Are there any on that list that are not korean?

I thought you died Rob.

Holy shit CARRYHOOK

Yea and russia and canada are very likely to beat the other teams in their group, hence the game between them is an "elimination game". I can't believe you just made me explain my own bantz.

American http://i.imgur.com/BnXPVmi.jpg

That Canada vs Russia elimination game in group F is gonna be lit.

It's not a grammar error, it's a spelling error. Incorrectly used words bug me.

I like the idea of a global champion's league in overwatch. I think blizzard wants to run all the local leagues AND any potential CL type tournament, and so far that has not worked out.

Thinking of OWL, if you have like 6 or 8 teams in the league, then what, 2 or 4 make it to the play offs? It just doesn't sound fun unless there are at least 12 teams participating, and ideally something like 16, and then contenders.

Here they will have an 8 team league with a 2 team play off. If that's an OWL preview, i'm not all that excited.

Contenders season 0 with 16 teams in 4 groups is just better. In a proper league format instead of groups it would be something like NBA's divisions, which have cross divisional play.

Of course since they want massive buy ins, we probably literally will get a 6 or 8 team OWL in season 1.

Last i heard overwatch was decreasing in popularity in china. If china doesn't qualify for blizzcon, that's going to be pretty bad from a marketing perspective. I think there is a real chance they won't.

I was gonna catch some of this match after the short apex series, but these breaks between maps are insane. I'm out.

Best of 3 of best of 7's.. ok then. Guess we're going to really REALLY find out who is better.

So are the semis and finals after WC qualifications? Looking forward to KDP vs NV. Kappa.

Fighting for the honor of getting KDP in the semis. Kappa.

Well where else would major teams be based? Memphis? Bidding for the LA spot is going to be hot. I hope blizzard doesn't allot more than one to LA, that would defeat the whole point tying teams to cities. OWL ain't the NBA yet.

What nerfs though? I could have missed some, but the roadhog nerf isn't in yet.

Sombra standard pro meta now without any patches really influencing it. That's the kind of thing that makes overwatch fun.

So uhh.. yea, canada got cucked hard in both the broadcast and the games. #neverforget.

Referring to "fresh"? That's a butter knife edge :).

Should be a good one.

https://i.imgflip.com/1p3gln.jpg

This game is a litmus test for rogue that will determine if they belong in the contender/top team conversation, or if they are second tier to top korean teams.

Kinda felt like you rushed through the topics in this one, but 10/10 speculation overall :).

Overwatch open was broadcast live on both TBS and Twitch. That would be the smartest way to do it. I literally haven't had cable for 12+ years now, and i'm not getting tv just to watch owl. The biggest issue with mlg.tv is you lose out on all the "foot traffic"/"discoverability" you get on twitch. The proverbial average joe won't hit browse, see a channel with 60K viewers broadcasting a big overwatch game and check it out on mlg.tv.

They very well might have been making money, or at least they could make money on developing players, if blizzard did not kill the entire tournament scene outside of asia. Hard to make money when there have been virtually no meaningful competitions over the past 6 months. Blizzard should have been putting on pre-owl events this whole time to keep hype/community involvement/build stories coming into owl.

If they want viewership numbers, excluding twitch and only streaming on mlg.tv will be a disaster.

Sideshow needs to realize that it's 2017, and it's ok to be out of the closet.

How do the commentators not know that selfless, not rogue, popularized the triple dps spawn camp style?

I love the fact that timeboy literally plays tracer.

Is the SR rank of each country used as seed for groups? That #1 rank for china might not work out too well since as far as i understand they have their own country realm. That's why their rank is above SK. It's just the top 100 players on a single realm.

Someone has never been employed.

NRG actually looks alright. I think seagull made a mistake "retiring". Their performance is kinda what you'd expect from a team that hasn't competed in like 4 months.

inb4 OGN announces a different team to be invited.

