Next season, the Overwatch League will be present all over the world. From Paris to New York, from Seoul to Toronto, each team will host several games in its home stands. Overwatch is going abroad, to the delight of audiences in all countries!
During this conference — which took place during BlizzCon 2019 — Chris Puckett host, Erik "DOA" Lonnquist and Robert "Hexagrams" Kirkbride analysts and Jonathan Spector Senior producer director on the OWL discussed the future of the competitive scene.
Season 2 overview
8 new teams arrived and had the opportunity to prove their talent. Vancouver Titans quickly took over the league. San Francisco Shock didn't accept this situation and regained control, creating an extraordinary rivalry between the two teams.
Shanghai Dragons — which has only lost during the inaugural season — managed to do great during Stage 3, winning Playoffs.
With role lock, the Final Season Playoffs saw Vancouver's domination over the winner bracket, and San Francisco Shock's domination over the loser bracket. This leadsto an exceptional Grand Finals where San Francisco was crowned best team in the 2019 Overwatch League.
General information
Season 3 will be divided into two Conferences (Atlantic and Pacific), each separated into two Divisions. Each team will have at least two homestand weekends. The matches will only be played on Saturday and Sunday and each team will play 28 matches.
An All-Star event will take place in the middle of the season, and there won't have any Stages, only Season Playoffs!
The top 4 teams in the league will compete in a mid-season tournament — the leaders of each conference will be guaranteed to participate.
The first weekend will see Paris Eternal vs Toronto Defiants on February 8.
Custa and Babybay were invited to the show to talk about the Overwatch League.
Many changes took place during the off-season, and all players were impacted. While the Pacific Conference had a fairly quiet start in the market, the Atlantic Conference has seen a lot of changes!
Homestands will be an opportunity for all teams to be even stronger on their own ground. Going into "enemy territory" will necessarily be difficult for players who have had the least public experience.
New match format
For the moment, players were competing on four maps during each game. Since there will be no more end-of-stage playoffs, the first 3-point team will now win the game. The matches will always start on a Control map. Then, there will be a rotation of the order of maps to play each type of map equally. If necessary, the 5th, 6th and 7th maps played will be Control ones to have a clear result.
Playoffs
8 teams will compete in a double elimination tournament. The top 6 is qualified automatically, and teams ranked 7-12 will compete in play-ins in direct elimination for the last two spots. We don't know yet where the playoffs will be held this year.
Overwatch 2
For 2020, the Overwatch League will continue on Overwatch, first of the name. The new Push game mode shouldn't be present in the competition — at least at the beginning.
Q&A
- The matches will be streamed in such a way as to be the easiest to watch for the public. For the moment, not all of them have yet been decided.
- The journey will inevitably be complicated for teams. Jetlag will impact both the sleep and well-being of the players and their ability to train effectively.
- The World Cup is an opportunity to see many talents reveal themselves, whether in play, as a coach or as casters.
- New teams may appear in 2021. In the long term, 28 teams are expected to compete in the Overwatch League.
The panel on the future of Overwatch discussed issues and new features related to Blizzard's new game: Overwatch 2. Discover all the information related to this conference below.
