The original over watchs days are numbered. Last week, Blizzard revealed in a Reddit AMA that when surveillance 2 starts on October 4thit will be overwritten over watch Prime, effectively ending the six-year-old game.
“When OW2 launches October 4th and will be a replacement for the current live service,” game director Aaron Keller wrote.
While the switch adds a wealth of new content – new heroes, new maps and more – classic over watch will stop ending the 6v6 format and relegating attacking playtype to the relative obscurity of the custom play corner. The news came as a bit of a surprise since originally over watch Prime and surveillance 2 should coexist. During the surveillance 2 Panel at BlizzCon 2019, Aaron Keller, the game’s current director, and Jeff Kaplan, the former game director who left Blizzard over a year ago, described a scenario where players upgraded to OW2 would still be able to play with those who didn’t.
With players’ unlocked skins and other cosmetics being carried over and with surveillance 2 Switch to a free-to-play model, it seems that then there was no reason to keep the two games isolated. In a comment to The edgesaid the Overwatch development team:
“Our goal is not to divide our player base and make the transition surveillance 2 as seamless as possible. Plus when surveillance 2 launches as a free live service game on October 4th, it will replace the current one supervisionbuild h. Content players have unlocked themselves over watch will be automatically transferred to the players surveillance 2”
For players worried about them over watch Main features are sunset with the arrival of surveillance 2 (ie loot boxes), the AMA revealed that the contents of unopened loot crates are automatically added to your inventory and any unused coins (a currency you earn from loot crates) are also carried over. However, Blizzard intends to create a new currency with it OW2and the old coins will not be able to buy everything on offer.
There will also be no matchmaking rating reset with the arrival of surveillance 2. Hoping for fans OW2 would entail ladder balancing for mass competition, Scott Mercer, Principal Systems Designer, wrote that “a full reset would mean games would be completely unbalanced across the service for weeks or more, and we don’t think that’s going to be a great experience.” for all.” However, Mercer has revealed this OW2 will feature a new decay system that lowers the MMR of accounts that haven’t played in a while to ensure matches are as even as possible at all tiers of the leaderboard.
While I’m excited surveillance 2, I’m a bit sad that everything new comes at the expense of the old. I’m one of the extremely rare Assault fans, and the game mode’s shift to custom matches essentially means I won’t play it anymore, not to mention the many tiny tweaks, like UI changes and sound design, that fundamentally its going to change how i play the game.
surveillance 2 launches October 4th, so, Assault fans (yes, all 10 of us), it’s time for us to do our final licks.
