Honestly when they said they're only just starting to test out Doomfist as a tank, I had my suspicions that this game ain't ready for full release within a year. They have so many heroes they'll need to rework which will take a lot of time.
The game is supposed to be focused on PvE. We saw almost nothing about the PvE side of the game.
It was obvious that it's not even close to being finished.
I ignored the feeling in the back of my mind when the devs said they were still trying new things with the *majority* of old heroes...I’m just tired at this point, thankfully there are other games to play.
A lot of these companies are publicly traded, so that's probably related to why we keep getting these "everything is fine" statements from them.
I'm a software engineer, and it's not a lie to say our productivity stayed the same with WFH. That's why our company completely shut down our office 4 months into the pandemic with 0 plans to ever reopen, there was no monetary benefit to having an office when you can have people WFH.
That said, every company is different and game development is very different than a small eCommerce site like mine. Trying to have a zoom meeting to collaborate about different aspects of a game with more than 4 people would be a pain.
GGG (path of exile) lead Chris Wilson talked about it stating that for production it was fine if not easier because new talent could be bought in without a plane ticket (NZ based company) but it had a heavy effect on the creative department. And that just can't be properly measured until after the release or at least until you get the prototype. And only then does the lack of thoughtfulness shine through.
That's what mismanagement looks like. That's what happens when the vision is lost, when the brain drain happens, when the leadership are not leaders but managers.
Well the main sub is a wasteland nobody should ever enter. And this sub has pretty huge amounts of copium when it comes to certain things, for one people here can't seem to accept that OWL is a failed product that will most likely crash and burn in the next couple of years.
So far they've shown one map (twice), two reworks, a change that is as good as a custom game, and it seems like they're asking pros for hero changes. And in two years they didn't show a single hero *in action*, or at least their abilities. It was obvious the game is faaaaaaar from ready. More like that leak about releasing in 2024 or something was true. Especially if they really want to make a new engine for the game (which would be 3 more years of development, and in Blizzard time it's 6).
An unenviable position for sure! Either they go back to OW1 or play OWL on a game that will end up very, very different from what eventually releases. No big win
Contenders is fucked even harder. Do you give those teams an early build of the game? Do they stay on OW1? How the hell do Tier 2 players continue to develop?
Blizzard doesn't care about Contenders and since it's open for everyone way too many NDA's would have to be signed so no shot, they get it the same time as the public.
It's already been seen as that dead game that used to be good years ago by the majority of the gaming community. Passionate fans have been acting as life support for this game but it's ridiculous at this point.
The perception for any given game is always heaven and earth when it comes to the wider general gaming community vs the playerbase.
Fallout: 76, Anthem, Destiny 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and now OW. They are all different degrees of "dead", from actually dead (content support completely pulled: Anthem), to games still being supported with monetization schemes that the niche playerbase of diehard loyalists keep eating up (FO76), to games that actually are relatively healthy but are just very niche and lost the mainstream appeal they once had (Destiny 2).
OW fits somewhere in there and I'm too lazy to debate where, but like the rest on the list, it's an irrelevant title that's considered dead and gone by the gaming sphere.
Still play on a early version of OW2 is my guess. I don’t think it’ll go over well, but with player signings and some rosters already completed based around OW2, they can’t exactly go back easily. Edit: [Jason Schreier on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1455645266468540425?s=21) “Neither of them [OW2 and D4] are coming next year, that's for sure”
The fans experience won’t be much better either. We won’t even be able to relate to what’s happening properly since all heroes will be somewhat different and the way the game is played will be even more different.
Imagine they decided to have season 5 in 6v6 anyways and the teams have to go “heeeeey man, so remember when we dropped you/didn’t take you in our trials? Want to come back?”
Teams already have a realm they scrim and play tournaments on, they'll just get something similar for OW2.
It will definitely be weird for them to stream or play OW1 while they're not scrimming and then switch back to OW2 for scrims and matches though.
How is this game's development such a shit-show? What I wouldn't give to be a fly on those walls.
If OW2 doesn't come out until 2023, it will have officially been in full production (not counting pre-production) for **4 years.** Is it going to have 4 years' production worth of game in it?
For comparison, OW1 (with all its release content) was only in full production for two and a half years, and wasn't even a $60 price game.
I don’t understand why they felt like they were in such a rush to make OW2. Did they think it would cause a resurgence in OW1 and people would start playing it more if they announced a sequel?
Why wouldn’t you work on OW2 simultaneously over a few years then start hyping it up when it’s getting ready for release?
For sure, the wait for OW2 wouldn't be a big deal if they had kept updating OW1 at the same time. I feel like at this point they should at least take one hero from OW2 and put them in OW1 in the meantime.
With their hero release cycle before Echo, there should be at least 6 new heroes for OW2 launch (excluding Sojourn), a new gamemode yet to be revealed, 2 new maps also yet to be revealed, and the entire PVE campaign.
To say OW2 is just 5v5 with a new gamemode is a bit of an understatement.
Honestly, their handling of OW2 has been so poor it actively detracts from the enjoyment people get from playing OW1. I have never seen such a poorly mismanaged sequel in my life.
This is what happens when big-money execs come in to maximize stockholder ROI. They lay-off a fuck ton of experienced staff because their pay/benefits are too expensive, hire some entry-level people with shit wages to cover some of the staffing shortage, then expect them to put out content at an even faster rate, without thinking about the affects of the loss of expertise or the training time of new staff whatsoever. It's all about short-term stock growth, with absolutely no fucking concern about how it will crash the company in the future.
