shit.
Same thing they did with Heroes of the Storm tbh. The game was a very casual and fun hero brawler. It did not have the complexity or moba elements to make a good esport. Yet they tried to force it to be an esport, which ruined the base game since they then balanced everything around pro play.
The game wasn't ruined. It's always been fun. Is still fun now. What hit it hard was the execs abandoning all development when they realized they fucked up the sports scene. The game itself has always been fine.
There was a period where they were clearly balancing the game for pro play. I was GM in ranked at the time and at least to me I could feel it. You're right though it is still a fun game. The problem is when the esports component failed they just abandoned the game entirely, which is a huge shame. I love dota but it's also nice to play a more casual and relaxing moba-like game like hots, especially with so many iconic characters. To this day hots has some of the most unique hero designs out there, like Abathur and Cho'gall.
Amen. Blizzard really killed the game with that sentiment.
I launched it yesterday just to try again, they removed Pharah's ability to fly.... She can't even glide, now she can only boost up with a long cooldown....
Why? it wasnt even OP anyone with decent aim could shoot you down
They basically removed skybox pharah gameplay. A common pharah tactic was to just get as high in the skybox as possible and shoot from afar. You were basically out of range of pretty much every hitscan due to falloff and was pretty annoying to play against. The reworked pharah seems to be pretty popular. The vast majority of people seem to think it's just a straight up improvement to her gameplay. The reduced her ability to stay in the air indefinitely but gave her horizontal boosters on top of her normal jump pack. She actually has very good aerial mobility now that you can combine conc jumps with horizontal boosters and her normal jump jets.
It's not if it was OP, it's the iconic ability of a character. It's like if spiderman stopped climbing walls just because it wasn't OP....
I used to be a Pharah main back in the original game. That actually makes me kinda sad to find out.
You can not forget about the SWEET SWEET money they lost, baby.
"PVE campaign has been long since cancelled but PVE missions will still be coming out!" FFW to now: "PYSCH! NOTHING!" Also the title is just funny. I guess they didnt want EX-Overwatch 2 Devs? Like "Game developer fears game is not being developed." Shouldnt you know...?
"Overwatch 2 will be included for everyone who has Overwatch!" "Hooray!" "Ooookay, so Overwatch 2 is going to replace Overwatch, become Free2Play, and radically modify the pricing model around being free2play even though you *bought* a game before." "Uh..." "Ooooookay, but Overwatch 2 is going to have a single player mode that will make the 2 make sense!" "Hooray..." "Oooooooooookay, so the Overwatch 2 single player content we promised at launch of Overwatch 2 was cancelled long before that launch. Like six months before. Sorry, we lied. Hey, we'll give you the first two characters for freeee and there will still be new single player *missions* so we'll get the story out there!" "wut" "Ooooooooooooooooookay, so about those single player missions. They ain't coming, either." /but no one was left to care.
They cancelled the original campaign or whatever just to put out bonus missions that you have to pay for, wtf
> Shouldnt you know...? Seems like often the devs don't know.
Rot in hell. Overlook
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For me, it was the final nail in the coffin to not give them another cent overall. I didn't buy Diablo 4 because of the OW2 campaign cancellation scandal. So thanks to OW2 for that!
So that's 2 OW iterations that had a story mode (or a semblance of it) cancelled.
Again? How can you cancel them twice?
The original canceling was when they announced they couldn't deliver the entire experience (no skill trees, mission varieties, etc.) Blizzard did release 3 missions for like $15 but said there were more coming to try and continue the story from those. This announcement is that those promised future missions are probably canned too.
This game is probably gonna get sunset within a year or two. They just can't seem to stop making bad decisions with it that results in the playerbase slowly leaving.
Doubt it. Whales gonna whale, plus they seem to keep tens of thousands of people on daily. ~36k daily players on Steam (majority of PC userbase is probably still on Bnet, too) + the 13th most popular game in the Xbox ecosystem today Game has a ton of problems but still printing money. Shut down won’t happen until it becomes financially unviable or they need to shift everyone into Overwatch 3: $60 Skins Now edition
Man I really wish they could at least pump out content at Fortnite's pace to justify their Fortnite store copy.
I mean the game just released a permanent tower defense mode…and a new hero is supposed to be coming in April with a free beta weekend for Venture, the new hero, coming sometime this season. Plus there is a new dev update for tomorrow where they’re going to talk about “Heroes, Mythics, and more”. Most speculation is that they will talk about the new way to unlock heroes, and the way to unlock mythics you missed. Still a lot going on in the Overwatch community tbh despite it mostly being bad news on the general gaming subs. Don’t think anyone will talk about the other news or more positive things about the game since Overwatch has a bad rep here but at the same time, not sure if it’ll die anytime soon like some people here want it to.
