Re-read my last post. People are acting like it’s some sort of nefarious and intrusive privacy invasion. It’s just a measure to validate the account owner only has one account, to prevent smurf and cheat accounts.

No, it’s so when they inevitably act out, they can’t come back. Not without jumping through some serious hoops

I think this stuff, combined with the reported cadence for unlocking the modes, all speaks to trying to clamp down in smurfs and banned/blocked players ability to just make a new account. It isn’t a terrible idea with a F2P game but we’ll see how it shakes out.

Yeah, I get that. But when you say “Though the jury is still out on whether SMS Protect is on the up and up or not.”, that’s not exactly what is being implied.

I’ve been giving strangers my phone number since March of 2020 to do my job. I might as well give Activision/Blizzard my number. 

Mandatory phone number = less dickheads ingame

Man, you keep harping on the phone number thing, as if it hasn’t been a standard in the authentication world for years.

Steam and epic require 2fa

Overwatch has never been a “$60" game and loot boxes literally aren’t even legal in some places, how about you put away your righteous anger and actually get your facts correct considering the rest of your post is also full of garbage.

Replying to my own post because 100 matches isn’t set in stone. I’m guessing you’ll unlock heroes with an achievement system and while it’s a relatively sensible solution, if they made them prerequisites it’s gonna suck real hard if you need to complete, say, tank/support tier 1 cheevos to unlock access to the DPS…

Pretty much what they’re doing (Unlocking competitive mode requires 50 wins and is tied to an achievement) and what most GAAS do these days - tie unlocks to specific achievements. I could see them unlock Supports, Tanks and DPS last if they tier it this way.

Fortunately, outside of competitive, they’re waiving every onboarding measure if you’re grouped up with people who have access to the things in question. At least they thought about it, if nothing else.

WoW already requires a phone number for their Authenticator to be applied to your account. No Authenticator limits your party forming ability.

In some interview, or maybe a reddit AMA, they mentioned that designing all the PvE modes for heroes turned out to actually be as difficult, if not more difficult, than designing a new hero from scratch. So all the time developing PvE abilities for the existing core class took a ton of time.

But Heroes and Maps will be free so that doesn’t make sense.

Current credits, which I think might still be earnable, will be used for basic cosmetics that currently exist for all OW1 characters and will exist for OW2 characters. They stated each new character will come with a few basic cosmetics that can be purchased with old credits.

Blizzard announced that there will be nothing new in OW2 that can be acquired with credits from OW1. The old credits can still be used to get old stuff, but they didn’t confirm that all the old stuff will be there.

I mean, it’s not “selling.” It’s free to play. You can just pay $40 for some extra skins and the first battle pass, but that's entirely optional.

Like Ashley said, delayed till next year.

Campaign is supposed to come out next year and will probably cost money. This is strictly the PVP stuff right now.