One would have thought, in front of the endless queues at the entrance to the servers which could have lasted several tens of minutes, that the public had rushed to the Overwatch sequel, which definitively closed its own servers to make way for its successor. It is likely that the attendance figures were excellent, but all the general public will remember from the evening of October 4 is a failed launch, marred by connection problems.
A good number of players may have encountered messages such as “Unexpected Server Error”, unexpected disconnections in the middle of a game, or simply items, cosmetics and rewards that did not appear in their collection. It is especially during the phase of login that problems arise, most players trying to enter their information at the same time. Remember that the game is free-to-playwhich may explain the large number of connections.
It was in any case the first track to explain all these worries, Mike Ybarra, the president of Blizzard Entertainment, having first cracked a first tweet.
Unfortunately we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage. This is causing a lot of drop/connection issues. https://t.co/4GwrfHEiBE
—Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) October 4, 2022
“Our teams are working to address server issues with Overwatch 2. We’re thrilled to see players’ enthusiasm for the title and will continue to work through these issues to ensure they can have as much fun as possible. playing. Thank you for your patience.”
Later in the evening, he had to face the facts: the server problems were not due to the popularity of the title alone, but to DDoS attacks from malicious Internet users.
We’re steadily making progress on server issues and stability, as well as working through a second DDoS attack. We’re all hands on deck and will continue to work throughout the night. Thank you for your patience – we’ll share more info as it becomes available.
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) October 5, 2022
“We are unfortunately victims of a massive DDoS attack on our servers. Our teams are working hard to limit the consequences. This explains the many disconnections and connection problems at present.”
This morning, Overwatch 2 remains the most viewed game on Twitch, with 127,000 viewers as of this writing.