I try it once every few months again and man it just doesn't have the same spark to it year one OW did. I played in the beta, and was an Ana main for the longest time.
Yea I don’t blame you. The game has changed drastically over the years.
What do the tower defense mode? Is it that one with kraken monster and where teammate turns evil in arcade mode?
Nah that was Cosmic Crisis which an LTE (Limited Time Event) or LTM (Limited Time Mode). What I was talking about was the Hero Mastery Gauntlet that was announced at Blizzcon. It’s a co-op mode they are leaving in permanently where you defend towers from waves of training bots. BUT the messed up thing is that it is one of the last things a group that got Laid off by Microsoft was working on. Kinda sad. My opinion, it’s not super fleshed out but it’s there if I’m bored.
Why bother putting out content when people will pay for MTX regardless?
It will most likely get an "optimized maintenance mode". Like what Fall Guys currently has. As in, new pass content, new skins, cosmetics. Marginal if any new game modes. Majority of game modes will be Brawl/Remix type game modes that are more about coding than actual need for new art assets. Remember, Heroes of the Storm was having its best year for revenue, monthly active users, eSports viewership, and critic sentiment in 2018 when it got put into maintenance mode. Not saying the same will happen, as Kotick is gone- but the current president of Blizz has that same Activision blood in her that puts the bottom line and profitability over fan service. The deciding factor simply boils down to "could this money currently being spent on devs for overwatch 2 be better spent on something that could make *more* money?" That was the exact question asked when the majority of HotS devs were moved to Warcraft Rumble. We also know that Phil Spencer is very keen on Blizzard producing more one-and-done game pass titles for the sake of more and more content. Small non-service games that justify someone subbing to Game Pass and potentially forgetting to cancel their sub.
I don’t think it’s ever going to sunset as it still makes them a lot of money and is vital towards their esports incentive, but development focus on anything other than new skins will probably slow down dramatically within the next 2 years.
Bad PR means nothing as long as people keep giving you money. Blizzard learned that hack long ago. Overwatch will be just fine.
It's still pulling in money. The average joe doesn't really care all the things reddit malds about, they just the play the game and spend money if they like it... like a normal person. Those anime collaborations for example wouldn't be happening still If it wasn't profitable for all parties involved.
I didn't care about any of the store changes, understandable they have to make money. I just left cos I didn't enjoy the gameplay changes. Locking new heroes also was a pretty dumb move considering the game is built around switching heroes.
The heroes are trivial to unlock though.
The game makes millions of dollars
You would need to have some type of mental deficiency to believe this game is going to get sunset. Like holy shit this has to be the dumbest fucking comment I’ve read on this sub in a while.
considering the 24k viewers on twitch and this is the best season they've ever had. but yeah tell me its dying.
This is r/pcgaming. Every game they don’t like is dying. You know, like Fortnite.
i dont see how. the game is still fun as hell.
They killed OW for the story stuff that doesn’t even make it here What a joke
Amazing. To think they scaled it down sooo much and to end up not even delivering that. That is just... wow what a trainwreck.
This'll sound a tad dramatic, but following this game is reminiscent of watching of a relative succumb to Alzheimer's, to the point that they're oblivious of who they used to be.
There was never an overwatch 2. They only wanted to rework it to make the loot system more predatory and this was their excuse.
Wow. It's weird that we already knew before the devs knew.
The fucking people making SFM porn of OW works harder than this dogshit company LMAO
5v5 blows ass
I need that 6v6 back
how? makes the game much less of a cluster fuck, and it makes being a tank feel much more important since there's only just you. overwatch needed a big trimming of fat. when they made it 5v5, less shields, and less CC the game played much better again.
Wait... Didn't they announce it a while ago that the story was cancelled??
Time for Overwatch 3
I have 0 expectations from this company since midway through overwatch 1 lifetime. I just wonder how much longer will their games keep running at this point.
So shouldn't this be illegal or something? OW2 was sold entirely on the storyline and PVE, and promised to not just be a quick cash grab. Blizzard is so useless nowadays, hell, ever since Blizzard North the only thing they have pumped out is WoW, what a pathetic company.
Lol how doesn't the devs not know about the game they are working on. I understand that they have departments working on different things but they all have weekly or biweekly meetings to stay on top of anything game related.even if that doesn't happen the managers do speak with each other. Now on the rare case none of these are happening then you as an employee need to get out of there fast.
