Overwatch 2 is a free-to-play monstrosity, and it’s hardly surprising. The years between the original Overwatch and its sequel saw Blizzard go from gaming darling to one of its most loathed villans. If only someone saw that coming.
#Overwatch #Overwatch2 #Blizzard #Activision #FreeToPlay #Microtransactions #JimSterling #Jimquisition #JamesStephanieSterling #Games #Gaming #Videogames
It’s free and the gameplay is better than the first “shoot the shields” game. Who cares about cosmetic purchases? I PLAY games for the gamePLAY. If it’s free and it doesn’t change the gameplay in any way, do whatever you want with it.
I dunno Jim, I think you’re talking out of Tracer’s arse on this one
Can we even expect the game to exist much past 5 years? The first Overwatch launched in March of 2016 and closed in September of 2022.
Stephanie talking about OW. It’s almost nostalgic.
I genuinely feel bad for the designers and animators for the game. I’ve been playing for a few days, and I could tell there was some care given to the new characters. I think the higher ups thought they could try and get away with just copy and pasting OW1. It just feels like an emaciated skeleton that was bleached to give a “shiny” minimalist look of what 2016 was. Fuck the Higher Ups. Fuck Kotick.
I’ve killed many a drug addict in New Vegas, remorse free.
The grindy season pass puts things into perspective for me. I’ve been playing Gundam Evolution, and while it has some of the most shameless F2P monetization I’ve ever seen, literally halving how fast you can unlock the season pass on a free account, it still let me progress 20/50 levels in only six days, all for just playing 15 casual matchmaking games. I was kind of astonished: It respects me enough to be honest about its greed, and still gives me progress at a good pace.
In any other world Gundam Evolution would disgust me, and to an extent it still does, but at least I can hold it up to really show how far Activision has sunk. “You lost to this, Activision. How can Bandai Namco be this greedy and you’re still that much worse?”
Damn I want that vid about Condemned. Thank God for you Steph
Overwatch 2 is a great game that I can’t recommend anyone play.
I eventually dropped Overwatch by how soulless it is. I can’t put my finger on it but something’s missing.
So to sum up: Bobby Kotick is bad, blizzard is bad and you would rather talk about something you mentioned previous than talk about condemned… (which is an alright game I guess)
Just so you know – Jim Sterling is a “Games Journalist” and so far he has covered more content about shady business practices than the actual video games. At this point, why not just call yourself a “Games Company Journalist” first, “Pro Wrestler” second, “Action Figurine Reviewer” third and finally “Video Games Journalist” forth. It just makes more sense going by the style of videos you’ve uploaded. If anyone asks me what Jim does as a job: I’m just going to say they complain about stuff, beats people up and occasionally reviews ‘A’ video game.
Why wasn’t Tracer on the box art like for Overwatch 1? The Overwatch 2 box art is terrible.
Do people remember they can not play Overwatch? They can just not play it, and play any of several hundred thousand other games. No one even needs to throw a tantrum or tweet threats to a single other human, they can simply close the game and play the catalog of thousands and thousands of other games that don’t hate them quite this much.
Thank you. I also have insisted on using the full A-B name the entire time. A-B has been rotten since at least Diablo 3’s launch, when they tried to push Real ID, the auction house, etc… I’ve been done w/ them as a company ever since then.
And yes, that rather is a problem that a game like Condemned can be released no problem, yet a game w/ “saxual” themes gets sensored, even w/ an M rating. But you refuse to cover that controversy, which A-B is also embroiled in (replacing in-game art of women w/ literal fruit, as a response to their real life “escapades”, for example)
More like Overwatch Poo
Had a friend that worked at Blizzard QA form between BC to OW1’s launch and according to them the development process hadn’t changed to a noticeable degree from before and after the merger as Activision appeared to leave that part mostly alone from his bottom-up perspective. Other reports I’ve read said that Activision didn’t start actively controlling most of Blizzard’s development process until around late 2018. This makes them look even worse:
This means that back in 2016, Blizzard and Activision weren’t exactly the same, but all the shitty and gross decisions up to that point came primarily from Blizzard themselves The WoW Shop, Real Money AH, Tokens, and OW’s Lootboxes). The fact that Blizzard mirrored Acti’s internal culture of abuse appears to have been an (un)happy accident prior to 2018.
We should all play paladins instead just to spite blizzard.