Overwatch League: all of the news about Blizzard’s ambitious e-sports league – The Verge

Overwatch League season 6 is bringing massive changes

2023-02-08T16:01:00-05:00

The sixth season of the Overwatch League will be its biggest yet, literally. With Overwatch 2 in its first full year and finally in the hands of players worldwide, the League is making sweeping changes to accompany this new state of things.

To start, the Philadelphia Fusion and the Paris Eternal are no more. Paris has "relocated" to Vegas to become the Vegas Eternal, and the Philadelphia Fusion have undergone a complete rebrand, relocating to Seoul to become the Seoul Infernal. The Paris to Vegas pipeline had been in the cards (heh) for a while, as the Eternal's Call of Duty League sister team, the Paris Legion, had rebranded to the Vegas L …

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At the Overwatch League grand finals, a candy bar was the real winner

2022-11-11T15:53:05-05:00

The Overwatch League 2022 grand finals were last week, concluding a season that was one of OWL's most successful. Fans broke viewership records, there were several successful live events, and on the whole, folks were simply jazzed to see competitive Overwatch played in a brand-new game. And though the San Francisco Shock were thankfully (blessedly, praise Jesus-ly) kept from a third championship, the real winners weren't the triumphant Dallas Fuel but, curiously, one of the worst candy bars on the planet: Butterfingers.

A wild Butterfinger at one of the Overwatch League booths at the 2022 grand finals. | Image: Ash Parrish / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Image: Ash Parrish / The Verge">

Before this season's playoffs, the Overwatch League was going through a bit of a rough patch. After the news broke about A …

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How (and why) to watch the Overwatch League grand finals

2022-11-02T13:23:49-04:00

The Overwatch League playoffs are already underway, but it's not too late to catch the first live grand finals event in two years on Friday, November 4th, broadcast on YouTube. (Get the full playoff schedule here.) We don't know yet which two teams will be competing in the final match, and any attempt to predict the participants is an act of monumental hubris.

Depending on your perspective, the Overwatch League has this either frustrating or exciting tradition of introducing balance patches right before the playoffs. When that happens, the game's strategies, known as metas, that have been solidified over the last few weeks of the season ar …

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Overwatch League cancels its in-person playoff events

2021-08-26T14:50:23-04:00

The 2021 Overwatch League playoffs have hit a slight snag. Yesterday, the League announced it will no longer host live playoff matches in Dallas and Los Angeles.

"Due to significant changes in the environment affecting travel for some teams, we've decided to pivot away from originally scheduled live events in Dallas and Los Angeles," the League wrote in a statement on Twitter. "Instead, postseason competition will return to Hawai'i for playoffs."

The move is likely in response to the COVID-19 delta variant surge that's spreading across the globe and the diminishing ability for travelers to obtain visas to and from the United States.

Last …

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The key to the Overwatch League’s 2021 season is a trip to Hawaii

2021-04-15T10:00:00-04:00

A 2020 OWL match in Dallas, Texas. | Photo: Dallas Fuel.

When the Overwatch League shifted to online play last season, it meant that the dream of a global esports league - one with teams spread across three continents - would have to wait. It also meant that fans wouldn't be able to see the best teams compete against each other. The league split up into two divisions, with some teams based in Asia and others in North America. Because of issues around latency, those regions never competed against each other until the Grand Finals, which took place in Korea and featured some of the best matches of the season.

So when the league start thinking of ways to make the 2021 season better, figuring out a w …

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The Overwatch League is bringing back some live matches with a trio of events in China

2021-04-14T00:01:00-04:00

A 2020 Overwatch League match at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. | Photo: steadyprime for NYXL.

The Overwatch League kicks off its fourth season this week, and while the majority of matches will be played remotely, today the league announced plans to hold multiple live events in China.

There will be three events spread across three cities - Hangzhou in June, Shanghai in July, and Guangzhou in August - and the league says they will take place in venues with reduced capacity "in order to comply with local safety requirements." The events will be something of a hybrid between online and in-person competition. Here's how OWL describes it:

The five China-based teams - Hunters, Charge, Spark, Valiant, and Dragons - plan to travel to each o …

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The Overwatch League’s 2021 season will start in April

2021-01-14T13:00:00-05:00

For its first three years of existence, the Overwatch League has kicked off early in the year. But that's going to change in 2021. Today, Blizzard announced that its ambitious esports league will begin play in April. It will also be the first season in which the league starts off with remote matches - and there will be some big changes to accommodate that. "To take full advantage of what was learned last season, we've made several changes that will improve the quality of competition and the fan experience for this coming season," Blizzard says.

First is a structural change. Blizzard says the 20-team league will be split into two divisions - …

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After a rough 2020 season, the Overwatch League aims to end on a high note

2020-10-07T13:02:20-04:00

This year has been a tumultuous one for the Overwatch League. It wasn't supposed to be this way: the 2020 season was slated to be a breakout year, a chance to finally realize the ambition of having a truly global league with teams traveling all over the world to compete against one another.

That dream was halted due to the ongoing pandemic and the inability for teams and players to travel. To make matters worse, viewership dropped after a shift from Twitch to YouTube, and the rapid rise of Riot's team-shooter Valorant kicked off an exodus of big-name players, led by 2019 OWL MVP Jay "Sinatraa" Won. At one point, the second-best team in the …

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When the Overwatch League moved online, fans found new ways to connect

2020-09-09T12:37:41-04:00

A group of Chengdu Hunters fans following an August 8th watch party. | Photo: Panda Base

Marie Blanquart had big plans for 2020. As president of The Rooster Club, a supporters group for the Overwatch League's Paris Eternal, she spent a lot of time thinking about what the fan group could do for the new season, where each of the league's 20 teams would host home matches in local arenas for the first time. The group worked with the Eternal to have their own seating section during games in Paris so that they could lead chants and cheers. They also planned trips to watch the Eternal play in London and Toronto, and they hoped to organize watch parties for fans all across France.

But then the pandemic happened, and all of those plans …

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The Overwatch League’s Grand Finals championship will take place online

2020-07-15T14:00:00-04:00

For the first time in its three-year history, there won't be an arena full of screaming fans to go along with the Overwatch League's Grand Finals. As the league has shifted online for 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic, it has had to reimagine what its championship tournament will look like. And today Blizzard provided some details on the upcoming playoff format.

Essentially, at the conclusion of the regular season, all of the 20 teams will face off in a playoff-style tournament kicking off on September 3rd, with seeding based on how they performed during the year. The format will be similar to the tournament structure the league adopted midw …

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