This is reminiscent of the arguments that go on in the UFC/other mma orgs, and to a less extent in boxing. Matches that make the most sense from the sports perspective, vs matches that attract the most eyeballs. The reason UFC has gotten as big an popular as it has, basically burying other orgs, is because until their recent sale they have leaned heavily towards matches that make the most sense in terms of finding out who is best, not just making fights between the most popular.

I don't think this particular instance is a HUGE deal because NRG should still be competitive, but favoring popularity over performance in event invites can do serious long term damage to the "sport" overall, because it become less and less of a sport, and more and more of an occasional spectacle.

Feature request: links to liquipedia for the corresponding tournament/event on all the match pages.

It's galeforce now? Fucking jebaited.

It was pretty insane to see this live: https://clips.twitch.tv/FrozenConsiderateOxFailFish.

No that's just retarded.

meta 3-0.

That team name though...

You can still play scrims, the tournament doesn't start tomorrow. Meanwhile you're saying scrims are as valuable as playing in an actual competitive environment with stakes? That's not remotely true. A round robin group tournament that's online is perfect to hone whatever game you might be developing. I don't see any reason not to do it except insecurity in not wanting to appear like the same losing nrg side they were before. That's the completely wrong approach if you actually want to get better.

Is that trolling? The way you gel as a team is by playing high level teams...

NRG missing.

I don't want to see anyone play a 2cp map pre spawn change. That anubis round was completely fucking ridiculous (in a bad way).

South korea is to esports what the USSR was to the olympics, except without a USA to counterbalance.

Envy and misfits are in a different category from every NA and EU team. Fnatic is basically garbage. Clown 9 showed they can potentially challenge envy/misfits given a bit of time with their new korean coach, who is awesome. When it comes to KR teams, they are better than nv/misfits at the very top, but it's competitive. But basically all your chavs/eunited/nip/immortals/fazes are utter trash. Rogue.. we'll see. No one really knows yet, maybe somewhere around c9 level given their AMM performance.

But bottom line is KR will dominate. During the insight on esports youtube show with thorin and monte, with bishop, bishop basically floated a philosophy that when teams have more fun they have a higher ceiling (he said he left the KR scene and joined an NA team as a coach because it was too stifling and basically depressing working within an SK org). That unfortunately has always been false in every real world sport. The best olympic, soccer, basketball, tennis, mma performances have come from an awful lack of fun in preparation. I doubt the west will ever be on top in OW again, but they will have teams that don't look like they shouldn't even be there.

That's interesting information about the behind the scenes of the korean OW scene. I really know very little about that. Where did you find that btw? I am simply going off of what i see in tournament games.

The "there isn't enough competition" angle though i'm not buying. There have been solid decades of competition, including at high levels in the west at fps games. Many people who were involved in that are in overwatch today, and despite the recent dearth of european tournaments, there are plenty of competitions in the west that foster competition.

Support structure is definitely far better in SK. But to me what better support structure translates to is, the players do not call the shots, and play for an organization. As opposed to the players call almost all the shots and play for themselves and each other, and the organization just facilitates that.

It seems like both western and korean teams have plenty of individual mechanical skill, but the mental attitude towards the game is different. Specifically it seems like korean teams inherently see the game as one of team cooperation, while western teams approach it more as an individual game with team aspects. I would describe it as cats vs dogs.

Maybe my perspective is colored by the fact that i come from quake, but it seems like western attitude it carry oriented, while the korean teams correctly see it as a game of team cooperation.

This probably has a lot to do with a much more organized structure around teams themselves in SK. In the west teams are made by players who want to play with each other. In korea teams are made by managers who pick the best pieces for the team, disregarding who players want to play with almost completely.

I'm afraid given rogue's success it also doesn't speak well for the NA scene that there is so much parity among teams right now. They all seem to beat each other on any given hour without any clear favorite, and no one is consistently better than the rest. Hammers didn't even qualify for the tourney immortals won a week or two ago.

Having said that it's certainly good that there is consistent competition with the carbon series. It's clearly what the scene needs right now.

Win or lose at least they've guaranteed themselves a place in the top 8. Unlike any other western team coughloserscough.