Haven’t seen a thread about it posted here, but it has been confirmed that Overwatch 1 will be shutting down on October 2 - about 27 hours before Overwatch 2 goes live.
The following text can also be currently found within the Overwatch 1 client:
We’ve taken the Overwatch servers offline temporarily as we prepare to launch Overwatch 2. Servers should begin to come back online on October 4, 2022, 11 AM PT.
Can’t wait to get started? Get equipped with the Watchpoint Pack, which includes the Season 1 Premium Battle Pass, two Legendary Space Raider skins, and 2000 Overwatch Coins—enough to pick up the Premium Battle Pass for Seasons 2 and 3 when they are released!
It’s almost time, heroes… we’ll see you soon in Overwatch 2!
Presumably this will be displayed if you try and sign in during the 27 hours downtime.
EDIT: Changed the title to October 3 as its more correct than the news articles. Servers will shut down at about 8am PT on the 3rd. The 2nd will be the last full day of OW1.
I won’t miss current OW1 at all. The game has been awful for 3 years. The issue is OW2 is still the same game minus a tank. I’m just waiting for Overwatch Classic and hoping it’s the game we had in year 1.
Wow, so close but it really hasn’t hit me yet that OW1’s last day is Oct 1st. Should we do anything special? Maybe get some groups together and go out with a bang? Idk just brainstorming
Honestly? Overwatch 1 has been dead to me for quite some time. I feel like it was only the best game in 2016. Early 2017 was amazing. The second Summer Games was when I realized I was bamboozled.
It made no sense that they ran an event to celebrate the Rio 2016 Olympic games (that is what the Summer Games event was supposed to be) in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. The writing was on the wall in regard to recycled content as soon as that event got re-used.
Just curious, what made you stick with the game then?
I know the only reason I still have any interest in the IP is because I started playing at launch and it was one of my favorite MP games of all time for those first 2 years. Had I picked this game up in 2019 or later I feel I would have dropped it in no time and regretted my purchase.
It’s probably for the same reason all you guys played it, the game was nothing like I’ve ever played. It was an FPS, but was dramatically different from every other FPS. I thought the heroes were really fun, especially the Dive heroes (my first main was Tracer), and I just found the gameplay loop to be great.
Even though by other people’s thoughts the game wasn’t good at the time, it was still great for a new player who hadn’t played a game like it. Once I started ranking up though, it did get a bit worse. By the time I got to Diamond, Sigma came out. We know how that went.
The thing that kept me playing after the “new player” phase was my competitive mindset of always wanting to get better, I suppose. I wasn’t ever able to find a game where I could just play it consistently and improve, but it finally happened with Overwatch.
TL;DR, I didn’t notice any of the negative aspects of 2019 Overwatch since it was so new to me
That’s fair. I guess a new player at that time wouldn’t have known what the game was before that. For me the first couple years of OW and what it became after that were so drastically different that it was like playing 2 different games.