Once Overwatch 2 arrives, you'll never be able to play Overwatch 1 again
In a Reddit AMA(opens in new tab) on June 22, members of the Overwatch 2 developer team provided some new details and added context for the upcoming game, including a confirmation that the original Overwatch will be fully replaced by Overwatch 2 when it launches on October 4.
As part of a response to a question about the game's «Early Access» title, director Aaron Keller stated that «When OW2 launches on October 4th it will be a replacement for the current live service.»
It was previously difficult to parse what the final form of this not-quite sequel will look like, and this move does little to assuage criticism that Overwatch 2 is more of a glorified update than a wholly original sequel. A tweet from the official Overwatch account(opens in new tab) shortly after OW2's reveal claimed that «Overwatch 1 players and Overwatch 2 players will play alongside on the same maps.» That framing seemed to imply that the original game would carry on in some fashion and interface with Overwatch 2, but that both would exist in some form.
Overwatch 1 players and Overwatch 2 players will play along side on the same mapsNovember 1, 2019
In 2020, former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan stated(opens in new tab) that any sort of «Overwatch Classic» (think World of Warcraft Classic) with the game returned to an early state would be «very costly from a technical and art perspective» and that «there were a lot of art and UI changes that were not properly 'versioned' off but rather overwritten.» It's unclear if Kaplan is suggesting that the various versions of the original game are lost to time and not properly archived, but even two years ago, it seemed like the developer wasn't interested in preserving what came before. Now Overwatch 2's
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