Does anyone remember Overwatch 2?

Source: Early Game

The original Overwatch was released May 24, 2016. The game released on all consoles and pc. At the time, the game was praised for it's multiplayer hero mechanics. Some even calling it a spiritual successor to Team Fortress 2. Over the next few years, the game would see multiple updates and patches. Most notably, new heroes. There were originally 21 heroes in the game, through updates, the game would see a total of 16 new heroes throughout the years. The game maintained a stable player base, peaking and dropping as new content came and went. However, nothing would prepare the community for the reveal of Overwatch 2.

Overwatch 2 came as a shock to the player base as this instantly brought up questions. If it's an online multiplayer game, why are we getting a second one? Will content carry over? Do I loose my skins? These questions would get soon be answered and the community accepted them whole-heartedly (for the most part).

This also brought a slew of new players to the game as, at the time, free-to-play games were extremely popular. Most people weren't willing to or were unable to cash out $60 on a AAA game. With the abundance of promises and reassurances, Overwatch finally seemed able to grow out of it's shell and evolve into something greater. However, the honeymoon didn't last long as players would soon find out in the coming months of release and on launch.

Before the game even launched, during the Summer of 2022, it was officially announced that the PVE mode would not come with the launch of the game (context). Instead it was delayed until 2023 (this year). This was a major blow to Overwatch 2's entire existence at the time. The only reason Overwatch 2 was a thing was because of this supposedly new PVE mode and some glorified Campaign. Since a major portion of the game was being delayed, people still held onto hope as they at least looked forward to the multiplayer being free-to-play. This too, did not last long.

Overwatch 2 released October 4th, 2022. It faced a slew of technical problems, bad cell phone policies, and loosing all of your skins. The biggest technical problem was the queue times in the main menu. Normally, when you launch quick match it should take around 10 seconds to load into a match. On launch though, players were placed into a queue before they even launched into the main menu. Another problem was a required policy of having a cell phone number to create an account. With no number, you can't create an account and play matched. This brought an uproar about the deemed "free-to-play" game and about unfortunate people who are punished for not having access to a cell phone number. The most infuriating part for players was them loosing their skins. When you've already played the first Overwatch, you sync your account to the new game and wait for your items to transfer over. I myself had to wait days in order to get my skins. Even then, some players reported them not having all of their skins. With some of them being event skins, they pretty much lost them forever as they had to wait on the off-chance they show up during whatever event they were made for (context).

With a terrible launch and a meaningless headache for players to transfer over to this "new" game, Overwatch has seen a decline in it's player base. Some sources even cited a 40% decline in the monthly player base (context).

Overwatch needs to, at the very least, deliver a competent PVE experience this year with the supposed release of the new mode. If not, Overwatch would have shot itself in the foot and it would have nothing to blame but itself.