Hello there. I am new to OW competitive scene (started to watch OW at blizzcon). So i got a question and maybe some1 can give me an answer : what is Contenders teams and why most of the NA teams (Dallas Fuel, Houston Uprising, NY Excelsior, etc) has mix of international players (belgian and south korean, for example, how do they communicate?).
Don’t really listen to that. Blizzard does care about contenders, and hopefully announcements arrive soon, it’s just that Blizzard’s primary goal right now is to focus and market the OWL. Once the season gets rolling, Blizzard can then put some hype into contenders and the players there to get people interested in mid season signings and the multiple teams that exist outside the premiere league.
Blizzard getting success with every game they release sicne WoW release (like 15 years ago?) and they keep doing good work bringing us new wow expansions (not playing wow, but ppl that palying wow are glad i think) and new games (overwatch is the latest example (not sure if i spelled it correct, but i hope you got it right)). They keep support Diablo 3, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm (last 2 are f2p games, so they get nothing from it since most of the HS and HotS community playing it for free).
And what did Valve release in last 10 years exapt CSGO and Dota2? And which of those 2 got major expansions/DLCs? Noone. L4D3? Not yet here or announced. HalfLife3? Not yet here or announced. HalfLife2 Ep3? Not yet here or announced.
So, you cant really compare blizzard to any other game developer.
(imo even UbiSoft/Creative Essembly/SEGA/2K/Square Enix is not that money hungry as Valve)
Where does all that money go? Valve take the money yet put millions back in the form of majors, name one big tournament Blizzard have done outside of Blizzcon for any game since SC1?
Blizzard barely pushed wow arena as an e-sport even though it was popular expansions ago, can't remember Blizzard doing big LAN events for WC3 even when it was popular as fuck, Blizzard take money and put it back into games but never do anything for the community in terms of big prize LANS other than OWL and even then, how much money did Blizzard pump into OWL?
I'm pretty sure if you looked at how much money Valve and Blizzard have dished out as prize money for their respective games that Valve would take the biggest shit all over Blizzard, who cares about expansions? CS and Dota2 are massive games where you have the potential to make millions any given year playing them, when was the last time you could say that about Blizzard games? never.
Ask yourself what you want as a professional gamer, millions of dollars or expansions.
Valve doing all those CSGO majors and Dota Internationals with gamers money. 50% of stickers sold in CSGO goes into their pockets, 75% of the compendium sold going into their pockets.
For example, TI'17 prize pool is $24,787,916, base is $1,600,000 and contributed is $23,187,916. Those $23,187,916 is 25% of the money they got from selling compendiums, so $23,187,916 * 3 = $69.563.748 is money they got once a year from selling some useless digital book. Those money not going to invest any new projects or expansions or anything else. And i am not even talking about money from selling CSGO keys, 15% of items value at steam market and money from developers for selling their games on steam platforms, etc.
$1.000.000 for 2x CSGO majors and $1.600.000 for next international is NOTHING.
And what did blizzard got from SC2 (all 3 expansions taken 2gether)? One time purchase of 20-30$ and they used some amount of money to make another 2 expansions. They getting nearly nothing from Diablo3 and HotS, sicne ppl not buying much of in-game goodies for RL$ and they keep release new heroes/skins/etc for HotS and new armor sets/balance the classes/etc for D3.
I think its easy to invest money into smthn and to be philanthropist if the money coming from other pockets and not yours :c
(srry for my bad spelling/English)
Exactly, they are making money and putting half of it back into tournaments, how much do you think Blizzard have made over the years since they started with D2 and SC1 and how much have they put into tournaments or e-sports in general? Blizzard have gamers money yet what have they done with it? how much money has Blizzard and Activision made in the last 20 years from gamers money and how much have they put back into e-sports?
How many tournaments have Blizzard themselves or officially backed for any game they have created? never mind expansion packs, SC1 was one of the most popular games on the planet yet had like 1 or something didn't it? WC3:TFT didn't have any yet it was huge, Quake 3 didn't have any yet it was huge, LoL/DotA doesn't have any yet are huge.
This is e-sports bro, we don't want expansions we want e-sports, we want tournaments all over the world with the best players/teams competing for juicy prizes.
Hi. Overwatch League (OWL) is a worldwide league featuring 12 teams from across the united states and 3 other countries. The organizations bought their way into the league and thus could keep their players from that team. This is why you see Florida Mayhem consisting of Misfits, Dallas with Envyus, and Seoul with Lunatic-Hai and so on. Before November, teams could pick up free agent players, such as SoOn, Unkoe, Sinatraa, Jake, Seagull etc. They can have a max of 12 players per team. There is a mid-season signing window, so players that didn't get a contract before the signing window ended now will have another shot. Players like Akm, Knoxx, FCTFTN, etc. The league works a lot like soccer if you are familiar with that format. The best players go on the best teams. I am not European so I do not know this for sure, but a lot of countries in Europe have people who can speak near fluent English, so communication is not that much of a problem, as for South Korea- the best case of it I can think of is KariV and FaTe for Immortals (Now LA Valiant). They spoke no English when they came to the states, and from what I've seen from streams, they both can speak good enough English to communicate with their team.
Contenders is kind of in a strange spot. It's probably going to be a minor league type of deal where players can try and show that they are OWL material. The top orgs are now in OWL or disbanded, so this might be a strange situation of some of the best teams not in OWL forming. I really hope this helps!
Discord