Want a hassle-free Overwatch 2? Make sure you’ve played Overwatch 1

polygon.com:

Overwatch2introduces a major hurdle for new players — one that it’s actually billing as a tutorial feature. When Overwatch 2 replaces the original Overwatchservers on Tuesday, Oct. 4, Blizzard will lock brand-new players out of the original game’s roster.

If Overwatch 2 is a player’s first Overwatch, they’ll have access to a subset of the game’s 35-character roster. That means if newbies want to play as Doomfist, Wrecking Ball, Echo, and the rest, they’ll need to unlock them by playing dozens of matches. But, for new players looking forward to Overwatch 2 there is a way to circumvent this problem: Play the original Overwatch by this weekend. As long as you’re not a “new” player — even if that’s just one match in the old game, it seems — you’ll instantly gain access to the series’ original roster on Tuesday.

Playing the original Overwatch for the first time this weekend is a little easier said than done, however. So let’s quickly walk through when the original game will go offline forever, how you can jump in to play before it’s too late, and why this situation is such a big deal for new players.

The original Overwatch will go offline at 9 a.m. PDT/noon EDT on Oct. 3. Servers will be down for 27 hours before Overwatch 2 launches at 12 p.m. PDT/3 p.m. EDT on Oct. 4.

Overwatch 2 will be free to play, but you have to pay your way into the original Overwatch. Unfortunately, you can no longer buy vanilla Overwatch from the Battle.net store. Instead you’ll need to buy the Overwatch 2 Watchpoint Pack ($39.99), which comes with a small collection of goodies:

This last entry, the original Overwatch, is what we’re interested in for this guide.

If you get this pack, you can install Overwatch and play a match or two, and that will