I haven't found any topic on Overwatch, so let's create one!

The newest Blizzard's game, Overwatch is a team FPS with funky graphics and tons of characters with unique abilities. Many people would say that it's gameplay is similiar to Team Fortress 2.

The game is to be released in 2016, a week ago beta has started. And beta is my biggest concern.

Unlike in the previous Blizzard betas, this time Blizzard 'flags' accounts and gives the access to the beta to players who signed up for it. There are no redeemable codes, codes trading etc. It seems perfect on the paper and Blizzard said that those accounts will be chosen randomly. But they aren't being chosen at random (well, mostly) - they gave beta access mainly to Twitch/YouTube streamers and content creators in order to get attention.

The result? Huge popularity, everyone talks about Overwatch, but the regular players who can't access beta are furious. Over 7 million people signed up for beta (excluding China) and they gave codes to few hundreds of streamers and small number of regular players.

Was it a smart move? Personally, I understand the reasons behind such Blizzard actions, yet I'm furious that experienced and devoted Blizz and FPS players who can provide real and valuable feedback (that's what beta is for!) are being ignored and blase streamers got into because of their viewership, only to struggle with controls and aiming...

What's your opinion? Did you get into beta?

Never heard of it, but then after the diabolicness of their last release I have no interest.either. Why bother promoting their DRM platform, or money grab systems.

What I hate the most is the stupid hype that is going on.
They try to sell you sliced bread as the best thing ever. People who never even talked about sliced bread, tell me now, how awesome sliced bread will be, even though they could have had sliced bread since forever.
Too much fanboyism for my taste.

The game could be good, but I haven't played arena shooters in forever, so why should I care about it?

Blizzard betas have never been given out randomly. It's just obvious this time around because the streamers have such a significant public profile. The number of beta seats available at this stage is so tiny that your chances of getting in are pretty marginal to begin with. Even if Blizzard had 70,000 beta seats available at this point, that's still only 1% of the beta hopefuls getting a spot. This has always been the problem with Blizzard betas due to the enormous interest they generate; your odds of getting in on the early waves without special interest are basically zero anyways.

I didn't try to get into the beta, sounds like I wouldn't have got into it anyways. I've only watched Robbaz play it and he annihilated everyone like he does in every shooter, it was pretty entertaining.

I might give it a try when it's out, I haven't really played a multiplayer shooter extensively for many years.

Speaking from QA experience I don't think you get much decent feedback from these public betas anyway. A vast majority don't give any feedback even if they encounter something, then you got your insane rants to filter out, you might get a few people that actually report legitimate bugs and problems. Honestly for games it's best used as a marketing tool primarily and testing server load, and seems that's exactly what they're doing. I'm sure they'll start rolling out more subscriptions for the beta as time goes on too.

So....Blizzard hands out beta access directly to accounts rather than a code which could be sold to people desperate to get into the beta....sounds good actually. Now if Blizzard released games more frequently they could maybe also weigh in how active people in the last beta they joined were to determine if they should get prioritized since they might actually get feedback that way.

Contrary to what some people think, Beta is there to allow a larger group of players (than internal tests) to test out a game and report bugs, glitches, things needing balancing and similar so it can be fixed before hitting the big public release.

Sure some companies release betas so late in the cycle any bugs reported won't be addressed, the beta tag being abused as a sort of limited early-access thing.

Last Blizzard game I played was Warcraft 2, and last Blizzard game I enjoyed enough to play for extended periods of time was Lost Vikings, so please don't dismiss me as a fanboy. But generally Blizzard does have a tendency to release products which are quite well done as far as I know.

My guess is they hand out beta access in a random fashion AND to streamers and other internet personalities. The non-randomly distributed keys being a way of drumming up hype, it's called PR. Does that mean there are no more available accesses to random accounts? I doubt that very much. It's just the lucky randomly chosen people tend to not have a big audience (or any) and thus won't be as visible as the streamers out there.

It would be fun to see what happened if they indeed didn't give out random access because all the "beta allotment" was taken up by streamers. My guess would be once the initial hit of steamers had done their initial piece on it, the ones who'd keep streaming would soon start to complain that the game is already a ghost town and boring to play when there are no opponents and the bots suck.

Personally, once it releases I might sign up for a Blizzard account and play it. I played a good deal of TF2 some years back. Quite enjoyed Monday Night Combat as well, and from the bits and pieces I hear of Overwatch it's kinda remniscent of TF2 with specialized characters of games like HotS, LoL, Dota and similar, and characters having so different optimal playstyles anyone might find enjoyment in it. I can get behind that a lot better than "You are Assault Trooper #0118999881999119725-3, go kill the other guys and take the objective."

As for sliced bread...I kinda like it. I know it's been out there forever. For Overwatch, maybe other games have done the exact same thing before, but apart from Monday Night Combat I haven't seen any team based shooters use MOBA like character with special abilities. I'd be happy to hear about some of the others, might want to peek at them.

Who's this Blizzard of whom you speak? They haven't released anything for sale since 2003, when the Warcraft 3 expansion came out. I thought they were a defunct entity...

As an old Mac user, I've always had a soft spot for Blizzard. When everyone was abandoning the Mac in the late 90s, game publishers in particular, Blizzard never did. Always had first rate Macintosh versions of their games. Always released simultaneously with the Windows counterpart, even on the same CD.

At the same time I value good singleplayer games more than online multiplayer/coop games and always online DRM which describes Blizzard of today. So, yeah. Pass on Overwatch.

Of course there are plenty of Blizz fanboys who will praise their every move.

But you have to admit they create great games.

You lost a "used to" there somewhere.

Not really, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone rock. Legacy of the Void looks solid as well. Reaper of Souls is praised.

I haven't played WoW so I won't talk about it.

Heh, don't mention it around my brother. Once it comes up, you've got at least 10 minutes of ranting about how Blizzard has repeatedly promised PvP in the next update/expansion then backtracked on that promise. Easily dismissed if you don't care about PvP, but for people for whom it was a big selling point (like my brother) it was nothing short of complete and total betrayal.

I refuse to call a MOBA and a card game with Blizzard's popular franchises slapped onto it "great games". It's like a has been rockstar making covers of shitty pop songs. They're supposed to be one of the best developers out there, second to none in their fan follwoing. And what do they make? Another MOBA and an online shooter. Whoop-dee-doo. Too bad they missed the motion control craze, there was a "great" Warcraft dance game to be made a couple years back.

Blizzard seem to specialize in creating games that are easy to get into, have enough depth to keep players around, and are topped with an appealing clean visual style. They’re not my thing either (because they’re all multiplayer franchises) but I can still recognize their talent.