(STY) Has Overwatch 2 Killed Its Own Hype?

Op: Short answer: Yes

Long answer: I currently blame the delayed McCree short story for the delayed Hype. (Which I suspect has a new Talon hero in it.)

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Im gonna throw my 2 cents.

We’re getting multiple new heroes, new maps, dedicated pve, and a huge overhaul to pvp. It’s a classic marketing tactic. Withhold all the content the game should be getting so people have more a reason to get excited. Once the game releases youtubers are gonna cover it, gaming journalists will review it, game trailers will be released, hype will build back up, and people will play it. I’ve seen this scenario in tons of other games before.

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well PVP certainly has, I honestly don’t see how this can bring in new players for PVP for OW2. If you didn’t like the non-DPS heroes in 1, you won’t like OW2. Everything is more or less the same, just certain heroes get free reign to carry hard.

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Absolutely! The game was revealed too early and the way they abandoned OW left bitter taste in everyone’s mouth. Plus all the Blizzard/Activision scandals…

Also majority of the community seems to dislike what was showed and revealed so far.

I am pretty sure that the game will do much, much worse compared to OW overall.

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The game doesn’t even have a release date? Why would you want to hype it up now? So we can listen to people complain about “why can’t we have this in-game now?” for the next six+ months?

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No, OW2 is following a fairly standard AAA game release.

Announce game, trickle info out every half a year or so, announce release date, go on an ad-blitz & hype the game into oblivion.

Literally every big game has followed this pattern. The “hype phase” for OW2 hasn’t even started yet. Game companies aren’t going to spend copious amounts of money advertising a game that is still years out from release.

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Except for the fact that smart people won’t even bother, because blizzard has had pathetic handling of this franchise for like 3 years plus now.

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Exactly.

Like, I would understand if they just starting working on OW2 during 2019 or last year or something and let OW1 in a standby. But they literally were working on OW2 since maybe 2017? And since the game won’t be released until next year, that will be 5 years of development! What we saw during the last exhibition doesn’t look 4 years worth of it. It looks more like a couple years worth of work. This is just a combination of (imo) bad management on top of Blizz’s usual glacial speed of development.

Keep in mind that the Witcher 3 took 4 years to develop. I know, I know, apples and oranges. Just saying that you don’t need this much time to make a polished masterpiece. Especially since OW2 is more building on top of what already exists in OW1.

I highly doubt that when OW2 comes out, we’ll see 5 years worth of content and polish, that’s for sure.

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Right now the campaign seems awful but i hope to see more leaks of it in the future.

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If OW2 is years from release, the community will mostly die off before OW2 comes out. You can’t not release new game content for 3 years.

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99% of the people will dive on it, no doubt. I have actually seen new players from BR games coming in, no lie. Real new players in anticipation of OW 2…

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I think the context of the post was referencing the 2019 reveal of OW2. OW2 is coming out next year and that is basically a certainty. You do not really build hype for a game until you are about 2 months from release because there is no benefit to doing so. When the time comes a BUNCH of OW2 info will drop and you will suddenly start seeing a bunch of videos and people talking about OW2.

Basically the first 2 stages of OW2 hype are the beta and OWL. From then on it will be about building up further.

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Can you imagine if OW2 PvE was of the same quality as Witcher 3? My expectations are so mediocre that I actually hadn’t even considered what it would be like if OW2 turned out to be a great game in its own right.

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The thing about OW2 is it basically is a whole new game. They built an entirely new engine for it, which in itself needs completely new coding, even for all existing characters. While the frame for the game exists with OW1, most everything would still need to be re-coded, as if it didn’t exist to begin with (or loosely existed). REDEngine already existed for Witcher 3, allowing at least 1 more year of totally free development for any other aspect of the game.

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By “carry hard,” do you mean “frag out?”

The reason I originally bought the game back in 2016 was because you didn’t need to frag in order to carry. You could win by mastering the game’s defensive abilities, which USED TO BE just as fun and over-the-top as the offensive abilities.

(RIP literally every non-gunplay mechanic in the game)

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I mean that there’ less defense and utility and focus on kills and chaining kills. high mobility heroes, are going to be making sweet kill montages.

lol

We know more about FF16, have seen more FF16 gameplay, know more -lore- for FF16 and that game isn’t even out yet either.

Please stop.

:roll_eyes:

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It’s kind of strange, too, as Overwatch is the company’s most recent franchise: you’d think they’d direct all their focus into that (I haven’t really heard good news about Warzone or Vanguard for the most part).

The only other saving grace they may have is the patented title, “Iris”, which we don’t know if it’s even a game or something else…

As things stand I think Blizzard plan to release PVP OW2 as free to play with a seasonal content pass and additonal cosmwtic purchases from April next year. It will feature new maps and at least 1 new hero. It looks like it will be 5 v 5 and include many reworks and balance changes.

They will then aim to release PVE as DLC in November.

Both release will be met with tons of media interest. However, due to the current reputation of Blizzard and community mismanagement, the game will need to be better than Overwatch (1) to turn the tide on what will inevitably be a mostly negative response. This is unlikely - the media almost want it to fail and the public mostly expect it to. Blizzard must change tac.

This is how Blizzard can snatch success from the jaws of failure:

  • publicly declare they are changing strategy and with immediate effect will support existing Overwatch community.
  • They should start releasing content now (maps and heroes and hero reworks) and keep releasing new content at a good pace
  • Stay focused on the amateur players. Don’t redesign a game for the pro matches. They can release 5 v 5 as experimental. Players will understand that its unbalanced but changing everything from 6 v 6 to 5 v 5 is too big a gamble without significant community testing first.
  • Abandon loot boxes in favour of free to play, with optional monthly cosmetic pass and weekly additional cosmetics available to people that pay. This is established model for success financially and acceptable to most players.
  • Release PVE as paid DLC when it’s ready.
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If the early summer release date is real (and theres no reason to think it isn’t) we aren’t even really far enough along for the marketing to start in earnest. Everything they’ve shown so far was just to give the community little tidbits to keep them placated for now.

It’s a little wonky now because normally a company starts marketing like 6-8 months before release, but because of BlizzCon now being in early 2022,they in the uncomfortable position of giving people more now, or saving it up for a better BlizzCon. After BlizzCon they’re going to put a brick on the gas pedal in terms of marketing since release would only be 3-4 months away.

A game that did kill its own hype would be like, Cyberpunk, which killed it by being bad, or Deathloop, which killed it by oversaturating the market in ads to where people got sick of it (but then Deathloop revived itself by being sick as hell).

Overwatch2 hasn’t even gotten far enough along to kill its own hype. This is just an OW content creator upset they have nothing to talk about lol

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