After three years of playing the game, that’s what it really feels like. Let me say this: you have to have an esports ready game, then make it esports when the time is right. You don’t just force the game into the pro scene. If you do, well you get what happened with Overwatch.
Less events, almost no lore, terrible balance changes, less communication, it’s almost like they pulled resources from the game. Looking back, this game would’ve been so much better had it not been forced into the pro scene.
I’ve heard that said about every Blizzard game except Diablo. Don’t really agree. I think people want these games to be Esports. The original Starcraft set that precedent.
I don’t mind it being an esport, but not an esport hosted by the company that also develops it. At least unofficial tournaments like Apex didn’t lock the live game’s patch cycles as a result of some attempt to sync the game with their own branded tournament.
Starcraft and Brood War didnt set that precedent though, the RTS genre did. Everyone just thought it was space Warcraft 3 and didnt care for any early material whatsoever, until Blizz overhauled and unified the visuals, sound, and story. It was made a mockery of in early E3 demos, then Blizz gave it their signature spit shine.
This isn’t even a problem, the issue is how quickly they dismantled the other tournaments and established a monopoly.
They threatened legal action against all other tournament organizers if candid OWL casters comments/tweets are anything to go by, and then set a hard limit on any org attempting to make a prize pool larger than $10k so as to make Contenders the de facto tier 2 league.
They literally strangled grassroots tourneys to death.
The game was forced into Sports thats why its took so long for 2-2-2 and patches.
if not the game would have launched with all these features and ones that are not here yet like a map editor as example we actually got an anthem but just cause it’s blizzard ppl gave it a pass even tho the game is a mess why? just look at the current meta and the slow pace of patches.
Now it’s just mainstream to blame OWL for every balance patch that you don’t like.
Nothing has been forced, the game was always heavily focused on E-Sport.
I don’t see why OWL is a problem, it helped E-Sport to being recognized in the world. It’s like saying soccers was forced into a competitive sports.
Do you think CS:GO or any competitive title would be alive without a proper competitive and
E-Sport scene ?
Blizz openly said they have several developers in constant communication with OWL plauers in a private Discord server operated by the pros and their team orgs. Jeff damage controlled it a bit by claiming the Discord server is not Blizzard’s own, but they still have private communication that no one else has.
OWL players have a direct line of communication, chase after the rules that benefit them most, and have direct involvement with QA testing any time they “discover” a “bug”, which then eventually trickles down into Live servers.
Case in point, Lucio literally had his second speed rework changed because of a “bug” with his speed stack cap being higher on OWL LAN 144 hz servers. Even though the stacks were working as intended, and it was their mistake on making the stacks dependent on server tickrate instead of actual timers, they still “bug fixed” and removed his stacks from ladder play, even though there was no conceivable way ladder players could ever have a higher stack cap.
You have to be incredibly blind to say that OWL has no influence.
The problem with tbem being the balance and esport entity together only comes from them having a monopoly on the eSports scene,
You can damn well bet there would have been larger Alienware/Apex/OGN leagues that wouldn’t give a damn about Blizzard’s balance decisions as long as they had the tools to organize their own league, and pros wouldn’t even participate in Blizzard’s league if the prize pools weren’t artificially restricted on all other orgs.
But they were snuffed out and now the only league is OWL and OWWC and Contenders/Path to Pro.
