27 hours of freedom.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Blizzard has confirmed that the service for Overwatch will end on October 2nd this year. This is, however, October 2nd in the Pacific time zone with no precise hour given, so depending on your location in the world, it may actually be October 1st or October 3rd.
So it’s basically 2nd October, Overwatch 1 has its last day; we’re down for 27 hours to give our team the ability to update all the servers to make sure that the backend supporting the launch of Overwatch 2 is ready to go; and then players can come in on 4th October. And if they already have Overwatch 1, they’ll get Overwatch 2 as basically an update from a systems perspective. You’ll see, ‘Update the game to Overwatch 2’ as an option on your PC or console. If you’re a new player, you’ll see on 4th October, the ability to come in and download and play Overwatch 2 for free.
Jon Spector, commercial lead, Overwatch 2
If there’s one nice thing here, it’s that the 27 hour downtime from Overwatch‘s death to Overwatch 2‘s dawn is that you will be able to start pre-loading the new game. And if you miss that, trying to start up the original will give you a prompt to upgrade to the sequel.
The other nice thing is that the new game will offer some upgrades over the original. Not only will your collection carry over (Blizzard plans on giving players a “checklist” to prepare for the switchover), but there are a host of changes from how things were done in the original game. Notably, loot boxes are out, replaced with a shop and a battle pass. There’s even going to be cross-progression between pc and console versions of the game. Of course, they’re locking characters behind the battle pass, so don’t be too optimistic.
Good thing I didn’t pay full retail for the original game.
Source: PC Gamer
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