Going for that smooth launch by not allowing a fraction of the player base to even play…
4 Likes
As someone who purchased watchpoint pack, someone who bought Overwatch 1 on day one, and has been a fan since the start: Blizzard what the hell are you thinking? The phone verification is a horrible idea to have mandatory, and completely removing overwatch 1 is a spit in the face of your loyal playerbase. I thought I was a fan, but I’m regretting giving you my money at this point.
4 Likes
Even better yet, they might still reject your phone number if it’s not a post-paid line (i.e. expensive contract you’re stuck with for 1-2 years)
Cricket service gets auto-flagged as pre-paid, even if the line is on post-paid service, so “just use family’s numbers” doesn’t even work for a lot of people either
My friend bought beta access with Watchpoint for both himself and as a gift for me, and now neither of us are able to play because we don’t have phone numbers accepted by Blizzard. SMS protection was not publicly mentioned or planned when they were selling Watchpoint, only recently announced.
People are considering lawsuits, that’s how bad this is. If any get ground I’m gonna be joining them.
10 Likes
See that’s why having a healthy relationship with your family / friends is important, you never know when you’ll need to link your smurf account to their phone # 
The phone number is so that overwatch 2 doesn’t end up like tf2, it’s a must cuz otherwise it will get inflated with cheating bots. And btw where is the pre-download, I am a pc player and I got the watchpoint pack and did everything. Still no pre-download…
Same here. pre-download not starting yet. Wonder when it will start?
Blizzard is high rn.
It’s completely worth everything, they are doing this to remove cheaters and so that overwatch doesn’t end up like the shooter that it was inspired from and is way greater than it.
Welp, still no preload happening 
It’ll hardly do anything to stop cheaters. Everybody saying “just use family or friends numbers” you really don’t think cheaters and smurfs aren’t going to do the same thing? This is preventing more legit people from playing than it will ever prevent future cheaters from joining.
7 Likes
I am gonna go to sleep cuz I have been waiting for so long.
pre-download working for anyone?
banning 1-2 cheater accounts is easier than banning 200k cheater accounts
And yet oddly enough, 200k cheat bots is still effectively a minority compared to the number of players that are being locked out by these requirements.
To quote Torbjorn, you’re making a chicken out of a feather.
1 Like
Good start : Pre-download isn’t ready, an hour and a half later than approximated time, and no one is sure they can actually play because of the cell phone requirement.
How about making that SMS verification mandatory only for Comp play, this way players who just want to play the game and don’t care about Comp can actually enjoy OW? Sure, smurfs are a pain, but having no players is probably a worse problem, isn’t it?
3 Likes
Pre-download just started for me
why is my download speed only 100KBs/s for this pre-download thing, lmao. welp doesn’t matter anyways lmao
RIP 6v6. I loved you well.
2 Likes
Of course it is.
I’d play against nothing but smurfs if it meant I could still play.
Sadly others support people from being prevented to be able to play because they are dumb enough to believe it will somehow stop it. That and they’re selfish and take the game way too serious.
Discriminating against 50 million or so Americans for the type of cellphone service they have is A-OK!
Of course, maybe the next requirement preventing them from playing is simply unfathomable to such simple minds.
2 Likes
Can I get a refund if I don’t want to use my phone number? I wouldn’t have purchased if I had known this.
I’m going to put in a support ticket.
2 Likes