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Overwatch 2’s frustrating phone registration requirement axed for most playersQueuing to play the game should be less irritating too
Queuing to play the game should be less irritating too
Blizzard have said they’ve disabled the phone number account requirement for mostOverwatch 2players, following issues with registration for some. The company originally insisted on all players providing a phone number as part of the hero shooter’s new anti-cheat system, dubbed Defense Matrix. The planned change should go into effect from October 7th.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsOverwatch 2 is not a sequel, in the traditional sense, but we still think it’s really good.Watch on YouTube
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Starting with an apology and an acknowledgement that Overwatch 2’s launch hasn’t met player expectations, nor their own, Blizzard shared an update on issues they’re working on resolving that have cropped up since Tuesday’s launch. The areas they’re concentrating on are SMS registration, queuing, errors from account merging, and heroes being locked for players when they shouldn’t be. It’s quite a long list of problems, frankly.
Blizzard onlyrevealedOverwatch 2’s phone registration requirement a week before the game’s launch. Since then, it’semergedthat some players on pre-paid phone plans in the US haven’t been able to register their number with Battle.net, as Blizzard doesn’t recognise the provider. The changes to phone registration for Overwatch 2 will mean that only players who don’t have an existing connected Battle.net account will need to register their number. Anyone who’s playedOverwatchsince June 9th, 2021 shouldn’t need to provide theirs.
Account merging issues are being dealt with as well, Blizzard promise. About half of these are on console and should already be fixed thanks to a UI fix, while the other half is a matter of time needed to transfer items and unlocks over to Overwatch 2 from the first game. Another issue that was troubling people trying to merge their console and PC accounts has been sorted out already, but Blizzard advise anyone who should have their unlocked heroes and items but hasn’t yet to try relogging into the game. That’s happening because Overwatch 2 was mistaking existing users for new ones.
Blizzard confirmed that several DDoS attacks had made matters worse on launch day, as Grahamreported, although no more attacks have been aimed at Overwatch 2 since then. You can read the full status update from Blizzardhere, and a list of all known issueshere.
Overwatch 2 is a free to play download from Battle.net.
