Blizzard’s launch of Surveillance 2 Tuesday did not go as planned. Many players who have attempted to play the revamped Surveillance experienced long wait times, were subject to server errors, were disconnected from games, and had progress and items not carried over from the original game – i.e. if they could connect at all to Blizzard’s game servers. On Wednesday night, Blizzard apologized for the state of Monitor 2and announced a major policy change: it will no longer require a phone number to be associated with a Battle.net account for “the majority of existing users.” Surveillance players.”
“We have made the decision to remove phone number requirements for the majority of Surveillance players,” the Overwatch team said in a post on the Blizzard forums. “Any Surveillance player with a connected Battle.net account, which includes all players who have played since June 9, 2021, will not be required to provide a phone number to play.
Blizzard said it plans to change the phone number requirement for Monitor 2 for existing players by Friday.
Despite lifting the phone number requirement for much of its player base, an initiative called SMS Protect, the developer “remains[s] committed to fighting disruptive behavior Monitor 2and noted that “Accounts that were not logged into Battle.net as well as new accounts will still need to meet SMS Protect requirements, which helps ensure that we are protecting our community from cheating. If a player is caught engaging in disruptive behavior, their account may be banned whether they have a new account or not.
Blizzard’s decision to require a phone number for Monitor 2 — and other restrictions regarding what types of telephone numbers would meet his requirements — was controversial. Some players who had prepaid cell phone plans found themselves kicked out of the game Monitor 2i.e. some customers who purchased the original Surveillancewhich was replaced by its wholesale sequel, could no longer play their copy of the game. This issue was exacerbated by the timing of Blizzard’s announcement of the policy: a week before Monitor 2 launched, and long after the developer started taking pre-orders for add-ons for the game.
As for the status of Monitor 2online game, Blizzard said it is still working to improve the stability of the game’s online service.
“Today we fixed a server that is critical to the login experience, and this change has increased login reliability,” the Overwatch team said. “Beyond queues, we are in the works with another server update that will reduce the number of players getting disconnected once they are already in-game.”
Blizzard said it has “made changes to simplify the queuing process,” and expects players to see more streamlined queuing times, and is working to address the issue of players removed from queues.
In Wednesday night’s update, Blizzard also addressed issues with missing account merges and player items, as well as incorrectly locked heroes, which it says are under investigation and work. . Blizzard again noted that Monitor 2Launch issues “have been exacerbated by DDoS attacks,” which have apparently subsided since Tuesday.
Blizzard said updates will be posted on the official site Overwatch Twitter Account (and presumably its forums) as they arrive.