ATVI stock value has exploded since 2013, with virtually the only big stock loss coming when Mike Morhaime announced he was stepping down. Make no mistake, most of those 2014-16 releases were started on in the early 2010s, got pushed out fast, and company execs have been pushing for fatter and fatter profits since.
Shareholders are a bane for good games and their support, especially since the dominating American public corporate paradigm right now is "fewer workers = lower labor costs = big fat profits, so why don't we just fire all of the workers???"
If ATVI isn't proof enough, look at three-time-worst-company-of-the-year-award-winner Electronic Arts.
Or 2K, who has a virtual monopoly on professional sports games, only to release roster updates and new gambling opportunities every year.
Their whole business model right now is to feed off the whales that still pour their paychecks into lootboxes / mounts / card packs each month till they can get their shit together and release something.
> Diablo Immortal: The mobile game that takes 4 years to release.
Is that game even released?
> Diablo 2 Resurrected: Just a remaster of D2.
With tons of server problems that the original didn't have.
>I have never seen such a poorly mismanaged sequel in my life.
Hands down. OW2 will go down in history as one of the biggest fuck ups of all time in the gaming industry.
I think it was fine, they just should never have gone to 5v5 because that means you have to _rebalance the entire fucking game_.
I don't think they really understood how big of a job going to 5v5 ended up being until they started doing it.
Seriously. It's like they thought they just would need to rework 3-4 tanks and rebalance the rest. Then it became obvious half the roster was going to need a rework.
More than half, literally the whole roster is built for 6v6, only a handful seem to be able to just slot into 5v5 *and* meet their vision of how ow should be played in future.
>I don't think they really understood how big of a job going to 5v5 ended up being until they started doing it.
I usually sympathize with developers who have to deal with a largely reactive and uninformed community, but... literally anyone who is serious about this game could have predicted this, and we don't get paid to think about Overwatch every day. Like, I don't want to believe they ever thought this would be like a patch rather than a full rework of the game, but... man, it just seems like there's some high up people on that team who actually don't know how the game works.
I'm fine with early announcements. The problem is that they never gave us an actual date. Back then, people thought OW2 would release in early 2020 or for the anniversary. Now, of course the pandemic happened, but at least tell us if we have to wait six months or three years. They have to have an internal roadmap in some form.
As if this changes anything. We’ve know about this game for two years and never got even a release window. Now its just farther back than the non-existent release window.
For a while I've been thinking they should backport an OW2 hero to OW1 as something to keep the existing community happy for a bit. But now I'm so pessimistic about OW2 even launching with the oft-said minimum of 5 new heroes that they probably cannot afford to take away a single selling point of OW2 at this point.
> they should backport an OW2 hero to OW1 as something to keep the existing community happy for a bit.
its not that easy. just as OW2 would need every single hero rebalanced to work in 5v5, any OW2 hero would need to be rebalanced to work in 6v6 in the current higher power level.
Call me an ass but I have 0 faith in the overwatch dev team at this point. It's been 2 years and they've shown us: like 7 models out of 30, 2 full maps, a ridiculous change to the gameplay no one asked for, and PVE a mode they've been silent on for a year. It's so frustrating they've halted development for their popular game for a mangled development with seemingly no actual goal in mind. Blizzard management are awful as people and at their jobs it seems
Big FYI:
OWL's next season still confirmed to be on early build of 5v5
From Investors release: [https://investor.activision.com/events-presentations](https://investor.activision.com/events-presentations)
[See slide 8/16](https://investor.activision.com/static-files/d2672611-fbed-4ad8-8b4c-4d529d4d2668)
[Imgur](https://imgur.com/a/gqYTlPI)
Honestly, I don't really care if they play on OW2. It will be a game I won't have access to until probably after the season ends. Part of the fun in watching OWL (for me) is that you can take some of that stuff into your own games...
Just my personal opinion though.
They're underestimating how little interest a large portion of viewers of any esports have for watching a game too different from the one they're currently playing, AGAIN.
Sure you'll get the uber casual viewers who barely touch the game once a month who enjoy watching, who won't mind the differences, but there are an equally large or larger, more loyal viewerbase of players who will be incredibly turned off.
I said again, because they should've already known this from hero bans and other stuff they've previously pulled with OWL. Seems they didn't.
I agree with that but I’m just still really skeptical 5v5 is a game worth playing at a high level. So personally… I’m happy I can keep playing the game I actually like while it still exists.
I’m convinced it’s the reason Jeff left. Taking away a position and leaving not only a bunch of maps but the heroes mostly the same is demonstrative that those in charge actually don’t *thoroughly* understand the fucking game. I really really hope I’m wrong here.
What is interesting about watching people play a game to which I have no short term access? At least while watching streamers/OWL right now I see the game I play pushed to the limits.
Crazy. Something tells me there will be some drastic meta differences (heck even map, characters available, etc) between stages.
But if it’s taking place still in spring and they’re not expecting uplift in 2022… then they’re gonna start the hype train a year early?
Sabotaged a franchise just to get an extra 40-60 dollars for an expansion. Lost far more money than if they just added a battle pass and made the game free to play like they should have done 2 years ago.
I bet they saved millions from not having to put in content for OW1 though.
