"Most live-service games don't get as many chances as has gotten, but most of them aren't made by Blizzard, which can afford to fumble, refocus, and rise from the ashes. The problem any game that's gone on for 10 years faces is that different versions of it exist in the minds of everyone who's ever played it. If you stopped pushing payloads during the height of the game's domination, you may have a rosy image in your mind of a game that doesn't really exist anymore."
"But last year, something shifted . Overwatch 2 may not have become the story-driven sequel I wanted, but Blizzard showed that even if its original plan had fallen through, it wasn't going to leave the game as a skin-driven cash cow doing nothing more than giving Mercy fans another one hundred outfits in which to dress up their favorite medic. The introduction of Perks, or character-specific tweaks that change or lean into different playstyles on typically one-note heroes, and the build-driven Stadium mode, showed"
Live-service games rarely receive repeated chances after failure, but Blizzard can afford to fumble, refocus, and recover. A decade-long game accumulates different, often contradictory versions in players' memories, creating nostalgia for past states among longtime fans and a perception of decline among newer players. The Overwatch sequel failed to deliver the promised cooperative campaign, prompting dismissals and temporary player departures. Recent updates introduced Perks and a build-driven Stadium mode that repurposed earlier work on skill trees and buildcrafting. By 2026, Blizzard shifted to integrating a linear story into seasonal rollouts, offering a sustainable alternative to a drawn-out microtransactioned PvE campaign.
Read at Kotaku
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