Overwatch was the biggest story at Blizzcon this year. The cinematic trailer for it looked straight out of a Pixar movie, and it's Blizzard's first foray into the world of first person shooters. It has really clear characters and a great aesthetic, and a lot of the gameplay options look really fun.
The thing is, I'm probably not going to play it.
The main problem: It's a totally PvP-oriented game.
Several years ago, I got the Orange Box - the pretty phenomenal bundle of Half Life 2, parts 1 and 2 of its episodic sequels, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I was really excited to play Team Fortress 2, but then I discovered that the game was 100% PvP content in small arenas. There was no story to speak of, and nothing one could play on one's own.
Overwatch will very much be in the vein of Team Fortress 2. Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone, come to think of it, are competitive games - to be played against others.
And honestly, that's not my type of gaming.
It's not multiplayer that I'm against. The absurd number of posts on this very blog prove that I'm a huge fan of World of Warcraft. But as you can probably tell, my WoW experience is 99.99% in the realm of PvE. And ultimately, the main reason why is just... that I don't like playing against other people. I prefer coming together as a team to vanquish some giant obstacle. The primary reason is that I don't like that my success requires someone else's failure (or vice versa, of course.) But there are other reasons.
Defeating another player does not provide me with the same satisfaction as defeating a raid boss. When it's another player, you never know if it was just luck or some flaw in their play or a simple lag spike that allowed you to get the upper hand. When you down a boss, you know it's because your raid pulled together and executed the fight correctly - your coordination and dedication result in success.
Other players are certainly more difficult to kill given their unpredictability, but they're also more boring. When I fight the Lich King, he can shatter the icy platform I'm standing on and draw my soul into Frostmourne. When I fight Garrosh Hellscream, he can draw me into weird visions of various temples in Pandaria filled with Sha. When I fight that Undead Mage sitting somewhere in Chicago, he can... Blink? Ice Block? There will be minor tweaks and a few new talents or what have you with each expansion, but fundamentally, he's the same Mage I've been fighting since vanilla.
Another problem - and this might be just one that the gaming industry has yet to solve - is that PvP games are historically, and perhaps inherently, less story-driven. As we're seeing with Overwatch - there will apparently be no real in-game lore. Every game is just a fight against other players. If Winston and Reaper team up, despite being enemies, there's no justification beyond "that's what the players on that team chose." So things will remain static, and what lore they come up with will be entirely outside the game itself.
People seek out video games for different reasons, certainly, and I absolutely don't mean to disparage anyone who prefers PvP-style games. But given my tastes, Overwatch just doesn't look like it's aimed at a gamer like me.
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