Blizzard is removing Mei from Overwatch 2 until mid-November
Blizzard is disabling yet another Overwatch 2 hero due to bugs with their abilities. Only a few weeks after we temporarily lost Bastion and Torbjorn (opens in new tab) for bugs that made them wildly (but entertainingly) overpowered, Mei is now being taken out of play for a little bit in order to fix a glitch with her Ice Wall ability.
“We are temporarily disabling Mei to address a bug with her Ice Wall ability that allows heroes to reach unintended locations,” Blizzard said in a tweet posted yesterday (opens in new tab), “We are working to address these issues as quickly as possible and aim to bring Mei back in our next upcoming patch which is set for November 15”. Bad news for Mei mains (‘Meins’?), who will have to find someone else to play as for the next two weeks.
Blizzard is trying to address a bug that allowed players to use Mei’s Ice Wall to traverse outside the intended boundaries of Overwatch 2’s maps. You can see the bug in action in a clip posted to Reddit (opens in new tab) (originally spotted by Polygon (opens in new tab)), in which a Mei player is able to get underneath the level geometry and fire up at players above them. Personally, I think Mei-Ling Zhou, planeswalker is a great new twist on the character, but it looks like Blizzard disagrees.
The Ice Wall bug is yet another bump in Overwatch 2’s already bumpy launch. Since the game came out in early October (putting a swift end to Overwatch 1 (opens in new tab) in the process), it’s been beset by agonising queues (opens in new tab), controversy over its phone number requirement (opens in new tab), and even the creation by some players of a gross “sexual assault” custom game mode (opens in new tab) that Blizzard had to crack down on. It hasn’t been smooth sailing, to say the least, and the problems surrounding characters like Bastion, Torbjorn, and now Mei certainly haven’t helped the perception that the game has gotten off on the wrong foot.
Still, for the most part, Overwatch 2 is a game we like in spite of its flaws. We gave it 74% (opens in new tab), noting that the foundation established by the first game is “too robust and too distinct to be completely erased,” but that the transition to a live service model risks hollowing out the best parts of the Overwatch experience if allowed to run amok. Here’s hoping the ship gets righted soon.
