The 6th season of the Overwatch League will probably be its greatest but, actually. With Overwatch 2 in its first complete 12 months and after all within the palms of avid gamers international, the League is making sweeping adjustments to accompany this new state of items.
To start out, the Philadelphia Fusion and the Paris Everlasting are not more. Paris has “relocated” to Vegas to develop into the Vegas Everlasting, and the Philadelphia Fusion have gone through an entire rebrand, relocating to Seoul to become the Seoul Infernal. The Paris to Vegas pipeline had been in the cards (heh) for a while, because the Everlasting’s Name of Responsibility League sister group, the Paris Legion, had rebranded to the Vegas Legion on the finish of the 2022 season.
For the Fusion, whilst the franchise is owned via Comcast Spectacor, lots of the day by day operations are controlled via notable South Korean esports group T1. All of Fusion’s avid gamers are Korean, and the group have been based totally out of South Korea ever because the covid-19 pandemic compelled the League to split into East and West regions. Whilst it’s unhappy that Philly and Paris now not have groups to name their very own, it is smart that a minimum of South Korea — being one in every of Overwatch’s greatest markets along with China and the United States — has a couple of group to constitute it. Europe merits a couple of group, too, and it undoubtedly shouldn’t have misplaced one in every of its two for the sake of every other American group.
Alternatively, the brand new layout the League is proposing may be able to deal with a few of this regional imbalance. Kicking off formally on March twenty third, the Overwatch League is opening as much as permit Contenders groups to compete towards Overwatch League groups. (When you forgot or, much more likely, by no means knew as a result of Snowstorm’s been abysmal about its Tier 2 promotion, Contenders is just like the baseball farm device however for Overwatch esports.)
Beginning in February, Contenders groups will play in tournaments to resolve who could have the privilege to get their asses kic… pardon — play — towards Overwatch League groups. As soon as once more, the League will probably be divided into East and West areas, with each coming in combination for LAN tournaments in the summertime and on the finish of the season.
Within the West, the League will kick off with a qualified / newbie event pitting Contenders groups towards OWL groups. After that event, common play will resume with OWL groups handiest. Within the East, the League will probably be expanded to allow Contenders groups to play towards OWL groups throughout the year. This distinction is most probably for the reason that 4 Chinese language groups (Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Chengdu) can’t legally play Overwatch 2, or maximum different Snowstorm video games within the nation, following an end to an agreement with NetEase to operate.
In an electronic mail to The Verge, Overwatch League head Sean Miller mentioned of the placement in China, “The League is operating without delay with groups to make sure minimum disruption of their preparation for the season.”
What that suggests is anybody’s guess, but when my Dragons don’t play, I will be able to be very disillusioned.
I’m all the time occupied with the Overwatch League, doubly so now that Contenders avid gamers gets the publicity they’ve wanted for some time now. Optimistically, those season 6 adjustments result in a extra equitable and sustainable League sooner or later.
Overwatch League play starts March twenty third.