Grand finals just wrapped, and after the heartfelt farewell by the announce team, I suspect everyone knows it’s done. Congrats to the Mayhem for being the final champions!
Hopefully Blizzard will restart things with a grassroots open tournament format and build a championship series on top of it (like other more successful esports). We’ll have to see.
yeah it was pretty clear from Soe’s message that even if Blizz hasn’t publicly said it, production has been told it’s over. A few players who even played today have already retired (Twilight) or moved to new non-OWL teams (Leave).
I wonder what could have been if Covid didn’t show up at the worst possible moment.
Wonder what the people who blame OWL when they step in dog poop will think after this when balance is still slow and bad
lets be honest, we cant blame a pandemic for this. streaming became VERY popular in 2020 the OWL should of exploded in popularity but the game just wasnt very fun to play or watch.
all the reasons OWL died (though its not actually confirmed yet btw) are because of the dev’s choices.
its easy to blame it all on the exec’s but the exec’s didnt tell them to balance the game poorly and ignore all feedback from the high elo players.
there used to be an endemic scene before OWL, Blizzard just changed their policy and ‘banned’ non official events.
no idea whether the sponsorships are still there, Alienware used to provide a cash prize for a monthly tournament for example. how’s CS:GO esports doing these days?
The meta/watchability of the time didn’t help but OWL was intending on doing mostly live homestands. This was especially what the owners were banking on to actually make money. Once that was no longer a possibility lots of owners lost interest and wanted to do the bare minimum to not breach contract (Chengdu was different as their parent org had NO money, Blizzard could fine them a trillion dollars and not see a penny)
COVID meant you had the terrible, hard to watch meta PLUS none of the hype of homestands and the lower standard of play from going online. Blizz also began changing rules to appease the owners like reducing salary requirements and room and board provisions.
all very true but they could of just did the tournys purely online for a bit like other esports did.
the real issue is just it wasnt enjoyable to watch. the fact they didnt want to do in public only makes it worse but it didnt save them from the other.
Covid hindered the plan for city-to-city travel in 2021. And it was an excellent organizational plan, no one denies it. As for the flight of sponsors after the scandals that emerged in Blizzard, it is 100% the responsibility of the management.
But 2022 was really the time when it was really a case of NOT renewing the OWL: you can’t have a tournament on an “OW2” that hadn’t yet been released to the public. And 2023 was no better, with the excuse of early access status to justify the incompleteness of the game’s functions for home users. “but look at the OWL, omg”. Sorry, first I’d rather have a game that exists 100% (promises kept included of “what was ow2”) and then maybe do a tournament on it with its 5v5.
what I mean is that COvid was less to blame in the closure of the OWL. Perhaps the most justifiable, but not the biggest cause of OWL’s decline.
ITS JOEVER
GOATS certainly didn’t help with watching OWL. It was a far cry from the previous games where skilled genji/widow maker/tracer were being utilized as compared to face smashing brig paired with 3 tanks.
They said, Microsoft is going to buy Blizzard some time between now, and this upcoming Friday.
It’s really unfortunate. I hope we have professionals in a better capacity
Now that the NFL style city system has failed, hopefully they’ll let a more grassroots tournament system spring up. And once it stabilizes, they can lay a championship qualifying series on top of it. Kind of like all the successful esports have done.
There will probably be something called ‘Overwatch League’ next year (ie. the brand won’t die). But OWL in its current form is over.
It’s probably going to look more like Contenders or the world cup.
Honestly, it’s probably for the best. Let the Esport be more organic.
I mean it’s not on the same level but my boyfriend won a cash prize and a 6k razer laptop for taking first place in a Total War: Warhammer tournament lol.
So I’m sure there’s sponsors that would be interested in Overwatch as long as players want a pro or semi-pro scene.
If OWL is gone does that mean no more free OWL tokens and skins?
OWL was a forced commercial mess with none of the foundation that more community-centred competitive scenes appear to have.
Blizz wanted the glitz, glamour, and corporate sponsorships of a huge e-sports scene, with none of the groundwork. Add to this the mis-management of players, the Blitzchung controversey, the loss of sponsorship, and the pandemic… it is unsurprising it fell like a house of cards.
Gross incompetence killed the league, and it will probably kill the game too. If it weren’t for the sexual harassment scandal and mismanagement of expectations for OW2, sponsorship wouldn’t have dropped and ticket sales would’ve been higher. But Blizzard and intelligence are two words that simply do not mingle.
thank god its over.
It was time they took `old yeller back to the shed…
It was pretty sad to watch over the last 2-3 years.
The execs are to blame, full stop. All the people who cared about this game and IP were run out by management/execs/Kotick specifically. Unrealistic demands were placed on them while receiving 0 budget(even though they absolutely had the money to keep both OW and OWL going).
They announced a sequel under Jeff that was going to be perfectly fine but he was run out, this caused the game to stagnate which would directly effect the state of OWL. No new maps/heroes and very minimal balance changes = stale meta. 6v6 was and still is better regardless but they decided to go with the horrendous 5v5 change. This adds several core gameplay issues for both pro play and casual play alike. Oh and let’s not forget they pissed on everyone and pissed off everyone when they decided to use PvE as a bait and switch to fully monetize all PVP content.
All of these things are direct results of exec/management/greed/corporate interference. The current C team doesn’t care right now, almost everybody at Blizzard is likely to lose their job in the next 8-10 weeks, so why would they care?