You may be attempting to play Overwatch 2 as you read this, curious as to why the queue seems to last forever – well, just know it isn’t technology failing you, there is a nefarious edge to it.
Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has Tweeted that the Overwatch 2 servers are STILL undergoing a massive DDoS attack, after the initial launch day had similar attacks that kneecapped authentication servers used to access the game:
We’re steadily making progress on server issues and stability, as well as working through a second DDoS attack. We’re all hands on deck and will continue to work throughout the night. Thank you for your patience – we’ll share more info as it becomes available.
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) October 5, 2022
Now players are experiencing queues that number tens of thousands of players, which move at a glacial pace. As a newly minted F2P title, this put Overwatch 2 in a very difficult position as both returning players and curious new ones are enjoying a waiting game and very little else.
In a bid for transparency, Blizzard has even posted a new Blog entry that talks about their efforts so far to stabilise their situation:
Login queues, server crashes, and stability problems are intertwined, so we’ll talk about them together. Players may have been seeing their queue numbers jumping around, going from a small number to a larger number. This is due to there being two queues for players—one through Battle.net, then one through the game itself. This process is usually invisible to players, but was being seen in real time. We have made changes to simplify the queuing process, so players should now only be experiencing the one queue before entering the game.
There are several areas where we’re working to improve stability. Today we’ve patched a server that is critical to the login experience, and this change has increased login reliability. Beyond queues, we’re in progress with another server update that will reduce the occurrences of players being disconnected once they’re already in game.
Finally, the player database is being overloaded, which cascades and causes a backup in the login system, which eventually leads to some people being dropped out of queues or being unable to log in at all.
While it’s interesting to read about the issues, it’s still just one more thing to do while you wait to play. As with any internet related issue in this day and age, it will be solved when it is solved.
If you are keen to play Overwatch 2, I recommend getting into the queue as soon as you can – and maybe crack open your YouTube backlog.
Are you stuck in queue? Or have you actually managed to play the game? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
