Instead of having to pay for the game’s premium battle pass or unlock that new hero through dozens of hours of gameplay, Blizzard will make Venture and all future heroes available to free for all players when they launch.

Wow, Blizzard actually taking a factually negative change back. No further modifications, no further rework, just a straight rollback of something that was a bad idea to begin with. That's really a sign of the times changing, that always felt like something that is strictly forbidden at Blizzard! 😮

The new hero Venture is so/so though, IMO. Yeah their movement ability is awesome, but that weapon is so boring. And they hype it up so much, but it is just Sigma's primary fire, including the ability to fire around corners and all. Unavoidable with so many heroes and not nearly enough niches for all of them that things will get doubled and tripled up, but it's still disappointing to see something copied&pasted so directly.

[–] CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 28 points 6 months ago (1 children)

And it only took how many years of people saying "wow, this is a really bad idea"

I loved OW1, went and saw a couple OWL games live, put hundreds of hours in...

No interest in OW2.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I played the hell out of OW1. They turned off OW1 servers and required my actual real phone number to continue to play on OW2. Wouldn't even let me use a VIP number. There is no time in this universe where I will want Blizzard/Activision or its advertising partners to have my real phone number. No interest in OW2.

[–] simple@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

AFAIK they removed the phone number requirement from people who own OW1 a few weeks after release

[–] zaph@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

They did because my alt accounts work and they don't have numbers attached.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

It's a good change for sure, but the cynic in me can't help but think they're doing this solely because they believe it'll make them more money this way.

[–] Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The actual reason is to hide the fact they're probably not gonna have much if any pve content soonish. That's the whole 'reason' behind ow2. They just layed off a bunch of staff too.

[–] NekkoDroid@programming.dev 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The actual reason is to hide the fact they’re probably not gonna have much if any pve content soonish

They literally out right said multiple times that PvE content is mostly shelved and to not expect anything. This isn't some sort of secret they are keeping

[–] imecth@fedia.io 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I don't see the correlation between those and making new heroes free. Maybe as a way to douse the community flames. I think it's simply because people want to play the new content. While some cave and buy the battlepass, it doesn't offset the losses of the grind and paywall that stops people from coming back and investing to begin with.

[–] Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's a distraction tactic. Blizzard has been doing it for years in wow too.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 1 points 6 months ago

Obviously they made the announcement at an opportune moment, but blizz wouldn't be making this change if it didn't coincide with their bottom line.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 4 points 6 months ago

That's not bring cynical, it's just being realistic. They're a publicly traded company, every action they take has to (by law?) be to make more money!