Over 40,000 players want to play Overwatch 2 – queues block the start
Today, October 4, 2022, Overwatch 2 launches – the sequel to Blizzard’s popular hero shooter. Apparently so many people were looking forward to the release that the servers couldn’t withstand the onslaught.
Actually, Overwatch 2 was supposed to start at 9 p.m. sharp. The servers went live almost a quarter of an hour beforehand. But you still can’t play.
If you want to log in at the moment, you will be greeted by a queue. According to the ad, this currently amounts to over 40,000 players who are in the queue in front of you and are waiting to be admitted, all on the PC alone.
According to our current information, the queue affects all platforms, but is shorter on some. Colleague Maik Schneider, for example, reports almost 10,000 players on the PlayStation, although Overwatch 2 fully supports crossplay.
How long do I have to wait? Unlike the insane queues in WotLK Classic, Overwatch doesn’t give you a message about how long the queues are. According to our observations, you should expect a waiting time of around 30 minutes.
The queue dwindles to around 30,000 after just a few minutes, but then it takes a while from there. We will contact you when we have specific information about the waiting times.
In the video we tell you the most important thing about Overwatch 2 in a slim 42 seconds:
Connection to the game server lost – restart?
Players share their current cues on social media like reddit and twitter. Some are as low as 20,000, while others jump happily between 0, 300, 4,000 and more, making it difficult to estimate an exact wait time.
Following the enormous rush, many waiting players are expressing their frustration with memes:
Also, there is always the error message: “Disconnected from the game server”, which will throw you out of the queue. If this happens, you should wait a moment and hope for an automatic reconnect. If that doesn’t work, according to current information, only a restart will help. If that doesn’t help either, restarting the Battle.net client may help if you’re playing on PC.
According to official Blizzard support, the problem is known and actively being worked on (via Twitter).
What is so special about Overwatch 2? If you haven’t followed the development of Overwatch 2, we summarize the most important key points here:
- Originally, Overwatch 2 was supposed to be a kind of successor to Overwatch
- The core of the game was a co-op mode in PvE with hero development and story focus
- At that time, however, there was great resentment because nobody wanted to pay for a “better update”.
- today at least the PvP part is completely free and relies on a Battle Pass as a new progression system
The biggest changes to Overwatch 2 are the overhauled graphics and the switch to 5 players per team instead of 6 as before.
The reduction of one tank leads to a better flow of the game and more action, a generally rounder feeling in the game, as MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus explains in more detail in his review of Overwatch 2.
However, the new PvE mode is not playable at the moment and will be submitted later, probably for a fee. Meanwhile, Overwatch 1 is shut down and no longer available, the entire game has been switched to Overwatch 2, for which new heroes and updates will appear from now on.
With our checklist you can prepare yourself ideally, especially if you are still in the queue:
Overwatch 2: The most important tips before starting in the checklist
Reference-mein-mmo.de