What about the needs of people getting banned for no reason?
The people are more important then the game, especially since you’re gaining nothing from this.
Cheaters and Smurfs have already found ways around it.
There’s no justification for this. None.
Are we absolutely confirmed or can it be a false positive.
" Make sure your number was not previously used on a pre-paid or VOIP plan
If you are unsure whether your number is a pre-paid or VOIP number, contact your provider for additional information. Please note that Blizzard Customer Support can only help if your phone is not pre-paid or VOIP. "
We see here that sometimes it depends on where the phone number first arose.
If you have MINT, but the number was originally from a post-paid carrier, it might work.
But if you got a new number from Mint, it might not.
Same thing the opposite way.
You might of gotten the number from Cricket, but now have T-Mobile, and it might not work.
People are always going to find ways to circumvent, but that doesn’t mean nothing should be done. Now. Instead of just creating a new account with a throwaway email, people have to go through the extra step of getting access to an eligible phone number and setting up the account and then fulfilling the conditions of FTUE. Is it perfect? There is no silver bullet in life. However, it will act as a deterrent and an additional step, which may discourage people from making a greater number of account than they otherwise would.
Lol, small step to do, which is almost no barrier
Stopping ~20 percent of legitimate owners
Yeah, doing nothing is much better.
That’s using an atom bomb to kill a fly
I disagree, it’s obviously an additional step because there are so many people here who just want to set up one account and are precluded from doing so. Every little bit helps, doing nothing is the problem.
That’s using an atom bomb to kill a fly
I will have you know my dear FELLOW PERSON that the fly was QUITE annoying!!
Well 20 percent of people can’t do anything because we’re out, banned for nothing.
So yeah, doing nothing isn’t a problem.
You’re actively destroying the game for me forever and supporting it.
And there will still be tons of cheats and smurfs.
I don’t even care about ranked either. I never play it.
What makes YOUR account better than mine?
All the verifications to work as far as i know have been gathered after the change, there might be some outliers but Im not blizzard and this is all just information people have gathered by working together, its going to be mostly accurate but it cant account for everything
hahahaha
Then it was worth it!
As I said, I’m not going to take that as fact.
But, I appreciate the work, as it might be truthful, and I see it as an honest attempt to help.
Last thing I’m going to do is go to Mint and get screwed.
This is the thing that concerns me the most about SMS verification:
With Google Voice, I can count on practically never losing my number, even if my financial situation is in dire straits (and it was, at one time). I had SMS verification on one of my account a long time ago back when I had T-Mobile, and I had to give that up because I had literally no income.
I forgot to remove SMS verification and guess what happened? - I lost my account. And I had to create a new one. I eventually got it back after some back-and-forth with customer service to prove my identity, but it was a process I’d really rather not go through again.
Honestly I just can’t justify an extra $15 /mo just for Overwatch 2 which I am not even sure I am going to like in the first place, when I already have two phone numbers that I use on a daily bases (one for personal/medical, one for work).
So yeah telling me my Google Voice number that I’ve had for over a year now is not valid is just utter baloney. It’s not a throw-away number, and even if it was, I would deserve the consequences for losing access to my account due to losing access to that number.
The reason is because anyone can make a Google account and get a phone number. I know because I have a few lol it takes an extra few seconds to register for GV and generate a phone number. It would defeat the purpose entirely if people could use GV.
I get that but it just goes to show that the entire system is flawed to begin with.
And let’s not forget - “real” carriers (if you want to call them that?) recycle numbers all the time.
What if you got a phone number that someone else once used in the past? Oh - you can’t create an account now because the phone number that is NOW YOUR’s belonged to someone else who had to give up THEIR phone service for whatever reason.
It’s clear that whoever developed this policy actually lives in a fantasy world where everyone can be identified by one single phone number and everyone can afford a number that THEY approve of - that simply is just not the case.
In other games, the phone number is removed from the previous account and added to the new account after you verify it. Then the previous account would no longer be eligible until that account gets a new phone number added to it. There is a cool down to avoid people using the same phone number to switch between accounts multiple times, but I don’t think that cool down has been revealed. Since most people aren’t changing their phone numbers that often, I imagine it’s a pretty strict cooldown since it would be unusual for someone to keep switching phone numbers between accounts.
In an ideal world that’s how it SHOULD work with Overwatch.
But this is Blizzard we’re talking about here - and they have no idea how the real world actually works. It’s actually quite evident in their policy that boldly states - “you cannot create an account with a phone number that was previously used” [paraphrase]
So yeah. This was stupidly short-sighted and poorly thought out on their part.
I’ve had the same number since 2005
One Blizzard account, played from the same internet account, in the same house the entire time.
If blizzard can’t make that work, they’re idiots.
There is no ‘game’ reason to deny me access. If there is, it’s all too serious to exist.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it’ll do. All the people that see a new free game will try to make an account, but get told they need to give a phone number, get told that phone number doesn’t work, then go play a different game.
except the cheaters and smurfs, who know how to get around it.
I already know how to, I’m not going to do it, because I’m not a cheat or a smurf and will not lower myself to do something like that in order to play a game I should be able to normally.
It took about five minutes reading other sites talking about this issue where people are like well just do this.
Oh yeah, I’m sure people will be turned off, just like people are turned off when they load up a game and it requires them to create an account with the publisher or link their accounts. Some people want instant access to a game.
The fact that this is not going to be 100% bulletproof at eliminating cheaters and hackers and people that disrupt the positivity of the game, doesn’t mean anything. There are always ways to circumvent. The policy is not to do nothing, it’s to do something. I’m sure there will be those kind of people in the game, but imagine how many without any steps! Definitely a lot more than there would otherwise be. That’s the point!