Overwatch devs reveal OW2 was supposed to become an MMO after PvE content

The Overwatch 2 developers have confirmed that Overwatch was initially planned to become an MMO after the PvE content was released.

The decision to cut parts of the planned PvE content from Overwatch 2 has resulted in a ton of backlash against Blizzard, even though a story campaign is still on the way.

Despite the story missions releasing in Season 6, the devs have taken a lot of heat over the scrapped Hero Missions – a unique part of the planned PvE experience featuring deeply replayable content and special ability unlocks for every character.

In a blog post detailing why the PvE Hero Missions were cut, Aaron Keller explained that the plan for Overwatch 2 was for it to become an MMO, just like the canceled project that spawned Overwatch itself: Project Titan.

Overwatch 2 was intended to be an MMO

According to Keller, the FPS MMO Project Titan was still near and dear to the developers’ hearts, and as such, it was the end goal following the release of PvE.

“The Overwatch team was founded in the wake of a cancelled game at Blizzard called Project Titan. That game had many facets, but at its heart, it was an FPS MMO. The Overwatch team, especially at its inception, considered itself an MMO development team,” Keller explained.

“As we transitioned away from that original concept and started creating Overwatch, we included plans to one day return to that scope. We had a crawl, walk, run plan. Overwatch was the crawl, a dedicated version of PvE was the walk, and an MMO was the run. It was built into the DNA of the team early on, and some of us considered that final game a true realization of the original vision of Project Titan.”

However, as we now know, work on the PvE portion didn’t go as planned, with Keller admitting that the scope was too large and the team was unable to create a “polished, cohesive experience.”

This all said, the director is confident that this change will be for the better, further commenting how “something beautiful” came from the cancelation of Project Titan and like it, this change will lead to the future of Overwatch.