The first Season of the Overwatch League is over. In spectacular fashion, the London Spitfire won the play offs in a dominant resurgence from their extremely poor Stage 3 and 4 performances. Analyzing the League in retrospect made me realize the parallels between Overwatch and League of Legend’s competitive landscapes. What can we learn from the Korean dominated MOBA’s history?

The Season 3 League of Legends World Championship was the beginning of the Korean dominance in this esport. Since we saw that tournament end in a very dominant SKT win, the World Championship has been won by a Korean team every single year, four years in a row. Most times, in dominant fashion. This year, in the first Overwatch League Season, we saw a similar dominance reveal itself. The League had twelve slots and three of them were entirely Korean Squads: New York Excelsior (NYXL), London Spitfire and Seoul Dynasty. Six teams qualified for the play offs: two of them were full Korean rosters and the other four had at least two Korean players.

The regular Season was utterly dominated by the NYXL and the Play Offs were taken by storm by the London Spitfire. Since the OWL operates like a mixture of the LCS and Worlds format in the League of Legends circuit, one year of dominance from the Koreans has a similar impact to a few years of dominance in LoL, because the teams are only playing against opponents from the same region for most of the year. Now you might ask, what is the point of comparing two games just to say that Koreans are quite proficient at competitive video games? We’ve known that since the Starcraft days.

The point is: can they be beaten? Similar to what happens in League of Legends, Koreans seem to be superior both in the macro and micro level of the game. Most of the superstars in the League are Korean players with otherworldly mechanics. They dominate the Widowmaker battles but, at the same time, they are the best Reinhardt and Winston players. The MVP of the League was the Korean Support player Jjonak. They seem to adapt to the metas faster than anyone and have unrivaled coordination and synergy. This is exactly what happens in League of Legends. Hence why I consider the comparison useful: the LoL Korean Hegemony has finally begun to falter this year.

MSI is the second most important international competition in League of Legends. It happens more or less in the middle of the season and it consists of the six strongest teams from their respective regions. The tournament ended in surprising fashion with Royal Never Give Up, the Chinese representative, convincingly beating Kingzone Dragon X, the Korean team, 3 to 1. This wasn’t the first time that a Chinese team beat a Korean one in MSI. The same happened in 2015 but it had a very different significance because that Chinese team had two Korean players as their stars. This year’s winner, RNG, have a full Chinese roster with the exception of a Taiwanese player. Their only Korean member is their coach.

The Chinese presence in the OWL is a famous one for the worst reasons. The Shanghai Dragons managed to not win a single game in the whole Season. This doesn’t seem to bode well for my parallel between the two esports, but it might. The Chinese Contenders scene is rich in regional talent and, even though the winners of the tournament were Lucky Future Zenith, a full Korean roster, teams like LGD and T1w are extremely strong and have full Chinese rosters.

Akin to League of Legends, it seems that the most “obvious” route to success is opting into the Full Korean route. Get a Korean Contenders Team, or maybe two of them and you might end up like Jack Etienne did with the London Spitfire, champions of the entire League. What about the “not so obvious” route to success? Yesterday, on the 5th of September, Jacob Wolf published an article in which he mentions that we will most likely see eight new slots in the next season of the OWL. Three of those are Chinese slots. This is time to shine for Chinese Overwatch. I am hoping that at least one, but hopefully two of the (now) four slots will have a full Chinese roster because, like in League of Legends, it seems that mixing Korean and Chinese players doesn’t work.

After finishing Stage 1 at 0/10, the Shanghai Dragons decided to sign three Korean players. They lost the remaining 30 games that they played. If the Chinese slots opt into full Chinese rosters next season, we will see better results from the region and, hopefully, the teams will first look into regional talent before rushing to the Korean fountain of gold. League of Legends has taught us that 5 Chinese players work better than 3 Chinese players with 2 Korean ones, even if you have a weaker man for man line up.

In conclusion, the Koreans do seem unstoppable, deservedly so. My guess is that we will see the same kind of dominance, or probably more, in the next season. New teams enter the League and, with them, lots of new Korean players will too. But if they will be beaten or at least challenged, it will be by the hands of the Chinese innovative and chaotic style. Shall the Asian derbies begin!