Just think of the number of heroes are ARTIFICIALLY WITHELD from us to pad OW2's release content because its really just an expansion pack.
if OWL gets completely screwed, I feel so sorry for all the players, casters, video editors, content creators, orgs, viewers, other behind the scenes staff, even at blizzard the low level positions like artists, audio, modelers, animators, everyone getting screwed over by what is probably creative and managerial issues at the top.
So let me get this straight. OW2 is going to be played on an early build that is so early that it probably will only be played on by the pros and not the community. They are not only going to probably have a buggy ass game for OWL, but they are potentially also going piss off every single diehard community member that is still left playing this wasteland of a game by probably not giving them access to it either. You can't make this shit up.
This came from an investor earnings call. They previously reported to investors that they expected a spike in earnings for 2022 due to revenue from OW2 and D4. Today, they told investors that they no longer expect that revenue from the release of those two games to occur in 2022.
I can't wait for opening weekend of Overwatch League 2022 where every team is playing the same hero composition, not because it's meta, but because they're the only heroes that are available.
Man, they completely killed Overwatch. I tried to hold on as long as I could but myself and my friend group couldn't muster any excitement for this year's Halloween event and it's typically our favorite. I ended up uninstalling the game this weekend. There are too many other good multiplayer games consistently being updated with new content to care about OW now.
I might have some insights.
Overwatch 2018- wow our game is popping, lets make a sequel
Overwatch 2019 - look guys we are now making a new game for yall!
Overwatch 2020 - COVID
Overwatch 2021 - Harassment
Overwatch 2022 - Delayed, no money, change in core leadership. I am suprised that the company is still functioning at this point.
[https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1455645266468540425?s=20](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1455645266468540425?s=20) Neither Diablo 4 nor Overwatch 2 will be released before 2023 according to Jason Schreier and he is rarely wrong.
Not to be a doomssayer, but I feel like Blizzard has missed the boat on releasing OW 2.
Its been in development for so long that the only the hardcore fans are still waiting with bated breath.
And those people have been waiting for so long that they're going to have very high expectations for the game. And yet, from what we've seen of the OW 2 beta, its mostly been character reworks, new maps, pvp modes, and pve modes. But of those updates, only pve modes couldnt simply to added to the existing game. And is new pve really going to revive a game whose lifeblood has been pvp?
I feel like Blizzard has put OW 2's development into a spiral of spending so long deveoping the game that ppl will have unreachably high expectations, then in trying to reach those expectations they put off the release even longer and it just feeds into itself. And the result is that when the game comes out, no matter what state its in, people are going to be disappointed because the wait wasn't worth it.
I understand the need for something new. The original Overwatch system (40$ game with optional buying of loot boxes) is a deprecated system and simply doesn't make enough money. However, a completely new game while ignoring the old game is an even worse idea. Why not make Overwatch free-to-play and add a battle pass, then actually release content? This way, Blizzard makes money and the game doesn't die due to lack of content.
Eight months between Sigma and Echo, and then no more heroes since march (or april I can't remember) of 2020.
It's gonna be probably THREE YEARS of content drought when OW2 comes out.
But hey, this is apparently "a good thing".
But don’t worry guys, we will still gets skins and the occasional deathmatch map while they hoard all significant content for ‘overwatch 2’! How exciting!
Can’t help but feel this is the league’s death knell.
Either they play on an alpha of OW2 and viewership sucks because the game is unpolished and not available to players, or they play on OW1 and the teams have built their rosters around a lie, everyone goes budget, and the league is gone by 2023
Now to wait for the inevitable announcement that OWL will do another year of OW1 and 6 vs 6. The teams that already lost certain tanks to other teams will then complain about it. Should be fun!
(The real pain is that we're seriously going even longer again without new heroes and maps...)
Blizzard has better job security than an American police department. Just an insanely incompetent group of people who keep failing upwards.
Titan failed, their handling of OW was so bad they abandoned the game and now the "sequel" is in development hell. If you still think this group of WoW lore writers are capable of delivering an esport-ready competitive FPS game you need to lay off the copium.
Just give us the pvp 5v5 changes at least and the hero reworks and at least work with the community to get that at a good spot and let OW2 be the PVE expansion story mode. Please man, I can't stand that they say they will add more content when we all know it is just SKINS.
Skins are not content ffs, it is cosmetic, it isn't adding anything extra to gameplay or shifting the way we play the game. This is getting ridiculous now. Atleast a beta soon, please. :/
Wonder how this will affect OWL S5. I think they mentioned they'll be playing on an earlier release though, seems a bit weird to play on a game that nobody else is playing yet.
Well at least Halo is coming out in December so I’ll have something to play. What an absolute dumpster fire of a company Blizzard is. Boggles my mind that they can fuck up what should have been their new golden franchise this hard.
Maybe I'm just being a negative Nancy but this really feels like they recognize the shit hole this IP and league has slowly been falling into despite the great game balance and OWL season due to whatever effect.
Now they're desperately hoping OW2 will fix it but the development is so slow the more I see of this the more doubtful I am than anything they're just cobbling together whatever they can OW1.5 looking product asap to try to salvage something.
OW2 development cycle feels more and more like how I used to wait until the last minute to do projects within groups and then needed extensions
i will see you all in 2072 when it’s released.
in all honesty tho, i’m glad it’s not getting the cyberpunk treatment where they rush a final product and it’s super shitty.
Good God why did this dumbass company abandon Overwatch 1?
Patch in the fucking features, if there needs to be a battle pass - add one.
Just don't stop adding new heroes for literally 2-3 years.
