Anyone who already has a current license to OW1 should not have to add a phone number.
Phone numbers should be applied to only brand new accounts with no OW1 license.
If a phone number cannot be added, have a requirement to make a purchase no less than $10 to have an active OW2 account. Pretty much the cost of one Battle Pass.
Offer something for free if you link a phone number, like how it’s done in WoW.
My number works perfectly fine for OW2. These are merely sensical suggestions to help resolve a phone number issue whilst also mitigating any potential cheating issues.
EDIT: I have a number that works but great news today:
I would not mind as I am against this SMS protection gatekeeping our players, but it does very little to solve the problem Blizzard is attempting to address.
This wouldn’t make any sense. All of the smurf & alt troll accounts that already exist would get a pass… brand new players aren’t even going to be capable of smurfing. They just need to find a way to make the SMS verification not screw over honest players just wanting to play the game while still screwing over players who want to use multiple accounts for bad reasons
They could simply apply the 50 win requirement to existing accounts and it would be as effective an anti-smurfing tool with or without SMS.
The people who down-rank intentionally and use the same account for a long time won’t be deterred either way, but it will accomplish more than SMS protect will.
I think the best solution would be to have two separate queues for verified and unverified users. Then unverified users who are in good standing could be upgraded to verified without needing to attach a phone number. Perhaps tie it to the endorsement system or something.
This is an interesting idea. Currently there’s very little protection from cheaters in QP and Arcade, where many people play. Most of their new tools really only deter cheaters from rated. From what people are saying, cheaters will be able to get numbers fairly cheaply to start new accounts, and all of those people are going to end up in our QP and Arcade games.
Having two queues might help keep cheaters in one since they’d prefer that over having to pay money for a new number (maybe?).
I think people who owned OW1 and have a certain amount of played time should automatically end up in the verified pool also.
I don’t think Blizzard would do this though as it may mean they have to provide server resources for a much larger number of players, many of whom may be hackers if they could just make an account and play unverified at any time.
This is a good idea, but maybe instead of playtime, they look to see how many times one has been banned for a good reason to see if they do or do not qualify?
Ohhh, playtime, I see now! More hours mean you had the same account for a while. I’m so dumb lol
Gatekeeping with a Mobile Phone is a terrible idea, and it only hurts honest players.
Do they really think that dishonest players are going to be stopped flat in their tracks with PAID devices on the approved list?!
Because if they do, they literally have astounded me and the human race itself. We all KNOW that those players, when they get banned are going to call up Their phone carrier and BEG for a new number, just so they can sign up for ANOTHER overwatch account and do it ALL over again. and now that the game is FREE. It will be happening at an exponentially FASTER rate.
That would be perfect. They make more money… People get to play the game. Win-win. Obviously they should have never been locked to begin with, but you know, this is Blizzard. We should just count our blessings that it is not as bad as it could be.
