OW2 absolutely deserves criticism but that is factually incorrect - if you had OW1, all your stuff carried over. You didn't have to pay for anything you had previously
What is factually correct is that they promised no map or hero would ever be paid content when ow1 launched. Ow2 allowed them to eat their words and put new heroes behind a paywall.
If we're going for complete accuracy, that's not totally true either. You can unlock every hero through (free) challenges or pay to unlock them immediately.
Before I get called an OW2 fanboy: I loved OW1 and liked OW2 enough to play it for a few weeks but quit when they announced the PvE changes.
You can unlock every hero through (free) challenges or pay to unlock them immediately.
Which is a problem in competitive gaming. Mauga proved that when people were leaving comp games to buy the battle pass so they weren't getting obliterated for not having him unlocked yet. So sure it's not totally accurate to say new heroes are locked behind a paywall but the spirt is the same since it's still pay to win for a few weeks.
OW2 was to make things harder to obtain without spending money
They had already cancelled the campaign a long time ago, it really pissed off the HOTS community because the dev team was taken from that game to work on that