From the very beginning, the Overwatch League drew scores of fans to it. After a successful first season, Blizzard made a fair few changes to their format – successfully so. The second season was even more of a success than the first one had been. With more teams and matches spread out further, the stress on the players was reduced significantly, leading to a much better experience for everyone involved.
Changes to the Format
This time around, the changes were different, if no less significant. While the number of teams stayed the same, Activision Blizzard still made some big alterations to the tournament format. These included alterations to the matches themselves – for example, games will now be played until one side has three wins to their name. There won’t be any draws between teams, even if that means six or seven matches have to be played.
There won’t be any more stages – instead, Blizzard added a midseason tournament to the Overwatch League schedule. During the All-Star Weekend, the four best teams of the league will be competing for the extra title of All-Star. Perhaps the biggest change overall was one of location though – OWL Season 3 will be taking place across different homesteads instead of in just one location.
The Beginning of the Season
As of February 8, the third OWL season started – and with it, Activision Blizzard’s new deal with YouTube. Where previously all Overwatch League matches were streamed on Twitch, they will now exclusively be streamed on YouTube.
The first eight matches this season were hosted in Dallas and New York, and they saw pretty great teams competing. Toronto Defiant, Paris Eternal, London Spitfire, New York Excelsior and more debuted on the first weekend.
The first match – Defiant vs Eternal – went to Defiant 3-1. Excelsior beat Spitfire 3-1 as well, while the Vancouver Titans beat the LA Gladiators 3-2 in the closest match of the first week. The last match of the first day – Dallas Fuel vs LA Valiant ended 3-1 for Valiant.
Remarkably, the second day of competitions saw all four matches end with a clear-cut 3-0. Eternal defeated Spitfire, Excelsior defeated Boston Uprising, Titans beat Valiant and San Francisco Shock defeated Fuel, each without losing a single match to their opponents.
Season 3 Continues
Right in the first few weeks, the OWL’s new homestead system suffered an upset – because of the Coronavirus outbreak in China, two homesteads (Hangzhou Spark and Shanghai Dragons) are out of commission. Blizzard formally announced that no matches would be held there until it was safe for the participants.
This meant that four of the eight matches of the second week were postponed. The matches that were held ended with Florida Mayhem beating the Houston Outlaws 3-0 and Philadelphia Fusion beating Washington Justice 3-1 on the first day, and Justice beating Outlaws 3-0 and Fusion beating Mayhem 3-0 on the second day.
The highlights
Thanks to the myriad of small(ish) changes that Blizzard have made to the format and game since the last season, the first two weeks of the third OWL season were quite unique compared to previous years.
Thanks to role queuing, the 2-2-2 setup that has been in place since mid-last season, each category of hero got to shine, but one did so much more than others; supports. While having a decent support player was always key to winning, this is now truer than ever. An example is Brice “FDGoD” Monscavoir.
The Paris Eternal player played support hero Lucio and he did so quite spectacularly. He wasn’t the only support hero player to distinguish himself though – the Titans’ Lee “Twilight” Joo-seok and Gladiators’ Benjamin “BigGoose” Isohanni and Jonas “Shaz” Suovaara also more than carried their weight in their matches.
Even official OWL statisticsconfirmed that these players did well – as did others, of course.
The upcoming weeks
So far so good – the first two weeks were characterized by pretty decisive wins. Although the new rule changes would allow OWL season 3 games to run even up to seven matches in order to reach the necessary 3 wins a team needs to best their opponents, this wasn’t even close to necessary so far. With one 3-2 exception, all games were decided in 4 games or less. Although it’s unlikely this will continue for the rest of the season it paints a strong picture early on – this season’s teams are determined to prove themselves.
Not without reason – several teams completely changed their line-ups for Season 3 of the OWL. Spitfire and Valiant stocked up on rookies, as did Gladiators and Eternal; that’s a lot of change, and a fair bit of risk. While seasoned OWL veterans know what they’re up against, rookies are definitely keen to prove themselves – and they did.
A fair few were severely underestimated by both fans and analysts. Valiant’s Caleb “McGravy” was one such player. He helped his team secure a strong 3-1 win against Dallas Fuel along with his team-mates, despite initial boos from the audience. Whether they and the other teams will be able to keep up the momentum remains to be seen, of course – week 3 will paint a clearer picture.