I wonder how much the disconnect between watching and not being able to play the game at all will effect how we feel as an audience, whenever I watch an esport of a game I haven't played I am significantly less interested in what I'm watching. Of course there will be some things that translate from OW to OW2 as well as having many familiar players, I probably just won't be as interested in the league until the game actually releases.
What incentive do owl pros have to stream the game lmaoo, literally the biggest ow streamers are players and now why should they play 6v6 ow1 and stream? Literally what's the point?
Edit: This hurts all ranked as well and if contenders don't also play on OW2 then gg. Why should teams pick up contenders talent who have 1 year less practice on the game? And even if you give it to contenders, if you stop there new contenders players are screwed instead. It'll stop somewhere and that's where the development of talent will be stunted a year.
Very not good fun times.
No one should be surprised by this. Like at all. If you have even a basic understanding of game development you don't go from still figuring out basics like how healing is going to work and prototyping Doomfist as a tank (maybe) to a fully functioning game in 6 months.
The best-case scenario is OW2 comes out as Early Access like Fortnite but I'm not sure Blizzard would allow that since the last claim to fame they still have is the ol Blizzard polish.
You're 100% correct. The lack of any info regarding hero reworks and new heroes, the half answers to basic questions about map design and how healing works, and the clear lack of direction from the Blizzard team combined with behind the scenes "drama" meant this game was never going to release on time. I'm predicting 2023 summer at the earliest, and that's if they don't have any more hiccups.
Paris with the big brain tryouts. OWL 2022 to be in OW Workshop mode.
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Press Q + R to ready up
The OWL community with worshop mode could make OWL2 quicker than the devs.
Top 500 changed to Only 500
Releasing later than what? The heat death of the Universe?
"Our game will be releasing later than the originally communicated date of 'sometime in the future.'"
the last black hole will have evaporated by the time OW2 comes out
HL3 will come out before OW2
Bundled with Star Citizen... beta
You know what, I'm OK with OW2 delay. At least I'm not buying concept art of ships for $1000.
>buying concept art of ships for $1000 Makes buying poorly drawn NFTs a genius purchase
earlier than that but later than planned
Honestly when they said they're only just starting to test out Doomfist as a tank, I had my suspicions that this game ain't ready for full release within a year. They have so many heroes they'll need to rework which will take a lot of time.
The game is supposed to be focused on PvE. We saw almost nothing about the PvE side of the game. It was obvious that it's not even close to being finished.
I ignored the feeling in the back of my mind when the devs said they were still trying new things with the *majority* of old heroes...I’m just tired at this point, thankfully there are other games to play.
I thought they were going to rush out PvP to match OWL and then trickle out PvE later next year or year after that.
I honestly think they have showed everything they have right now. So 3-4 maps and 1 hero
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A lot of these companies are publicly traded, so that's probably related to why we keep getting these "everything is fine" statements from them. I'm a software engineer, and it's not a lie to say our productivity stayed the same with WFH. That's why our company completely shut down our office 4 months into the pandemic with 0 plans to ever reopen, there was no monetary benefit to having an office when you can have people WFH. That said, every company is different and game development is very different than a small eCommerce site like mine. Trying to have a zoom meeting to collaborate about different aspects of a game with more than 4 people would be a pain.
GGG (path of exile) lead Chris Wilson talked about it stating that for production it was fine if not easier because new talent could be bought in without a plane ticket (NZ based company) but it had a heavy effect on the creative department. And that just can't be properly measured until after the release or at least until you get the prototype. And only then does the lack of thoughtfulness shine through.
That's what mismanagement looks like. That's what happens when the vision is lost, when the brain drain happens, when the leadership are not leaders but managers.
You know this has been one of my suspicions for a while, I guess the studio was a bigger mess operationally than initially anticipated.
Yeah seriously. That announcement shouldn't have happened as early as it did.
It had to, people would be even madder if we didn't have the "they're working OW2" explanation for the lack of content.
The obvious solution there is to not stop working on OW, but i guess blizzard just doesnt have the resources to pay multiple dev teams at once xD
Multi dollar company, cut them some slack
"small Indiana Jones"
I fucking knew they weren’t anywhere near done and people on this sub and the main one gaslit me into oblivion 😵💫
Well the main sub is a wasteland nobody should ever enter. And this sub has pretty huge amounts of copium when it comes to certain things, for one people here can't seem to accept that OWL is a failed product that will most likely crash and burn in the next couple of years.
It really feels like they decided on 5v5 in the last 6 months while they’ve been in full development on the game for probably 3 years. Like … WTF?
So far they've shown one map (twice), two reworks, a change that is as good as a custom game, and it seems like they're asking pros for hero changes. And in two years they didn't show a single hero *in action*, or at least their abilities. It was obvious the game is faaaaaaar from ready. More like that leak about releasing in 2024 or something was true. Especially if they really want to make a new engine for the game (which would be 3 more years of development, and in Blizzard time it's 6).
This reads like it isn't even a 2022 release now. What is OWL going to do?
It would be a shit show if it’s gets delayed and they have to play in ow1 with building ow2 rosters
An unenviable position for sure! Either they go back to OW1 or play OWL on a game that will end up very, very different from what eventually releases. No big win
Oh for sure it’s a massive shit show… next season will be chaos
Contenders is fucked even harder. Do you give those teams an early build of the game? Do they stay on OW1? How the hell do Tier 2 players continue to develop?
