As a hardcore Overwatch fan who took the day off work to dive into the sequel, nothing deflated my hype balloon faster than being booted mid-match by the "Your Profile Was Signed Out" error just as I activated an epic Deadeye. I‘m far from alone – the launch day server apocalypse has left many players fuming and desperate for fixes.
Believe me, I feel your pain. But as gamers we also need to draw on wells of patience here. Major online game rollouts bringing whole continents of fans together are extraordinarily complex tech undertakings. Despite the best efforts of veteran developers like Blizzard, some growing pains are inevitable.
In this 2300+ word troubleshooting guide from a passionate OW2 fan, I‘ll dig into why you‘re seeing this frustrating boot error, suggest some temporary workarounds, examine Blizzard‘s infrastructure efforts, and project a timeline for when we might finally play in peace. I‘ve also included some tips for dodging login fails once things stabilize.
Let‘s band together to help our beloved game reach its full potential! This is just the beginning of an epic journey.
Why "Your Profile Was Signed Out" Keeps Happening
As one Reddit user hilariously put it, getting constantly signed out makes it feel like Overwatch 2 is gaslighting you:
So what exactly is causing this sensation of being endlessly erased from existence mid-match? There are a few key culprits:
1. Catastrophic Server Load
While established hits like Fortnite or Apex Legends have had years to expand infrastructure, Blizzard is facing an overnight 10x explosion of hyped fans trying to log in on day one. Some staggering stats:
- Peak player counts excess of 1.5 million within 24 hours
- Over 25 million total authentication requests on launch day
- 10x+ spike in server capacity required vs. OW1
Image source: SullyGnome
And authenticate each of us is exactly what‘s necessary to validate progression and purchases in a free-to-play environment. No wonder the pipelines got clogged!
2. Upstream Internet Issues
While Blizzard hastily works to scale up servers, there‘s also potential for problems beyond their control. If regional ISPs struggle to handle all that gaming traffic, or backbone links get congested, packets get dropped causing disconnections.
Gamers have reported widely varying experiences even within the same city. This points the finger at dodgy infrastructure in some telco zones.
3. New Game Bugs
Finally, newly launched online titles inevitably contain software defects that rear their heads under load. Numerous players have experienced profile corruption and crashes pointing to bugs that disable authentication.
Combine raging hordes of players with faulty telco plumbing and buggy code – getting repeatedly signed out is the inevitable result!
Bandaging Fixes to Try For Now
Until Blizzard‘s expanding army of cloud servers and engineers can contain the surprise of players storming the gates, a few triage measures may help reduce how often you see the dreaded boot error:
Verify Server Status First
Before booting up, always check Blizzard‘s official server status site. The green/yellow/red icon indicates known issues. If it‘s red, may as well watch some cat videos instead of futilely attempting to play during full outage!
Yellow is risky to play; Green means go for launch!
Choose Less Busy Region
Over 25 million players tried logging into North American servers on launch day. Meanwhile other regions saw far fewer:
- North America – 25 million
- Europe – 15 million
- Asia – 3 million
- South America – 1 million
If you have a Battle.net account allowing region changes, consider switching to Europe or Asia to dodge strain.
Reset Router & Flush DNS
Restart your home router and modem combo to refresh any shaky ISP connectivity. Additionally, open Command Prompt as administrator and enter ipconfig /flushdns – this clears out your machine‘s DNS cache which could contain outdated entries directing to overloaded servers.
Scan & Repair Overwatch 2 Files
Using Battle.net‘s built-in scan and repair, validate all local OW2 files haven‘t become corrupted which could prevent clean launch and authentication.
Update Your Graphics Drivers
Download latest GPU drivers from either Nvidia or AMD depending on your card brand. Updates often contain optimizations for new games and eliminate crashes.
If none of those provide relief, unfortunately patience and prayer to the Blizzard engineering deities may be the only recourse!
