Why Does Overwatch 2 Have a Queue?

Overwatch 2 just launched yesterday and has been seeing a lot of love in the game's reviews and the community now that the original Overwatch is shut down. With the game being freshly released, millions are logging on in hopes of getting in a few quick matches so that they can check out the new maps and heroes. Unfortunately, some have noticed issues connecting to the game servers, with many even finding themselves locked in long queues.

While there's a lot of excitement over playing Overwatch 2 now that it's out, there are also some underlying issues causing the long queue times that players have reported. One of the main causes for these long queue times is because the game's services have been under attack since it launched.

According to tweets from the game director, Overwatch 2 has been under a "distributed denial of service," or DDoS, attack since the game launched. When a game or server is experiencing a DDoS attack, that means the service is being flooded with connections to disrupt its normal operations. This has led to many experiencing connection issues and being stuck in long queues before being able to load into the game.

For those lucky enough to load into the game, you still have to worry about the servers becoming disconnected randomly due to the excessive load being thrown at them. Because the DDoS attacks are continuing, there's no guarantee about when Overwatch 2 servers will completely stabilize.

The good news is there are still over 60 days for players to jump in and level up their Battle Pass so they can unlock the game's newest hero, Kiriko. Hopefully, news of Overwatch 2's stability will drop soon.

For now, at least, fans of the Blizzard-made hero shooter can rest easy knowing that the gameplay loop is very much on par with what they loved about the original Overwatch.

As Brittany Vincent wrote in Newsweek's Overwatch 2 review, "Overwatch 2 brings a slew of improvements to the original game, but it also makes some changes that don't always feel as though they're in players' best interests. Still, it's the cream of the crop when it comes to hero shooters, and no one is doing it better than Overwatch 1 when it comes to recognizable characters, unique abilities, exciting maps and cosmetics that keep us coming back for more."

It might be hard to connect right now, but at least Overwatch players have something to truly look forward to when the Overwatch 2 servers are back up and running smoothly.