No Fun PvE for Overwatch 2

I’m a very casual player when it comes to Overwatch 2. I occasionally play along with my boyfriend, who is much better than me. Of course, I play as a support character, because that’s what I’m best at. But I’m not really a huge fan of the PvP stuff. I much prefer cooperative game modes.

Now, back before Overwatch 2 existed, we were told that Overwatch 1 would have something more PvE-oriented. There were plans to have a whole cooperative game mode, complete with skill trees and fancy things like that. This was back in 2019, which feels like forever ago, but we were promised a big PvE expansion thing, that would give players more stuff to do.

After that though, things kinda went a bit quiet. We didn’t hear much about the PvE content, aside from the odd event with a single PvE horde-style mission, like Halloween. It was later announced that Overwatch 1 wasn’t strong enough to handle a new PvE system, so Blizzard announced Overwatch 2, which would be bigger and better than Overwatch 1, and it would have all the better engine features they needed to build this beast.

Again, after that announcement, things went quiet again. Eventually though, Overwatch 2 was released, and it deleted Overwatch 1 in the process. As in, they completely removed Overwatch 1, killing it forever. And cementing the fact that Team Fortress 2 outlived Overwatch 1. On top of that, Overwatch 2’s release was incredibly messy, with a host of connection and server issues. Many players couldn’t even get into the game at all, and Overwatch 2 came in and out of maintenance. Things did settle down eventually, but there was something very obvious missing from Overwatch 2. There was no PvE section. And, for me, there was very obviously an entire roster of heroes missing, as my Overwatch game data failed to be integrated into Overwatch 2. So I had to grind out a bunch of heroes that I’d originally had unlocked.

Anyway, my problems aside, the lack of PvE was a bit weird. After all, the entire reason why we had Overwatch 2 was because of the PvE stuff. We just assumed it was coming “soon”.

Well, on May 16th, we found out the actual truth. The entire PvE section had been scrapped. They had given up on it in favour of their season passes and making more heroes. The whole reason why Overwatch 2 had to be was now gone forever, and we have been left with a lesser game because of it. If you look at what Overwatch 2 has given us so far, it looks like a complete downgrade from Overwatch 1.

Seriously, we ended up with less maps, with a lot of older maps being retired; we lost a whole player with Overwatch 2 sticking to 5v5 combat instead of 6v6 combat. And we only really got one new game mode, the Push game mode. We had a handful of event/season-themed game modes but they weren’t very good. Oh and we lost the best lootbox system in AAA gaming. It was replaced by a season pass and a much larger grind to get anything for f2p folks. Skins became more expensive and many are now locked behind the premium currency. And you have to either buy the premium season pass or grind through it to get any new heroes.

For a lot of people, this was a major setback. The PvE stuff was what these folks were waiting for, and we’re now never going to get it. The road ahead may have some interesting stuff instead, but it’s nothing compared to what we were promised.

Overall, that’s the big problem. They cancelled something they promised, and don’t seem to care. So why should we care?