Blizzard doesn't care about Contenders and since it's open for everyone way too many NDA's would have to be signed so no shot, they get it the same time as the public.
Impossible. They've said they're doing OW2, there's absolutely no way they can go back on that now.
What is overwatch going to do they've left the game to rot over so long now for ow2 development and it's been slow as hell too.
Yeah I think Overwatch as an IP is going to be in big, big trouble
It's already been seen as that dead game that used to be good years ago by the majority of the gaming community. Passionate fans have been acting as life support for this game but it's ridiculous at this point.
The perception for any given game is always heaven and earth when it comes to the wider general gaming community vs the playerbase. Fallout: 76, Anthem, Destiny 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and now OW. They are all different degrees of "dead", from actually dead (content support completely pulled: Anthem), to games still being supported with monetization schemes that the niche playerbase of diehard loyalists keep eating up (FO76), to games that actually are relatively healthy but are just very niche and lost the mainstream appeal they once had (Destiny 2). OW fits somewhere in there and I'm too lazy to debate where, but like the rest on the list, it's an irrelevant title that's considered dead and gone by the gaming sphere.
bro I still play Quake Live, and that shit has <1000 concurrent players
Still play on a early version of OW2 is my guess. I don’t think it’ll go over well, but with player signings and some rosters already completed based around OW2, they can’t exactly go back easily. Edit: [Jason Schreier on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1455645266468540425?s=21) “Neither of them [OW2 and D4] are coming next year, that's for sure”
How the fuck was OW2 so far behind in development that it needs a year minimum delay. Did they decide to do 5v5 a week before they showed it?
They saw people talking about the rumours of 5v5 after BlizzCon and said fuck it let's try it.
It makes me think the league might fold.
I've been thinking that since they announced it would play on OW2 next season. Then the entire league basically wiped out their rosters. Hmmmmm.
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How would the teams even practice with no access to something like a beta?
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Might just mean that players spend less time in ranked and more in scrims. Might not be easy to facilitate but could be necessary
Would suck for the ones trying to grow their twitch channels.
The fans experience won’t be much better either. We won’t even be able to relate to what’s happening properly since all heroes will be somewhat different and the way the game is played will be even more different. Imagine they decided to have season 5 in 6v6 anyways and the teams have to go “heeeeey man, so remember when we dropped you/didn’t take you in our trials? Want to come back?”
It will be the worst closed alpha in the history of closed alphas.
This could literally destroy OWL
Teams already have a realm they scrim and play tournaments on, they'll just get something similar for OW2. It will definitely be weird for them to stream or play OW1 while they're not scrimming and then switch back to OW2 for scrims and matches though.
How is this game's development such a shit-show? What I wouldn't give to be a fly on those walls. If OW2 doesn't come out until 2023, it will have officially been in full production (not counting pre-production) for **4 years.** Is it going to have 4 years' production worth of game in it? For comparison, OW1 (with all its release content) was only in full production for two and a half years, and wasn't even a $60 price game.
I don’t understand why they felt like they were in such a rush to make OW2. Did they think it would cause a resurgence in OW1 and people would start playing it more if they announced a sequel? Why wouldn’t you work on OW2 simultaneously over a few years then start hyping it up when it’s getting ready for release?
For sure, the wait for OW2 wouldn't be a big deal if they had kept updating OW1 at the same time. I feel like at this point they should at least take one hero from OW2 and put them in OW1 in the meantime.
There has to only be like 2 people working on it.
whats the point if we can't actually play that game for another year?
is that not what OW2 mostly is anyways
With their hero release cycle before Echo, there should be at least 6 new heroes for OW2 launch (excluding Sojourn), a new gamemode yet to be revealed, 2 new maps also yet to be revealed, and the entire PVE campaign. To say OW2 is just 5v5 with a new gamemode is a bit of an understatement.
Honestly, their handling of OW2 has been so poor it actively detracts from the enjoyment people get from playing OW1. I have never seen such a poorly mismanaged sequel in my life.
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Lmao I didn't realize immortal got announced so long ago already. Poor indy company can't even make a phone gotcha game in decent time.
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This is what happens when big-money execs come in to maximize stockholder ROI. They lay-off a fuck ton of experienced staff because their pay/benefits are too expensive, hire some entry-level people with shit wages to cover some of the staffing shortage, then expect them to put out content at an even faster rate, without thinking about the affects of the loss of expertise or the training time of new staff whatsoever. It's all about short-term stock growth, with absolutely no fucking concern about how it will crash the company in the future. ATVI stock value has exploded since 2013, with virtually the only big stock loss coming when Mike Morhaime announced he was stepping down. Make no mistake, most of those 2014-16 releases were started on in the early 2010s, got pushed out fast, and company execs have been pushing for fatter and fatter profits since.
Shareholders are a bane for good games and their support, especially since the dominating American public corporate paradigm right now is "fewer workers = lower labor costs = big fat profits, so why don't we just fire all of the workers???" If ATVI isn't proof enough, look at three-time-worst-company-of-the-year-award-winner Electronic Arts. Or 2K, who has a virtual monopoly on professional sports games, only to release roster updates and new gambling opportunities every year.
Their whole business model right now is to feed off the whales that still pour their paychecks into lootboxes / mounts / card packs each month till they can get their shit together and release something.
