Earlier this week, Blizzard released its roadmap of upcoming content coming to Overwatch 2, including the much-anticipated arrival of PvE story missions. The reception from the community quickly turned sour though, as it was revealed that plans to deliver hero missions and talent trees had been scrapped.
“With everything we’ve learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level that you deserve, it’s clear that we can’t deliver on the original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019.” Executive producer Jared Neuss said in a livestream. “What that means is we won’t be delivering that dedicated hero mode with talent trees, that long-term power progression.
“Those things just aren’t in our plans anymore.”
Game director Aaron Keller added: “Going forward though, rather than doing a big, one-time, PvE releasing, and rather than pouring all of our efforts into these singular releases, we’re planning to make co-op gameplay and co-op experiences just part of our live roadmap, so we want you to be able to experience it more often and with more variety than we had originally announced.
Following this announcement, many began to speculate that Blizzard’s RTO (Return To Office) policy was to blame for the changes to PvE. However, this theory was quickly debunked by executive producer Jared Neuss, who took to Twitter to address the speculation directly.
“I’ve seen speculation that the changes to PvE scope on Overwatch 2 are related to Blizzard’s RTO policy.” Neuss said. “For the record, that isn’t true.
“Managing PvE and PvP development simultaneously has been a challenge for the team for years. It’s a less exciting headline but it’s reality.”
“We’ll go into a bit more historical detail in the next Director’s Take.” Neuss continued. “I hope that the additional context can shed some light on why we made this decision.”
Blizzard president Mike Ybarra followed up on Neuss’ statement and expressed his support for the Overwatch team.
“I will always support the decisions our teams make and the many elements they balance as they do so.” Ybarra said. “It’s not easy changing direction – and we will learn from making such early expectations.
“I am proud of what the Overwatch team continues to do and I know the ambition remains high to bring great experiences to players.”
Overwatch 2 was announced at Blizzcon back in 2019, promising story missions and “highly replayable” PvE hero missions as well as an overhaul to the PvP experience. The game’s PvP component released in October 2022 alongside the new seasonal content model.