Overwatch 2 was barely playable last night, but at least the memes were great

If you weren’t able to log in and play the highly anticipated sequel to Blizzard’s hero shooter, Monitor 2, you were not the only one. After months of developer updates, the free-to-play launch day has arrived not just one, but two DDoS attacks, forcing players to endure endless queues only to run into the high likelihood of subsequent connection errors redirecting their asses to the back of the line. Really, the real Monitor 2 were the queues we waited in along the way.

I was ready to write my own impressions of Monitor 2, but last night I too suffered from connection errors and was only able to make five matches before being dropped back into the queue. In an attempt to turn mountains into Mountain Dew, I’ve shared my experience playing and (mostly) not playing Monitor 2. Get ready for these tales of Monitor 2 waiting line.

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Hour: 1
Queue Status: 40,000 players in front of me
Emotional Vibration Check: Disturbed

The irony has not escaped me that, despite the Surveillance team professing that OW2 is not just a glorified update of OW1I was literally sitting in front of my Xbox watching the loading screen of OW1 receive an update called “Overwatch 2”. As boring as it all was, I also couldn’t help but be nostalgic for my bizarro journey with this game. It felt like it was only six years ago (because it was ) when I first waited SurveillanceLaunching Xbox while sitting in my freshman college dorm. I had played the beta, announced it to friends and was almost ready to put it next The Witcher 3 and rocket leaguethe games that would sustain me between journalism classes.

So it was more than ironic that six years later I was sitting in the living room of my second apartment waiting Monitor 2‘s launch so I can cover it for work. I still agree to go to journalism school while acting Surveillance in my spare time to become a games journalist with a full bachelor’s degree that covers Surveillanceis sort of the sequel. It’s weird.

Suffice it to say that last night Monitor 2 quickly became a meme as I and countless others waited to finally be allowed to play the game. OW2servers are under attack.

Hour: 2
Queue Status: 20,000 players in front of me
Emotional Vibration Check: Hunger

It would be dishonest of me not to admit that at this stage of my OW2 purgatory, I gave in to temptation. I lost focus and bought my second—yeah, you heard me, second—Adult McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy. Now hear me out, I still support those plastic toys that are destined to occupy America’s landfills for being ugly as sin, but I can’t deny my desire to own my own biblically accurate grimace and still note its presence. see you soon The guest house. At least that’s how the scenario plays out in my head. So far I only have the Cactus Buddy from Hamburglar and Cactus Plant Flea Market (boo!) so I can only hope that a theoretical third trip to the well will grant me the purple bastard. As you may have guessed, there is no OW2 updated for this hour because I was too busy maximizing chicken nuggets.

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Hour: 3
Queue Status: 40,000 players in front of me (again)
Emotional Vibration Check: Bored

At this point I had given up hope of ever playing OW2 and resigned himself to starting my Steam Deck to do something other than play a video game. I was technically off the clock anyway, so why not? Why shouldn’t I live deliciously and use my glorified laptop to catch up on my stories? I was overtaken by episodes of What we do in the shadows and even started watching the latest episode of the medieval white drama that is HBO Dragon House. The Targaryens are messy. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who took advantage of this purgatory to metaphorically touch grass either. another would-be OW2 player hit the town and ended up winning a fourth place at his local pub’s trivia night. Cheers.

Read more: Monitor 2 The beta visuals do not help to perceive that it is barely an update

Hour: 4
Queue Status: 20 people in front of me
Emotional Vibration Check: WE MOVE

The promised hour had finally arrived. Much like Adam’s creation, Junkrat’s filthy fingers touched mine through the Xbox controller and I was greeted with a free slow motion shot of Genji’s epic new skin, trying to trick me into giving this game more money than I already had in buy loot boxes in past summer games. But my willpower remained strong because all I cared about was how my adorable babies, D.VA, Mercy and Moira, looked inside. OW2. Lo and behold, all my skins and emotes were still there, albeit updated with OW2new character models. It literally pays to be acquired in OW2. The only thing that remained to be seen was whether I could still hang on to the game.

Read more: Monitor 2 Looks more and more like a gratuitous nightmare

As you can see, this old boy still got the moves. And by moves, I mean maintaining the healer and the tanks because OW1Cooldowns were abysmal if you were trying to play a damage character. Of the five games I played last night, including OW2of the new push map, I only lost one. As much as I’ve played so far OW2 plays basically the same as OW1 just with the added bonus of more detailed character models and its maps being at different times of the day.

The big complaint I have with OW2 so far, firefights no longer feel like wars of attrition in which the application of team strategies in tight choke points is rewarded. In place, OW2The larger maps and 5v5 gameplay feel more like team deathmatches in Call of Duty in which individual pop-off games take center stage.

An advantage to OW2, compared to its closed beta, is that the outcome of matches no longer seems to be a foregone conclusion if you or the enemy team have an early advantage. It is because of OW2New passive healing and damage attributes where, if you work hard, your health and movement speed gradually increase. I found this game update to be a welcome change to make characters at all levels more durable instead of reintegrating OW1is feared meta barrier. Nobody liked that every character and their mother had a barrier that needed to be lowered, or that they were stunned left and right by annoying heroes. (You look, Brigitte.)

However, my pride in entering the game would very quickly catch up with me, leading me to ruin. Sharing my PotG clip on the interwebs to let people know I’m “that guy” came to bite my ass because the moment I came back to the game OW2The servers at had decided to disconnect me and send me back to the ghost realm of the connection queue with the rest of the plebs. Sad.

Hour: 5
Queue Status: 400 people in front of me
Emotional Vibration Check: Sleepy

In the end, just like with its predecessor, which saved my jimmies from being rustled by SurveillanceThe many flaws of – long content droughts, perpetual connection errors, or the promise of a canonical story that constantly received retcons – were the memes that poured in from the community. Y’all were out in force last night and reminded me why I love playing this damn game in the first place.

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Playing Surveillance meant being able to hang out with my friends across the country during late night sessions. It didn’t matter if we launched aggressively for multiple games or pulled off a monumental winning strategy; At the end of the day, OW served as a similar vibe to keep my favorite movie on mute while I caught up with the house guests. The weekly challenges were less about buying skins and emotes, and more about having an excuse to call a friend and schedule a play date – something I hope to continue OW2‘s weekly challenges, because I won’t pay for any Watchpoint passes. It would spoil the fun of getting items while playing with my friends.

The best part of waiting to play OW2 ultimately didn’t come in was seeing the memes everyone else was doing while we waited. It was heartening to see our Surveillance the community was still alive and active in the only way we could be, sharing memes from our files for when Monitor 2 is good and for when it inevitably fails. Hopefully by the time I feel the urge to get back into the fight and maybe play some of these new characters, Blizzard will have their servers sorted.