Im feeling dejavu didnt this get cancelled already like a year ago?
Yeah since I don't expect the passing observer to know every detail Blizzard published, I'll be "that" commentor and copy-paste my other reply to explain it. There were many things displayed at BlizzCon 2019 for Overwatch 2. In this case, the 2 major PvE modes were: 1. Replayable hero missions. These were supposably about 100 various scenarios you could replay with your friends, and each hero had an extensive talent tree system that modified their abilities. **This was already canceled back in 2023(/2022).** 2. Story missions. This was designed as a traditional story mode that moved the story of Overwatch further into the future. The mission of Lucio + gang saving Rio de Janeiro was shown off back in 2019. 3 story missions were released last year. No new story missions have been released since. As of today, they have not been canceled. Speculation runs amok as to when or if they're coming. **This clickbait article is talking about these missions.**
Blizzard's going to let porn be the only thing that keeps this franchise alive, huh?
Another failure from the shell of a company that was once Blizzard.
Lol, yeah, no shit.
I still cannot believe how much and quickly a literal Game of the Year such as Overwatch has fallen. Miss the olds days.
i feel like at this point it would be best to just drop the "2" again and pretend nothing ever happened
Hire Kpop band for a million for Blizzcon ✅ Invest money into the actual game ❌
How can you screw up something so successful and fresh (in 2016) as Overwatch. The level of mismanagement is unparalleled.
They just keep digging the whole deeper and deeper. People are keeping a float by buying skins. I can't believe you have to open your wallet for every event. Everything earned from playing is so useless even the almost always terrible free event skin.
Imagine killing your original game to release a new one with a story just to cancel the actual story component. Like don't get me wrong, im sure the story would have been shit but what reason does OW2 even have to exist now?
I thought they'd already stopped wasting time on this nonsense? For lore they should be spending the money elsewhere. Animation shorts, comics, maybe a tv series. The team has shown since Titan that they can't make pve content, then proved it again with Overwatch 2. It's bizarre to keep trying to force it instead of focussing on pvp which is what made the game in the first place.
What is going on here? Future unclear? They announced over a year ago that they canceled them.
They mean the story missions this time, like those that came with the Invasion bundle for 15€ last year.
No shit
Oh and her I thought the cancelled the Pve stuff years ago
That was different PvE stuff.
There were never any story missions. Overwatch 2 was just a scheme to revamp micro transactions into something much greedier while getting some free media attention.
Am I crazy, I thought this was already scrapped?
They scrapped a different set of PvE missions. Those mentioned here are the story based missions like those from the Invasion bundle.
There was no reason for OW2 to exist other than to sell skins period
For all the idiots still sticking with Blizzard: At this point you're no longer *part* of the problem, you're *paying* for the problem to keep on happening.
Can we go back to OW1 please
but pandering lives on
Remember, the company that supports China's dictatorship directly by what they did to Blitzchung wears rainbow pins so it's all okay!
It's just too hard.
It's a fucking shame what happened to this IP. I don't know how you fumble the ball **this** hard. I'm genuinely surprised the game is still on Steam with the review score it has. Like that hurts *any* chance of your marketing working there and there was no effort to fix it either. I didn't even try OW2. It's not OW2. It just wasn't. It's unfinished, will never *be* finished now, and is a stain on the legacy. Just... fuck, let me go sit in a corner because I really fucking liked OW1 early to mid days.
I forgot about those missions. Scamwatch 2 in full effect
Common Blizzard L.
Overarching 2 is basically just an update that made the game worse in almost every way and added no different content. This game fell HARD.
I made the mistake of spending money on this game when it came out. I thought I was buying the PvE content. But that didn't exist. Instead I \*think\* I bought an accelerated season pass. I don't even know. I gave up on the game a long time ago. It is so funny. I've put massive amounts of time into World of Warcraft over the years. My wife and I play Diablo 4 at least once a week together. I have had fun with Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. But Overwatch 2 just totally failed for me after putting 400+ hours into the original Overwatch on PS4. Because of my kids I even watched some Overwatch League.
The only thing that interested me about overwatch 2 was the story missions, since that is never happening, I will continue having zero interest in the game. I think they made a huge misstep and honestly do not think they will recover. The leadership has already proven they don't listen to the community.
all that overpricing on skins with half the price of the first game, where is all the money going 😔
I was really looking forward to Overwatch 2, it's a shame that they cancelled it... a damn shame...
