The best answer anyone has given so far is just that they “don’t want to split the playerbase”.
There’s is a HUGE hole in that argument though, because if somebody doesn’t want to move to a FREE-TO-PLAY game that they can play at any time, all because they want to stick with the other game they payed for and love, what on EARTH makes them think DELETING the other game will accomplish other than just pissing off the people that wanted to keep playing it?
Best comparison i can see, it’s like if they completely shut down Titanfall 2 servers and deleted the game in order to “avoid splitting the playerbase” when they released Apex Legends, despite them being very clearly different games with only surface level elements in common.
That would have been stupid, and wouldn’t have attracted more players to Apex, it just would have made a LOT of players angry.
I mean yeah, I honestly don’t see myself playing OW2 and I was hyped AF since the announcement. I’d definitely keep playing OW1 but because OW1 won’t exist I guess I won’t play at all.
Obviously they don’t want to split their playerbase but in reality they will half it because people who don’t like the current state of OW2 just won’t play the game.
I
Even as someone who believes that OW2 is an amazing game in its own right with enormous potential, I believe that deleting Overwatch 1 would be a colossal mistake.
Sadly, many players have been conditioned by content creators to believe that they need content - and change for the sake of change - in order to have fun.
Their only redemption would be that they actually manage to make some heroes interesting to play on an ow1 level, like cool abilities, management, tracking etc, as that playstyle is basically gone on ow2 and some people feel like the abilities are barebones and just not fun at all
However we’re on beta 2 and they can’t balance sym for their life so
the real answer is that OW2 can generate buckets of cash with the new BP system, as sh–ty as it may be. How else you going to justify making a “new game” with the same heroes and maps?
I started playing during Covid, after the content drought, and I’ve never gotten bored. Each role and character has a slightly different loop. I’m apprehensive about OW2, and I definitely would be more hype if I knew I could go back to the game I definitely enjoy.
My initial assumptions were that most of the OW2 changes would download over the base of OW1, restructuring the files and merging data. So, basically like patch over everything.
Another was that access requires connecting to servers to play the game. The game was not made for offline play or localization either, and they have no plans to update it any further, or playable like an old fighting game. They don’t want to cover costs or manage those servers and they probably have no means to profit off it anymore. I believe future ow2 profits plan on going towards the company (obviously) and the future PVE/BP content instead (they also have a large portion of the team working on the PVE stuff long into the future, so nothing for OW1). They probably don’t want OW1 final state impressions lingering either.
And lastly, splitting the player base is a legitimate argument but it’s the intent that probably bugs some people. They want everyone to hop over to the “new” thing, and it’s free anyone can gain access. And why wouldn’t they want this? It bloats the player numbers and increases a chance for getting money. And since the game is similar enough to be a continuation for some, unlike the Apex and Titan example, I don’t think the majority of people will be as up in arms about it if it were two franchises doing it.
OW2 exists because they wanted to add a PvE experience to the game, and Jeff fought for it to be part of the same game people bought in 2016 and not requires farming all your cosmetics again in a new title.
After Jeff left, OW2 became a title update just so that they no longer need to upkeep the promise of “not selling heroes or maps for the game”. That’s a foregone conclusion because they already announced the 3 new heroes will be part of the first battlepass, which means they are locked either behind a paywall or in-game progression.
Ok but people aren’t even talking about the pve yet….they (those that just want to keep OW1 separate) are trying to preserve their current pvp experience……and that is absolutely a lost cause to devs…it’s why they’re going to 5v5….they’re not going to try to up keep both ways to play when 6v6 to them was something they needed to move away from….
True. There is no talk about the PvE and it feels like it was shelved so that the title change could happens as soon as possible, and the 5v5 change was the fastest way to justify the title change.
You can check the history and see that OW2 changed scope to focus on PvP a few weeks after Jeff left, and the initial showcase matches were basically a Workshop mode with one less player per team. The maps and new visuals are relatively polished, but everything about the PvP update feels like a rushed band-aid patch to make things feel different for the sake of feeling different.
It’s fine to enjoy the new stuff, but it’s also fine to not enjoy the new stuff. And looking back at old announcements we were never expecting that big change, and that’s why people are now begging for OW1 to stay separated.
At least that’s my perception looking from the outside. I have zero interest in PvP for as long as Role Queue are still a thing.