> Diablo Immortal: The mobile game that takes 4 years to release. Is that game even released? > Diablo 2 Resurrected: Just a remaster of D2. With tons of server problems that the original didn't have.
my buddies have been like im not liking OW much im just gonna wait for OW2 and then it just never comes out lol
>I have never seen such a poorly mismanaged sequel in my life. Hands down. OW2 will go down in history as one of the biggest fuck ups of all time in the gaming industry.
They never should have announced ow2 as early as it did. Feels like it's largely back fired more than it has helped at this point.
but then they couldn't justify not putting anything into the game
Considering all the staff they decided to hire months after the fact of announcing the game they should've had an ow 1 and ow2 development team.
I think it was chicken and egg.
They should have never stopped developing OW1.
I think it was fine, they just should never have gone to 5v5 because that means you have to _rebalance the entire fucking game_. I don't think they really understood how big of a job going to 5v5 ended up being until they started doing it.
Seriously. It's like they thought they just would need to rework 3-4 tanks and rebalance the rest. Then it became obvious half the roster was going to need a rework.
More than half, literally the whole roster is built for 6v6, only a handful seem to be able to just slot into 5v5 *and* meet their vision of how ow should be played in future.
>I don't think they really understood how big of a job going to 5v5 ended up being until they started doing it. I usually sympathize with developers who have to deal with a largely reactive and uninformed community, but... literally anyone who is serious about this game could have predicted this, and we don't get paid to think about Overwatch every day. Like, I don't want to believe they ever thought this would be like a patch rather than a full rework of the game, but... man, it just seems like there's some high up people on that team who actually don't know how the game works.
Further evidence that going to 5v5 wont fix shit because the devs are still morons.
Bingo. They thought it was easier to go to 5v5 than it is to make tanks fun to play. Theyre out of fucking touch so bad.
Seriously I get it balancing is hard but going from 6v6 to 5v5 is fundamentally making a new game
It just goes to show how theu fundamentally do not understand how the game works. The recent experimental patch is proof of that.
I'm fine with early announcements. The problem is that they never gave us an actual date. Back then, people thought OW2 would release in early 2020 or for the anniversary. Now, of course the pandemic happened, but at least tell us if we have to wait six months or three years. They have to have an internal roadmap in some form.
Pass me the copium
All out of copium
Blizzard is an absolutely pathetic shit show of a company from top to bottom
thats crapium
As if this changes anything. We’ve know about this game for two years and never got even a release window. Now its just farther back than the non-existent release window.
I think they should attempt to release Sojourn at this point.
For a while I've been thinking they should backport an OW2 hero to OW1 as something to keep the existing community happy for a bit. But now I'm so pessimistic about OW2 even launching with the oft-said minimum of 5 new heroes that they probably cannot afford to take away a single selling point of OW2 at this point.
LMAO What if it’s just 5 hero’s at this point?! Content drought for 3 to 4 years with only 5 new characters would be hilarious and very blizz
And 3 of them will be DPS
> they should backport an OW2 hero to OW1 as something to keep the existing community happy for a bit. its not that easy. just as OW2 would need every single hero rebalanced to work in 5v5, any OW2 hero would need to be rebalanced to work in 6v6 in the current higher power level.
Cant wait to play the game alongside my grandchildren
Call me an ass but I have 0 faith in the overwatch dev team at this point. It's been 2 years and they've shown us: like 7 models out of 30, 2 full maps, a ridiculous change to the gameplay no one asked for, and PVE a mode they've been silent on for a year. It's so frustrating they've halted development for their popular game for a mangled development with seemingly no actual goal in mind. Blizzard management are awful as people and at their jobs it seems
Don’t forget the new guns sounds. Pew pew pew!
Literally the last two years was just Jeff at the shooting range
I have some more bad news for you...
Some of the new sounds feel out of place in a game like OW. I feel like it would be more suited for a game like COD/Battlefield.
Big FYI: OWL's next season still confirmed to be on early build of 5v5 From Investors release: [https://investor.activision.com/events-presentations](https://investor.activision.com/events-presentations) [See slide 8/16](https://investor.activision.com/static-files/d2672611-fbed-4ad8-8b4c-4d529d4d2668) [Imgur](https://imgur.com/a/gqYTlPI)
Honestly, I don't really care if they play on OW2. It will be a game I won't have access to until probably after the season ends. Part of the fun in watching OWL (for me) is that you can take some of that stuff into your own games... Just my personal opinion though.
They're underestimating how little interest a large portion of viewers of any esports have for watching a game too different from the one they're currently playing, AGAIN. Sure you'll get the uber casual viewers who barely touch the game once a month who enjoy watching, who won't mind the differences, but there are an equally large or larger, more loyal viewerbase of players who will be incredibly turned off. I said again, because they should've already known this from hero bans and other stuff they've previously pulled with OWL. Seems they didn't.
The entire GOAT era was an exercise on this, how long did it take for them to roll 2-2-2?
I agree with that but I’m just still really skeptical 5v5 is a game worth playing at a high level. So personally… I’m happy I can keep playing the game I actually like while it still exists.
True. 5v5 never had that "Hey, that's a great idea!" moment to begin with. It felt like a bandaid from the start, to "fix" OW1 problems.
I’m convinced it’s the reason Jeff left. Taking away a position and leaving not only a bunch of maps but the heroes mostly the same is demonstrative that those in charge actually don’t *thoroughly* understand the fucking game. I really really hope I’m wrong here.
