Overwatch 2 launched and why you probably can’t play it
Overwatch has been sunsetted and its replacement, Overwatch 2, is now officially launched. However there is a good chance you won’t be able to play the game.
Some people are calling Overwatch 2 an unnecessary upgrade to the franchise. It was probably more of a marketing move anyways to get people to start talking about Overwatch again. It is moot because as of now most people can’t even play the game due to network and game errors. Blizzard’s top brass has blamed it on a DDoS attack.
Here’s the thing: as far back as even the launch of World of Warcraft, Blizzard has had problems with launching server-based games. Often servers are overloaded either due to problems with scaling up their network-related coding (often called netcode) or due to the lack of servers or bandwidth to handle the huge influx of players. It always seems to happen for Blizzard games that are popular enough to get proper notice.
But is this choppy Overwatch 2 launch due to a DDoS attack as they say or is it “business as usual” and they are just blaming someone else instead? Maybe if the term DDoS attack was around during the launch of World of Warcraft, they might have blamed the terrible launch on it as well. And yes, Blizzard’s historical launch problems even predate the term DDoS attack.
In either case, it would be difficult to prove. Why? Well, let’s explain a bit about what a DDoS attack is and how it works.
DDoS attack is short for Distributed Denial of Service attack. A server hosting something on the internet (in this case, a game server) will have a limited amount of resources – processing power, bandwidth, memory, etc – and is usually configured for a normal, healthy amount of users using it in an expected, average manner. However, there is a limit, and most of the times the server is configured to start rejecting new connections from users when that happens. If a server is configured well and the predicted amount of usage from legitimate users is correctly determined, then the users won’t notice because the server runs as it should and won’t start rejecting people. A DDoS attack, though, is used to artificially put the server under increased load – usually on the bandwidth but can also target the processing related systems – triggering the server to start denying new connections, presumably legitimate user connections. This happens more than you think, that’s why there are CDN (Content Delivery Networks) and cloud servers to help distribute the resources a server typically would have. You might have come across names such as Cloudflare or Akamai. Those are part of the effort to offset DDoS attacks.
However, if a large number of legitimate users try to connect to a server at the same time, this can also trigger the same type of conditions as a DDoS attack. This is what happened to Blizzard back in the day during the World of Warcraft launch. New players had trouble logging in (like yours truly) and when we did manage to log in, things would be slow and laggy such as character creation or even looting. I remember distinctly sliding along the terrain in a crouched looting position for minutes on end every time I tried to loot an enemy (a mob) that I had killed. It was terrible. And at that time, the influx of new users had created this strain on resources. But, at the same time, it was later confirmed by Blizzard that they had a lot of issues related to preventable things such as their server infrastructure (the servers themselves, the bandwidth, how each server was connected to each other, etc) as well as problems with how they coded stuff, especially on the database side. It was weeks before they had things sorted out enough that people could feel like they were playing normally. Thankfully that did not stop the game from being a massive hit, which could also be why Blizzard seems to have not learned their lesson throughout the years. The most recent one I personally experiences was Diablo 3’s launch. After that, I just decided not to get into Blizzard launch messes unless I had to cover one for the news or press reasons – and no, I was not invited to try out Overwatch 2 which meant my day was not met with frustrations as I tried to get in for a review of the game. I guess they assumed that since it was free-to-play that we would rush to cover it.
So it is not unreasonable to question the legitimacy of this DDoS attack claim considering the historical propensity for choppy Blizzard launches as well as the fact that a mass amount of users would also show similar signs to a DDoS attack. And so far it doesn’t seem that Blizzard has released proof of their claims, which, to be fair, is not really standard to do, and even if they did, it would be challenging to get accurate data or data that we can independently gauge the validity on since we’re don’t have reasonable access to their servers or service providers. We would have to trust the proof that Blizzard shows us, even if it is fake or misleading.
But who knows, maybe they really are under attack. There are plenty of reasons for people to attack Blizzard, such as the management scandals and issues as of late; shutting down of their favorite game, Overwatch; for farts and giggles; etc.
In any case, it is very difficult to trust anything a company publicly says nowadays. Look at Blizzard’s (and by extension, Activison-Blizzard) track record.
