“well” is what I want to emphasize here, most of the pharah play has been subpar imo, and if you take on a player like Mangachu for instance, his high level pharah play is hindered by his underwhelming genji play. To me tseini would be one of the top pharahs in the league, mixed with his ability to play a good genji; he will be a valuable asset to whoever picked him up

Tseini is a really slept on pickup imo. Someone who plays pharah and genji well is not plentiful in OWL

Can’t help but think the Gladiators are overrated here, but I guess their match vs. Philly will be very telling

Idk money is for sure the measure of success, firstly its the main reason blizzard is in esports, second, you need money to make the league go.. Its why Blizzard asked so much from investors because they needed capital to make a quality product. The part thats hard to control is viewership, which is where you need the funds from advertisers; you cant rmaintain a league of this size on investor money. Noah might be passionate about esports, but people like Robert Kraft are not, and they want a sizeable return on their 20M investment, like any big timer would.

eh, the amount of money being pumped into the league is unprecedented. Also blizzards strategy was obviously not to build up a fan base gradually before the league started; they held off on a lot of LANs for 2017 to wait and stir up hype for the OWL, and as of right now it is working. But the expectation, given the strategy and money is that Blizzard needed a viewership spike in the eyes of many "Overwatch educated" journalists as you put it

ya I see what youre saying I guess I didn't really see many pieces where they viewed 50k as a success, most of the articles I read and videos I saw were viewing hundreds of thousands as a success, especially post OWWC

idk about 50k being a success, but the numbers thus far have indeed been really good

I think the issue is an over saturation of games. Is the casual viewer going to want to watch 4 straight days of overwatch every week for months on end? I hope so. Week 2 will be interesting, I would like to see viewership hover around 200K consistently and rise for the big games, but the trend of the past days say otherwise. Some other factors are lingering, such as blizzard adding rewards for watching twitch and the proof of concept getting more advertisers/resources for the league. Ultimately it’s been really satisfying to see the viewership thus far competing with eleague, it shows the potential is there

dab

lol ik but the aesthetics are lets say.... retro

gotta love the 1999 Microsoft Fate keyboard

It’s felt like SoOn has been on a mission to reaffirm why he’s one of the best since some hype was lost while Rogue was struggling. I’ve been impressed with his play in the matches we have seen so far. I think he’ll be the X factor of this matchup

Hype for 3rd party tourneys!!

He most certainly does, Linkzr is pretty special on Widowmaker and Mcree when compared to his genji/tracer

Hopefully Linkzr can step it up after the first round

Great stuff! Rendering the poor viewership claims silly, but the true number I am curious of is week 2's numbers to prove viewership is maintained. Here's to hoping Blizzard and Overwatch keep the momentum going!

Zarya Rein POGCHAMP

I mean its not like seagull is a pharah one trick..

I agree that seagull would have been better in that situation, the best chance of countering a pharmercy is with your own

A very defensive anubis...

"Taimou is washed up" LUL still owning in 2018, this is a slugfest

babybay and nomy outplayed as well.. I thought nevix and danteh played well

holy Shaz.. they have families man

i second this lol

We haven't had some spicy NA vs EU debates in a while, it will probably reignite after the season gets underway :)

This begs the question what will happen to the MY and 1246 players themselves, given they are probably the most talented in the region. Maybe another Chinese team will pick up a roster, maybe some of the players move around individually?

The structure for the league is pretty damn solid, all we can do is pray for viewership.. I believe

I agree, but missing him for a couple of games is not devastating assuming his role would be a substitute to the other two anyways. The only hero IDDQD likely plays better than babybay/Danteh is maybe mccree, but thats more due to babybay not being to showcase his mcree a lot. And as I said Danteh/babybay flex easily onto any hero that IDDQD plays normally

ya it hurts them a little but I don't think its a "huge blow"; out of him, babybay and Danteh he is likely the weakest, and babybay/Danteh can flex to a lot of roles at a pretty high level. Unfortunate tho for sure

These nerfs are very much along the lines of what the community wanted and I personally am pretty satisfied with them. This is a step in the right direction, the issue is that like Torbjorn, Symmetra and Bastion, Mercy is inherently a bad hero for the game, which is why I hope she is just slightly underpowered to where she is not necessarily meta, but you dont auto lose if you have a Mercy one trick on your team.

LOL I look at this team like the damn mafia of owl

They released a classic album a little over a year ago, I think it's my favorite

Anyone have any notable upsets based on the pick rates of the games? I think I’m taking VAL over DAL, SHD over SFS, HOU over NYE

are coolmath games blocked too

Dope informative post boss

I agree I think there are a lot of newer players who need to get acclimated to LAN, and there are 40 matches this season to do so. Give it time and players like Danteh and Logix will eventually hit their stride and it will be easier to judge their performance.

congrats! one day we will see you in your 4 star final form

i see.. hype nonetheless

Ooo that corndog lineup is the best non SK contenders one ive seen, just think if they had akm as well

they won’t do well

unlucky

Oh I see now the only place where divisions matter is the top team from each gets a bye, nvm

Kind of hard to say divisions are pointless when the playoffs take the top teams from each division..

monkaS

I hope we get to see oputo in OWL one day, because realistically I dont see any OWL team picking up an entire Thai squad

This might be Nesh’s breakout opportunity to dominate, Meza’s squad looks pretty good!

Clearly top 4?

Looking at jkaps tweets it sounds like no OWL for him either, hopefully ZP dominates in contenders casting

Snubbing a day 1 iconic caster in ZP is a huge :candle: .. actually makes me really sad

Is Pine the best Widow in the world? (excluding kephrii of course)