This is not an attack on the OWL, I don’t care if you like it or not. I’m just making an assumption.
Let’s imagine a scenario very similar to that of Heroes of the Storm, where the game suddenly stops its tournament system. generating not only outrage in the export market but also creating a second scandal made in blizzard for having blocked all those involved in one of its franchises (for HotS it was really a strong blow for all its pro-players).
For those who don’t remember, HotS kept updating… extremely slow. It still released characters, but no longer had a rule of when to do so. He no longer developed any progression of the tiny lore that was forming about Orphea, the king of ravens etc. He no longer released new maps, and gradually began to ignore his events. There was one year where it stayed with winter content available until the following August, one of the longest periods of decay for the game. He didn’t even have the strength to release the old and once available game modes (Haunted Mines). He managed as best he could the competitive Metas, or rather what little remained of it, with frequent reworks everywhere. Then came the final stop in July 2022.
Now, I think it’s very symbolic for many people to note that the scaling back of plans for OW2 PVE and the still ongoing silence about “what happened to archives” echoes pretty well what happened to Heroes of the storm. So here’s a very serious question: IF overwatch fails miserably in its esport… what has it cultivated in recent years with its community remaining silent to the point of making many of the old fans very distant from curiosity about the lore? could it stand up to its identity or will it end up being seen ONLY as a failed blizzard esports product? this point of view is very serious because so far for OW2 we have even seen multiple priorities in having it released first in the tournament field and only after for us users (then monetization is a further extra discussion).
I think that the recent announcement, regardless of the “but the pve is there, just not as particular as before” made everyone think that OW is and will always be a tournament product that does not want to change direction, and that indeed in the last it blocked his desire to create narrative curiosity… for nothing, for what was already done with the rhythms of archives every year.