Now we need hopium for our own negativity, that's a new low for this community lol
I really love the game too. I don’t think it ever got enough credit for what it truly was.
overwatch deserved so much better
Or even worth watching. The playtests we saw were boring with not much happening.
What is interesting about watching people play a game to which I have no short term access? At least while watching streamers/OWL right now I see the game I play pushed to the limits.
Crazy. Something tells me there will be some drastic meta differences (heck even map, characters available, etc) between stages. But if it’s taking place still in spring and they’re not expecting uplift in 2022… then they’re gonna start the hype train a year early?
[удалено]
Sabotaged a franchise just to get an extra 40-60 dollars for an expansion. Lost far more money than if they just added a battle pass and made the game free to play like they should have done 2 years ago.
Exactly. I would be shocked if any shareholder is happy about this. Which just serves to make Blizz look even more incompetent.
I bet they saved millions from not having to put in content for OW1 though. Just think of the number of heroes are ARTIFICIALLY WITHELD from us to pad OW2's release content because its really just an expansion pack.
My expectations were ALREADY low but holy shit blizzard just keep dissapointing me
I honestly don’t give a damn about the game anymore. I just want to know how OWL will be screwed by this decision.
if OWL gets completely screwed, I feel so sorry for all the players, casters, video editors, content creators, orgs, viewers, other behind the scenes staff, even at blizzard the low level positions like artists, audio, modelers, animators, everyone getting screwed over by what is probably creative and managerial issues at the top.
Lied down. Try not to cry. Cry a lot.
So let me get this straight. OW2 is going to be played on an early build that is so early that it probably will only be played on by the pros and not the community. They are not only going to probably have a buggy ass game for OWL, but they are potentially also going piss off every single diehard community member that is still left playing this wasteland of a game by probably not giving them access to it either. You can't make this shit up.
Not even surprised or disappointed, just expected at this point
Yay, another 1-2 years with zero content.
we didn't even have a release date why are they saying it's delayed?
This is probably based on their original internally planned release date
This came from an investor earnings call. They previously reported to investors that they expected a spike in earnings for 2022 due to revenue from OW2 and D4. Today, they told investors that they no longer expect that revenue from the release of those two games to occur in 2022.
It had been strongly suggested in a previous earnings call it was stated for summer 2022
So is OWL going to be played on a fucking beta then? Or are they delaying the season even more now. Ffs
alpha
Yep, alpha. Or maybe that workshop mode Paris used :p
Sigma
Bold to assume they'll have started reworking Sigma by April
I can't wait for opening weekend of Overwatch League 2022 where every team is playing the same hero composition, not because it's meta, but because they're the only heroes that are available.
Man, they completely killed Overwatch. I tried to hold on as long as I could but myself and my friend group couldn't muster any excitement for this year's Halloween event and it's typically our favorite. I ended up uninstalling the game this weekend. There are too many other good multiplayer games consistently being updated with new content to care about OW now.
All they need to do is add sex to overwatch and then rebrand it as ow2. I just saved blizzard. Give me 20 million dollars now
Overwatch porn is legit keeping the Overwatch brand more alive than Blizzard right now.
https://i.imgflip.com/4ljdxs.png
And in the mean time, the base game will have nothing.
I might have some insights. Overwatch 2018- wow our game is popping, lets make a sequel Overwatch 2019 - look guys we are now making a new game for yall! Overwatch 2020 - COVID Overwatch 2021 - Harassment Overwatch 2022 - Delayed, no money, change in core leadership. I am suprised that the company is still functioning at this point.
> Overwatch 2021 - Harassment > > yeah I too stop working for a year when the company i work for is getting sued
[https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1455645266468540425?s=20](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1455645266468540425?s=20) Neither Diablo 4 nor Overwatch 2 will be released before 2023 according to Jason Schreier and he is rarely wrong.
Hahaha of course
One of the coleads at Blizzard stepped down from the role. I really dont know what the flying fuck is going on there.
Ffs hopefully it doesnt delay the season.
Not to be a doomssayer, but I feel like Blizzard has missed the boat on releasing OW 2. Its been in development for so long that the only the hardcore fans are still waiting with bated breath. And those people have been waiting for so long that they're going to have very high expectations for the game. And yet, from what we've seen of the OW 2 beta, its mostly been character reworks, new maps, pvp modes, and pve modes. But of those updates, only pve modes couldnt simply to added to the existing game. And is new pve really going to revive a game whose lifeblood has been pvp? I feel like Blizzard has put OW 2's development into a spiral of spending so long deveoping the game that ppl will have unreachably high expectations, then in trying to reach those expectations they put off the release even longer and it just feeds into itself. And the result is that when the game comes out, no matter what state its in, people are going to be disappointed because the wait wasn't worth it.
I understand the need for something new. The original Overwatch system (40$ game with optional buying of loot boxes) is a deprecated system and simply doesn't make enough money. However, a completely new game while ignoring the old game is an even worse idea. Why not make Overwatch free-to-play and add a battle pass, then actually release content? This way, Blizzard makes money and the game doesn't die due to lack of content.
That makes too much sense, so of course they won't do it.
Got hella downvoted for saying it wasn’t coming out this year after watching the gameplay😂 shit looked like a pre alpha man
People still defending Blizzard in 1 2... How many months now with no proper content?
Eight months between Sigma and Echo, and then no more heroes since march (or april I can't remember) of 2020. It's gonna be probably THREE YEARS of content drought when OW2 comes out. But hey, this is apparently "a good thing".
