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Overwatch League: introduction and brief analysis

The long-awaited Overwatch League has begun. Blizzard’s big event is finally here, and it’s here to stay. It can be watched via Twich, a streaming platform that paid ninety million dollars to get the broadcast rights for two years. The first phase of the season ended with New York Excelsior, Houston Outlaws and London Spitfire at the top of the table. In the playoffs, the first match was Houston Outlaws versus London Spitfire, and the winner then faced New York Excelsior. The winner of these playoffs was London Spitfire.

Overwatch hasn’t stopped growing in all this time. At the 2016 Game Awards it was named Game of the Year, and at the 2017 edition it also won in the categories of Best eSports Game and Best Continuous Game. But that wasn’t enough for Blizzard to stay in its niche or even be just another game in eSports. For more than two years, the company has consolidated at the competitive level: Overwatch World Cup, Overwatch Contenders and OGN APEX in Korea were the precursors to this new event, where Blizzard decided to go all out, build a stadium and have the best teams in the world compete against each other.

Among the requirements were that the teams had to be new franchises, that they had to be based in cities, and that twenty million dollars had to be paid to create them. So great teams and players who had participated in Overwatch Contenders, Overwatch World Cup, OGN APEX and others were spread out among twelve teams. But for this first season, they didn’t settle in their cities, but in Burbank, California, from where they play this first competition. For us Europeans it is not possible to watch the games live because of the schedule, but you can follow the broadcasts on tape.

The twelve teams and their squads can be seen on the Overwatch League website, and the matches can be followed both on the website and on Twitch or through the mobile application. Among the players are three Spaniards: Jonathan “HarryHook” Tejedor Rua in Dallas Fuel, Alberto “Neptuno” González Molinillo in Philadelphia Fusion and Daniel “dhaK” Martínez Paz in San Francisco Shock. All three hold support positions on their teams. In the first few weeks, the predominance of teams with Korean squads was clear. At the beginning, Seoul Dynasty seemed to be the strongest team, but by the end of the period they had dropped to fourth place.

Overall, the games were entertaining to watch, and although the visuals are sometimes too confusing, Blizzard is still working on improving this problem. Most concerning, however, is the fact that too many matches end 4-0. When a team is so clearly superior on the first map, the rest can become uninteresting, even if it is still important for the rankings. The problem could be solved if the compositions were more varied, but the classic “dive meta” (dive meta is a composition of heroes that allows you to flank the enemy team and quickly take them by surprise, eliminating their supporters first) clashed with Mercy’s meta, punishing mainly the supporters who played Mercy and Zenyatta the worst.

We could see this in the Philadelphia Fusion vs Dallas Fuel match. Philadelphia Fusion’s supports were better (Neptune made more than thirty eliminations than Mercy in this first phase), while Dallas’ were often alone, giving ShaDowBurn the opportunity to eliminate them. With the end of the Mercy meta, it is expected that the compositions will change and that this will lead to more dynamic and interesting games, but although the strongest supports are now Lúcio and Moira, Mercy is not completely gone from the meta and there is even room for an expected return of Ana. The next hero is also coming, and rumor has it that it will be a new tank. Blizzard has assured that he will play a key role and has hinted that he will change the meta.

However, the league is not without problems and controversies. Even before the start of the preseason, there were rumors that some players had participated in “boosting” deals in the past, a practice that consists of paying another player to move you up in the rankings. Blizzard has therefore suspended Su-min “Sado” Kim from Philadelphia Fusion for the entire preseason and thirty games.