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Overwatch8 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

My experience playing Overwatch after OnlyWatching for so long

For a long time I’ve been an OnlyWatcher. Like many, I signed up day one, preordered as soon as it became available, and all of that stuff that makes me feel entitled to being in the closed beta. Unfortunately, my dreams of being in the beta were not to be, and instead I spent month after month just watching the game. While I didn’t watch any streams, I did tune into GosuGamers Weekly tournaments and watch professional teams play against each other. At the start of last week, I had pretty much resigned myself to my first opportunity to play being in the open beta.

Then, Blizzard announced that there would be another beta weekend. The hope to stop being an OnlyWatcher and finally play the game I’ve worked so hard on making content for and so long watching, was rekindled. I waited hours just not really doing anything, constantly looking over to Battle.net in the other window to check if I’d gotten in. A few hours after waves started I had given up hope, I thought I hadn’t gotten in. I got up from my chair and did something else for half an hour; the nerves were too much for me. When I came back and sat back down I happened to glance over at my second monitor to see an “Install” button where there had been none.

I absolutely freaked out. To finally be able to play Overwatch was a dream come true. I planned my schedule entirely around playing the game during the 36 hours it would be up for. The next day I actually woke up early for once to be able to play. I hopped in as soon as it became 9am, and after waiting for about 30 minutes for servers to calm down a bit, I got into my first match. It was an absolute blast. The server went down right before we won, but despite that I still had a ton of fun. Server issues persisted for a while but eventually I was playing match after match of Overwatch.

Of the 36 hours of beta access I played 28. Playing Overwatch after having watched so much was immensely satisfying. I thought that it would have cheapened the experience, that I would have already seen so many things second hand that I wouldn’t enjoy it much, but it was far more enjoyable than I had expected even before I started watching. In fact, I felt that by watching I had gained a lot. By watching, I already knew a ton of advanced techniques. I understood what heroes were good on what maps and in which situations, and who countered who. It gave me an edge on my opponents that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Overall watching helped me and just made the experience that much better. I got to skip a lot of the learning curve and got straight into, in my opinion, the most fun part of playing: competing. It genuinely felt awesome to not have a barrier of knowledge in the way of just being able to play. Just being able to jump in and have it be skill that determined whether or not I did or didn’t do well was awesome, and I had so much fun with it.

It’s only been a few days since the weekend ended but I’m already having withdrawal and waiting for release. Watching so much Overwatch has been awesome for me, and I can’t wait until I get another opportunity and excercise my knowledge again.

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