Blizzard has confirmed theOverwatch 2release date, letting fans know the exact time they can expect to jump into the game and play come the October 4 early access launch date.Overwatch 2is set to make major changes to Blizzard’s hero-shooter game, chief among these being a shift to a free-to-play monetization model and dropping the number of players on any given team from six to five.Overwatch 2is completely replacing the existingOverwatchexperience when it launches on October 4, preceded by some downtime.

It’s previously been confirmed that thelast full day to playOverwatch 1will be October 2. The servers will then go down on October 3, but they will be brought back up on October 4 with the early access launch ofOverwatch 2. While some may have been hoping for a midnight launch or something along those lines, Blizzard has confirmed thatOverwatchfans will have to wait until the afternoon to play the sequel.

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Blizzard has confirmed that theOverwatch 2servers will go online starting October 4 at 12pm PT. At that point, fans of the hero-shooter should be able to log in and check out everything the sequel has to offer, fromnew Push mapsto the three new heroes. Of course, that’s assuming that there are no technical issues with launch that push the launch time back.

Overwatch 2 Release Date and Time

Prior to theOverwatch 2launch, there are steps that fans can take to make sure their accounts are ready to go come October 4 at 12pm PT. There are two things specifically that they will want to do. One is adding SMS protection to their Battle.net account. As recently announced by Blizzard,Overwatch 2requires a valid phone number to play, and this means everyone’s Battle.net account needs to have their phone number added to it.

The other thing players can do to prepare forOverwatch 2is merge their accounts. Those who have only ever playedOverwatchon one platform don’t have to worry about this, but those that have played it on multiple platforms will want to ensure that their console accounts are merged to their Battle.net account. TheoriginalOverwatchcurrently has an option in its main menu to do this, so fans will want to do that as well leading up to the sequel’s October 4 launch.

For those that will be playingOverwatch 2as their firstOverwatchgame, there is nothing they need to do to prepare beyond maybe adding the phone number to their Battle.net account. However, new players should know that they will have to go through the First Time User Experience tounlock all the game modes andOW1heroes, which will take about 100 matches, according to Blizzard’s estimations.

Overwatch 2launches in early access on October 4 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

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