In the past many games would come with a built-in LAN feature that allowed users to play on the same network with each other. This was great if you were all in the same house/room, making it a slightly less lag-free experience. Fast forward to today, LAN options aren’t that available anymore, and Blizzard’s Overwatch will not be the exception.
Speaking to Kotaku, Overwatch’s game director Jeff Kaplan confirmed that the game would be having its own dedicated servers. It will be hosted on Battle.net, which is pretty much Blizzard’s online platform that hosts games like StarCraft, Diablo, and Warcraft, and now we guess Overwatch is being added to the mix (to no one’s surprise, really).
According to Kaplan, “Overwatch will run completely on Blizzard servers. With that said, and when we do matchmaking it will be in a Blizzard pool, we are looking at regions and IPs and doing the best to minimise any sort of ping issues.” This sounds like a great idea but if there is a downside, it would be that any issues on Blizzard’s end pretty much affects everyone.
As many might recall, Blizzard ran into many a server issue with Diablo 3 at its launch, causing everyone to question the company’s decision to make it an always-on video game. Things were eventually ironed out but the initial experience was more or less ruined, but hopefully that won’t happen with Overwatch. No word on when Overwatch will be launched, but a closed beta is expected to be launched soon so gamers will want to keep an eye out for that.