[donatj]

Don't forget their handling of Overwatch.

Overwatch launched, for pay, I believe at $39.99 USD. It was very fun very micro-transactions are optional and purely cosmetic game. I bought it day one.

Then they saw the success of PUBG and Fortnite's season passes and decided "we want some of that" and launched Overwatch 2 going so far as locking entire characters behind micro-transactions.

The day they launched Overwatch 2, they entirely shut down the Overwatch 1 servers. Something they had said earlier on that they were not going to do, before they later changed course. They took away the game I loved, the game I paid for, and replaced it with a junky free-to-play game dancing around in its skin like Edgar the Bug in Men in Black, all "Look at me, I'm still Overwatch, pinky promise", but anyone with a sense of taste can tell it really isn't. They ruined it.

Literally all my friends played Overwatch. My wife was in an Overwatch League. I don't know a single person who stuck with Overwatch 2 for more than a couple weeks. My wife's entire league just shut down.

I hear people play it but I sure don't know anyone. I would estimate mostly people who never played the original? Left such a sour taste in my mouth that I am hesitant to ever give Blizzard money again.

[wongarsu]

Don't forget they nearly killed Overwatch by barely supporting Overwatch 1 while they worked on Overwatch 2. But when they finally released Overwatch 2 there were barely any changes from Overwatch 1, except for the season pass system and a switch from 6v6 to 5v5. Apparently most of the development time was spent on single-player content that was first delayed and then cut entirely

[slfnflctd]

I was really looking forward to the single-player/PvE content. The gamers in my household are all fairly low skill (myself included), and one of our favorite original Overwatch events was Junkenstein's Revenge-- more of that kind of thing was huge on our anticipation list.

When they not only killed the original Overwatch but also suddenly decided to abandon the PvE component, it was a double whammy which resulted in us instantly abandoning what had been a regular staple of our gaming time. We moved on to other things such as Deep Rock Galactic and haven't looked back.

[worthless-trash]

This point really hits home.

Blizzard basically ignored Overwatch 1 (except for lootboxes) for the last half of its life.

Players would have paid for maps, paid for expansions, paid for spectating the overwatch league, paid for spectating their favorite yt personalities commentary, but nope, they promised some fever dream single player which went nowhere.

[aniviacat]

The issues with Overwatch 2 were fixed. All heros are available for free; you can get the season passes for free (the free pass includes enough premium currency to buy the premium pass); you can get most skins for normal currency and you can get the mythic currency for the mythic skins by playing the battlepass.

There are still a few skins you can't realistically unlock without paying; but that doesn't ruin a game. Overwatch in its current state is great.

[xeonmc]

Your wife was in Overwatch League? Is she Geguri?

[donatj]

No lol. Not "The" Overwatch League. I should have maybe chosen my words more wisely, though I'm pretty sure they referred to themselves as a "league" though. My wife is asleep, otherwise I would ask her the correct terminology.

Basically she was on a non-professional all woman team for almost six years that would go head-to-head with other teams in scheduled tournaments. Her team even managed to get one-on-one coaching from some guy on the actual official "Overwatch League".

They dissolved shortly after Overwatch 2 came out. The move to 5v5 did not help as suddenly one of their tanks was redundant.

[Ragnarork]

> They dissolved shortly after Overwatch 2 came out. The move to 5v5 did not help as suddenly one of their tanks was redundant.

This is so sad to read. :(

Grassroot competition like that is the basis on which esports scene thrives...

Blizzard really wrote down the manual of everything you shouldn't do to make a game into an "esport", from the competition structure and insane costs (remember the initial slots for a league that hadn't had its first season yet was between $2 and $15 millions...), to the game balance which led to one meta destroying interest completely for way too long, making an entire role useless in the process, and the list continues.