Current Events > Overwatch League officially dead.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/toronto-defiant-exits-overwatch-league/

Wow, who would have thought that Blizzard of all companies would fuck up their own IP this much. I, sir, am shocked by this revelation.

lol

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/20089258.jpg

Does This means overwatch no longer an esport???

I'm surprised they didn't make a bigger deal with they decided to change the team's from 6 players to 5.

Can Microsoft split Activision Blizzard up again and just shut down Blizzard?

Ratchetrockon posted...

Does This means overwatch no longer an esport???

I don't follow this stuff

Sounds like they're done trying to force city-based teams (that are mostly comprised of players that don't actually live in those cities) and forced esports events. Instead they may pivot to 3rd party organizers like FACEIT.

__aCEr__ posted...

Can Microsoft split Activision Blizzard up again and just shut down Blizzard?

Can we just shut down both? Activision ain't any better

Good

Imagine owning this IP and making the game that normally is the spinoff game in a franchise your main products, only supported by a few animated shorts, weird crossover toys and comics. They could have made this franchise huge, with actual cartoons/CG shows, story based spinoff games, movies and what else not.

The only esports remotely interesting to watch are fighting games.

Zwijn posted...

Imagine owning this IP and making the game that normally is the spinoff game in a franchise your main products, only supported by a few animated shorts, weird crossover toys and comics. They could have made this franchise huge, with actual cartoons/CG shows, story based spinoff games, movies and what else not.

Yeah, I made a topic about Overwatch's wasted potential a few weeks ago. I don't care for the online battle arena gameplay, but 1-player action and adventure spinoffs? I'd been all over those.

ZMythos posted...

Sounds like they're done trying to force city-based teams (that are mostly comprised of players that don't actually live in those cities) and forced esports events. Instead they may pivot to 3rd party organizers like FACEIT.

oh ok thanks for the info =]

Think I read that the Saudis are running the new tournaments, which is funny since SA just won the Overwatch World Championships, despite having no OWL players.

Its ok im sure Diablo 4 will generate some revenue.

I have a hunch some people on this board believe all forms of competitive gaming are cringe.

Overwatch is fun to play and to watch a single player, but it is a disaster to try and do as an e-sport. For FPS that cut to multiple screens, you just can't keep up with what's going on with that many players.

Solid_Sonic posted...

I have a hunch some people on this board believe all forms of competitive gaming are cringe.

idk about this board but this opinion was prevalent on ps4 board a few years ago idk about now

__aCEr__ posted...

Can Microsoft split Activision Blizzard up again and just shut down Blizzard?

Blizzard was mostly fine until hyper capitalist activision came along

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Eh, Valorant is the same thing and it still gets pretty good viewership. Not that Overwatch didn't.

Moving off Twitch probably hurt the league most. Prior to their deal with Google, they were being shown on Disney XD and stuff.

What Blizzard really messed up on, was not making an Overwatch show for kids. You've got all sorts of characters to use, and how they didn't just make a 30 minute animated show and put it on Netflix or Disney is beyond me. There's little to no actual explained lore in the game outside of comic books and like 10-15 short cinematics. There's no reason they couldn't make a TV show to expand the audience more, and bring in more people.

Same can be said about WoW too. How they didn't make a cartoon on that is stunningly dumb. Yes they had a movie, but that was it. There's a rich history there and they could easily make bank branching out of the MMORPG and novels for it.

Blizzard higher ups are just idiots.

Its hard to believe a Esport pushed that hard could fail from a product as popular as OW was.

You could even watch matchs from the game live as well. So that should have been a decent viewer count there alone I assume.

Overwatch will suffer the same fate as RWBY in only being known for the porn in the future and maybe fanfiction that tries to "Fix" the broken story for the few who still care that Overwatch had a plot

My favourite thing about OWL is how thr Shanghai Dragons went from losing 40+ matches in a row to becoming champions.

Forty_Niners posted...

Eh, Valorant is the same thing and it still gets pretty good viewership. Not that Overwatch didn't.

Moving off Twitch probably hurt the league most. Prior to their deal with Google, they were being shown on Disney XD and stuff.

Valorant also is a much more stable camera as not much happens on screen when your just holding corners. The twitch move is definitely the largest outside contributor to their failure. There were also some majorly bad deals made backstage.

Part of the problem with OWL being so forced is that nobody knew the players. There were no big personalities that you could name. No streams you could watch with scrims, pubs, or interactions with these players and teams. That's what happens when you don't give a community time and space to evolve.

As someone who was really into Overwatch at one point in time, I never once watched Overwatch League lol

ZMythos posted...

Part of the problem with OWL being so forced is that nobody knew the players. There were no big personalities that you could name. No streams you could watch with scrims, pubs, or interactions with these players and teams. That's what happens when you don't give a community time and space to evolve.

It was also mad weird seeing a teams named Florida Mayhem and Houston Outlaws consisting of 12 Asian guys who didn't speak a word of English.

Even less popular games like TF2 have in-house names for both casual and competitive scenes.

Tagg, B4nny, Ma3la, Star_, Jerma, Muselk, Uncle Dane, LazyPurple. All at some point played competitively and had successful youtube/twitch channels (some have since moved on from the game).

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I vaguely recall a few but most were streamers whose careers didnt last long and either quit due to controversy, boredom, stress or for some just preferred to stream instead.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Nah, they did try to have actual "home" games. Each team would fly to each other's "home" city. Of course this was crazy expensive and only lasted a little while, because covid shut it down.

There was also the whole thing where Overwatch was a bad game

Kinda funny they killed the game to make OWL more exciting to generate viewers / money and then OWL is done, lol.