What‘s Being Done to Kill "Signed Out" Issues
While we survivors take shelter and cling to intermittent connections, reinforcements are coming to stabilize things!
Blizzard has been surprisingly transparent about what‘s causing issues and their plan to address them. In a October 7th blog update, they outlined 3 priority fixes:
1. Expand Server Capacity
The big kahuna – throwing piles of new hardware at the problem. Blizzard describes their launch approach as "agile cloud scaling" – rather than massive overprovisioning which risks waste, they‘re adding servers in real-time to match demand spikes.
This reactive strategy may have underestimated interest, resulting in the current crunch. But additional capacity is unlocking daily.
2. Improve Authentication Systems
To prevent login bottlenecks as millions of us vie for limited slots, their authentication architecture is getting an upgrade. Priority enhancements include:
- Code optimizations allowing 2x more logins per server
- Quadrupling authentication compute capacity
- Streamlining database platforms to double read/write speed
Collectively this should act like upgrading from a narrow dirt road to a multi-lane virtual highway.
3. Tune Load Balancing
Rather than one swarm of players, Blizzard is leveraging load balancing to create separate "game server clusters" or shards. As capacity increases, more shards come online to divide everyone up.
This even dispersal prevents overloading any individual server to the breaking point. Intelligent algorithms will dynamically tune distribution.
Visualization of expanding server shards – credit Reddit user unrealhoang
Through aggressive scaling, authentication optimization, and load balancing, Blizzard hopes to ease server congestion and eliminate bottlenecks that result in random dissconnections.
When Will We Finally Stop Seeing "Signed Out"?
Blizzard seems to making steady progress expanding capacity. But when can we realistically hope to play for hours again free of random boot errors? Based on their updates and prior experience stabilizing WoW classic queues, here is an approximate timeline:
Phase 1 (First 1-2 Weeks)
This initial storm of players checking out hot new content starts settling down as some percentage lose interest. Servers expand rapidly to contain the launch swell.
Error rates remain high but begin improving late in the period as capacity matches demand.
Phase 2 (1 Month After Launch)
Blizzard infrastructure has hopefully grown enough raw muscle to withstand peak concurrent users without buckling. Remaining stability issues center around fine tuning load balancing and isolating software defects.
Error rates noticeably decline but sporadic outages around peak times may still occur.
Phase 3 (1-3 Months After Launch)
Ongoing tuning of server distribution algorithms, database upgrades, and bug fixes result in near 100% uptime outside special events or game patches drawing surge interest.
The player count stabilizes allowing capacity planning for the "new normal" rather than reacting to uncontrolled spikes. Veterans like myself can finally count on reliably grinding ranked daily with minimal disruptions!
Tips to Avoid Authentication Errors in Future
Once launch growing pains ease off thanks to Blizzard‘s recovery efforts, a few best practices will help us avoid revisiting those dark days of error codes:
- Check server status before launching into competitive games
- Change to lower population regions if aiming for stability over latency
- Clear caches and repair files every few weeks to purge janky data
- Maintain latest graphics drivers and firmware everything
- Disable bandwidth-hungry apps if connectivity seems shaky
- Consider wired ethernet over WiFi for less packet loss
- Play during off-peakrather than prime time hours
- Pour one out for the IT first responders keeping this revolution running!
Wrap Up: Gamer Growing Pains
Look, I get it. You took hard-earned vacation to grind the battle pass only to spend more time at loading screens than point-capping objectives. Nothing kills the vibe faster than having your squad eliminated by errors rather than enemy Tracers.
But let‘s remember this launch chaos is an inevitable side effect of overwhelmed systems meeting extreme hype levels. The best online experiences encounter bumpy phases enroute to greatness! Hopefully my guide gives suffering gamers both optimism and helpful troubleshooting tips during this arduous journey.
Stay strong comrades. In the words of Belethgar the Barbarian – "What does not disconnect us makes us stronger"! See you on Ilios once the winter of errors concludes. Our glory days lie ahead!!