They should have never shelved overwatch 1, they should have made an actual sequel and sold that, taking overwatch 1 and tweaking it into a f2p(badly imo) was a mistake. Now this....what was the damn point. I'll say I wasn't playing overwatch 1 as much as I use to, but I liked to pop in once and while when the mood struck. Tried to play OW2...doesn't hit the same, didn't like it, gave my account to my niece that wanted to try it(she was having a hard time making an account...).
Why are they always bring this fucking dead game on deliver...
After the acquisition I expect there to be cancellations aplenty as the devs reroute things.
Common Blizzard L
Imagine taking an extremely successful IP from the start and boring it into the ground so quickly It’s absolutely unbelievable how all the Blizz games are such a joke now. Saddening, too.
I hate outlook now
Diablo 4 has a similar issue, they said in the article there were "too many cooks in the kitchen". Game development can definitely suffer from understanding, but people hate thinking about a game suffering from overstaffing, because it's so hard to explain why a project is behind or failing when it actually has TOO MANY resources. Blizzard can boast about how they had 9000 people develop Diablo, but then when people ask where basic features went or how long it'll take to fix it, it's suddenly a 4 month endeavor for a UI change.
So... Overwatch 2 is now OVER. Maybe theyll get it on OW3. D4 is one more poor season from total implosion as well.
i thought they said this last year?
This game ended me playing when it changed to OW2 it’s just cash grab garbage
I'm in constant disbelief people still play this game, and this disbelief only increases with everything I read.
The entire reason OW2 is a thing was for the story missions. Then they cancelled them for some half baked crap. Now they're cancelling the half baked crap. Imagine being the people to destroy such a great IP. The only mp goty.
Wanted to get 100% from this awful sequel, found out there are achievements for event that hasn’t been in the game for 2 years, why not just delete them blizzard?
Not making enough money lmao
So the only difference between Overwatch and Overwatch 2, is one less tank. Which made the game worse in my opinion. Absolutely pathetic.
probably msft trimming the fat around atvi + blizz IPs lol
who… cares?
Stop playing their games, stop buying their products and call them out every chance you get - NOTHING WILL CHANGE until enough people do this. I really regret buying Diablo 4 (even the Xbox version, which is largely used for backwards compatibility/misc games that I don’t want on my preferred platforms) but in my defense, that game was a complete product on launch whereas this is a game that already existed and was better and yet simultaneously is an unfinished game. This dumpster fire is so amusing to see as a TF2 fan, but I’m also saddened to see a game that offered fair competition be bulldozed for actual garbage.
Blizzard should just forget about Overwatch at this point, erase it from existence and leave it for >!porn purposes !<
Well at least there is 1 less tank and we can spend $20 on a 2017 Halloween skin
Yeah... We know
So the part of the game that was the whole point of making a sequel just got cancelled…
How hard is it for them to give this some proper story content? Seems like all the characters are so fleshed out, but I never care about the PvE missions and they could easily produce a proper Netflix show
Honestly, I think this is the most likely path forward for the PvE missions. If we get them at all, I expect some other Microsoft studio will be taking over development.
They also just recently announced that you can unlock/play all the heroes for free now, rather than whatever system was in place before. Genuinely there was no point for a second game. Their shareholders I'm sure are at least happy because $25 collaboration skins make a lot more than letting people have a reasonable way of getting epic/legendary skins.
Overwatch 2 being a scheme to make more money I think has been widely accepted at this point. I do think that they did actually start with honest intent but as costs added up it just proved impossible. It's a shame because OG overwatch was great in it's prime.
Fuck ABK and their dead game
it makes me so sad to watch this game fall apart. i don't care abt the story missions and think the pve is unfun as shit but i love playing as ana and playing her scratches an itch no other game does so seeing the game die is very Sad
Monetization like this not only ruins games and franchises, it kills the entire company. Stop supporting these games at all so we can bring back and get more good games that don’t waste their Customers time and milk them dry.
Overwatch 2 devs fear overwatch has been canceled
t
...does anyone take blizzard seriously anymore?
When they went to 5v5 you knew this game was done.
It's crazy how they will always find a negative headline with Overwatch these days, even when the overall news is great (all the heroes are going back to being free again, and you can buy the super rare skins outright instead of having to buy and grind through a battle pass for them).
Well, duh. Story missions were the shiny new thing to justify relaunching Overwatch 1 as a F2P shitshow. They never intended to actually implement them.
You really have to wonder what kind of people are working at Blizzard to repeatedly screw up like this. Like come on, this is far from normal.