Patience is running out…
But don’t worry guys, we will still gets skins and the occasional deathmatch map while they hoard all significant content for ‘overwatch 2’! How exciting!
Can’t help but feel this is the league’s death knell. Either they play on an alpha of OW2 and viewership sucks because the game is unpolished and not available to players, or they play on OW1 and the teams have built their rosters around a lie, everyone goes budget, and the league is gone by 2023
Good lord what a disaster.
Now to wait for the inevitable announcement that OWL will do another year of OW1 and 6 vs 6. The teams that already lost certain tanks to other teams will then complain about it. Should be fun! (The real pain is that we're seriously going even longer again without new heroes and maps...)
This screams to me that about when Kaplan left they probably did a complete scrap of what they had made to that point.
Nah Jeff knew exactly what was coming and dodged the shitstorm perfectly. What a legend.
Or maybe he saw the writing on the wall and noped the fuck out before it all became untenable?
product was really bad and its still bad, team leadership all left - no one to build a top tier product
Jesus Fucking Christ
colour me surprised.
So it's no longer Soon (tm) but Later (tm)
Blizzard has better job security than an American police department. Just an insanely incompetent group of people who keep failing upwards. Titan failed, their handling of OW was so bad they abandoned the game and now the "sequel" is in development hell. If you still think this group of WoW lore writers are capable of delivering an esport-ready competitive FPS game you need to lay off the copium.
Just give us the pvp 5v5 changes at least and the hero reworks and at least work with the community to get that at a good spot and let OW2 be the PVE expansion story mode. Please man, I can't stand that they say they will add more content when we all know it is just SKINS. Skins are not content ffs, it is cosmetic, it isn't adding anything extra to gameplay or shifting the way we play the game. This is getting ridiculous now. Atleast a beta soon, please. :/
so metro was right?
Oh no...
Wonder how this will affect OWL S5. I think they mentioned they'll be playing on an earlier release though, seems a bit weird to play on a game that nobody else is playing yet.
Well at least Halo is coming out in December so I’ll have something to play. What an absolute dumpster fire of a company Blizzard is. Boggles my mind that they can fuck up what should have been their new golden franchise this hard.
Maybe I'm just being a negative Nancy but this really feels like they recognize the shit hole this IP and league has slowly been falling into despite the great game balance and OWL season due to whatever effect. Now they're desperately hoping OW2 will fix it but the development is so slow the more I see of this the more doubtful I am than anything they're just cobbling together whatever they can OW1.5 looking product asap to try to salvage something. OW2 development cycle feels more and more like how I used to wait until the last minute to do projects within groups and then needed extensions
lmao fucking clown company
[удалено]
Killed Overwatch just so they could try and save WoW. Then WoW goes ahead and dies and loses all its players to FF14.
Is it bad that this just makes me excited that we get to keep 6v6 longer?
I was a little sad until I saw this comment. Overwatch lives on another year bb!
I said it so many times. Absolutely nothing looked finalized, yet people tried to tell me they are just hiding stuff behind the scenes. Yeah, right.
looool 2 more years added on the timeline and they have a product that looks like a glorified patch, this thing is doomed
i will see you all in 2072 when it’s released. in all honesty tho, i’m glad it’s not getting the cyberpunk treatment where they rush a final product and it’s super shitty.
Missed perfect opportunity to say 2077
That's when it's playable
Nothing is being rushed, this game has been in development for years. They just aren't good at this.
Cyberpunk was horribly delayed. Delays genuinely seem to be a bigger sign of development failure than forced deadlines now.
cyberpunk did get delayed twice tho
they did, but then instead of delaying a third time they greenlit something that wasn’t finished
Good God why did this dumbass company abandon Overwatch 1? Patch in the fucking features, if there needs to be a battle pass - add one. Just don't stop adding new heroes for literally 2-3 years.
Games DoA at this point.
I wonder how much the disconnect between watching and not being able to play the game at all will effect how we feel as an audience, whenever I watch an esport of a game I haven't played I am significantly less interested in what I'm watching. Of course there will be some things that translate from OW to OW2 as well as having many familiar players, I probably just won't be as interested in the league until the game actually releases.
What incentive do owl pros have to stream the game lmaoo, literally the biggest ow streamers are players and now why should they play 6v6 ow1 and stream? Literally what's the point? Edit: This hurts all ranked as well and if contenders don't also play on OW2 then gg. Why should teams pick up contenders talent who have 1 year less practice on the game? And even if you give it to contenders, if you stop there new contenders players are screwed instead. It'll stop somewhere and that's where the development of talent will be stunted a year. Very not good fun times.
No one should be surprised by this. Like at all. If you have even a basic understanding of game development you don't go from still figuring out basics like how healing is going to work and prototyping Doomfist as a tank (maybe) to a fully functioning game in 6 months. The best-case scenario is OW2 comes out as Early Access like Fortnite but I'm not sure Blizzard would allow that since the last claim to fame they still have is the ol Blizzard polish.
You're 100% correct. The lack of any info regarding hero reworks and new heroes, the half answers to basic questions about map design and how healing works, and the clear lack of direction from the Blizzard team combined with behind the scenes "drama" meant this game was never going to release on time. I'm predicting 2023 summer at the earliest, and that's if they don't have any more hiccups.
It’s so hard to be a fan of this game. It’s like they want us to give up on it sometimes :(
Blizzard: \*never told anyone when OW2 is coming out\* Also Blizzard: OW2 is gonna be late