The Overwatch League Regular Season has come to an end and we are waiting for the playoffs to begin soon. This league was a unique concept in esports. The location-based franchise system is extremely popular in regular sports but is a novel concept in esports.

Regardless of your opinion on the first season of Overwatch league, there were highs and lows to Season 1. A total of 240 Matches played ( not including the Stage Title matches and the Season Playoffs), the Overwatch League exceeded expectations. But it also left a few fans disappointed and unsatisfied.

Top Notch Production: OWL sets the standard

Esports tournaments are getting better in their production and Overwatch league raised the bar higher. Blizzard enlisted some of the most well-known talents in the industry right from the get-go. Community figures such as Montecristo, Semmler, UberX duo added charisma and depth to the talent desk.

The Stage at the Blizzard Esports Arena was a unique stage with a LED screen sprawling across the stage. The expansive screen envelops the audience and it enthralled the online viewership everytime it was shown on stream. The attention to detail on the big screen and the experience of being surrounded by the Overwatch map is something that has not been seen in esports yet.



The team entries on to the stage were unique and exciting. Florida Mayhem stole the top spot when it comes to unique entrances in the Overwatch league. The team, despite not being anywhere near the top of the table were definitely the best when it comes to team entrances especially in the first half of OWL Season 1.

The regular extra content such as the WatchPoint Streams and videos definitely kept viewers glued to the OWL news. The Overwatch league website was regularly updated with the VODS and the match schedules. The talent lineup was not afraid to go out of the ordinary, which added the necessary flavor to the Season 1.

Better than expectations viewership numbers

Prior to the start of the Overwatch league, there was a lot of skepticism about the potential of success for the League. With the game hardly getting more than 30000 to 40000 viewers on it’s best LAN events, the possibility of a greater number for OWL seemed unlikely for many. But the Overwatch league beat all expectations, even that of the team owners.

To say it has been a massive success is an understatement. The franchise owners who paid out $20 million for the teams definitely came into Season 1 with lower expectations. The first week of Overwatch league had over 10 million viewers, a mind-boggling number for sure.

When we were finalizing our purchase of an @overwatchleague franchise, there was a very wide spread amount of skepticism and many people who immediately wrote off the idea as a flash in the pan. Boy, were they wrong. The first regular season was a massive success. — Mike Rufail (@hastr0) June 18, 2018

EnVyUs & Dallas Fuel owner, Hastro adequately sums up his experience so far in OWL Season 1. The initial jump on the first day of the Overwatch league was mainly due to the hype and the marketing surrounding the opening day. But as we ran through the various stages, the viewership numbers were on a decline. The lowest viewership numbers in Stage 4 were still way above the expectations for team owners. The most difficult task for the OWL team will be to maintain the viewership numbers in the Playoffs and in Season 2.

Too Much Overwatch

If you have been playing Overwatch since early 2017, this title will make you chuckle. The big announcement of Overwatch league came during Blizzcon 2016. However, this announcement turned out to be a repellent for tournament organizers in the subsequent year. Without any knowledge of Blizzard’s plans for Overwatch, tournaments organizers were opposed to investing in Overwatch.

2017 saw very few tournaments up until the Overwatch League. But once the Overwatch League started, we saw ourselves bombarded by Overwatch. With OWL match days taking up 4 days in a week, all of a sudden, viewers just had so many matches to watch.

By the third and fourth stage of Season 1, player and viewer burnout was a serious issue. The intensity of the games and the huge pressure on the players to practice and keep up with the ever-changing meta definitely had an effect. The players were given just 10 days of break between stages and most of that time was used up in trying to understand the meta for the next stage.

As we await news for Season 2, Blizzard would probably want to change the schedule to make it easier on the viewers and the players. I never thought I would say this, but right now there is too much Overwatch in the regular season.

The live version and the tournament version are not the same

Each stage of the Overwatch League was played on a single game patch. This is expected since the teams should have an even footing through the regular season. However, the live version of the game was not always the same as the Tournament version.

The tournament version would often be one or two patches behind the live version. Considering how big the changes in an Overwatch patch are, this fundamentally presents a totally different version of the game. The characters would often have different abilities ( such as the Hanzo Scatter arrow or the way Sombra Health-pack works).

As a casual fan, a viewer wants to watch the professionals playstyle and try to emulate them. But when you see the pros playing on a totally different patch than the live one, the disconnect does grow. The Overwatch league production team is different from the game developers, but they need to synchronize the Stage schedule and the patch release schedule with each other.

Other games such as Dota 2 and CS GO also have great timing for their patch update. The tournaments are almost always played on a live patch, give or take a week’s delay. Playing the live version of the game is important to connect with your fanbase and ensure interest in the game. This is something that the Overwatch league totally ignored and one that definitely earned them a lot of flak.

Potential for more

Although the production for Overwatch League is one of the best in esports, there is a lot of potential for more content to be added. We can have halftime shows and innovative entries and performances. Los Angeles was the only location for all the LAN matches of Season 1. However, the future for Overwatch League is based on teams traveling to other cities. We hope that individual locations bring out more flavor in the production.

One thing that I would definitely want to see more in Overwatch League streams is cosplays. However, despite the potential for growth, the overall experience for Season 1 was satisfactory.

The Problem with Overwatch Match format

Blizzard decides and announces the maps for each match in advance. However, they seemed quite random and did not provide any consistency. This resulted in a big gap when it comes to the teams’ map pools for the week. Some teams would get overlapping maps for their two matches, while some others would get two completely different map pools. Since a team is provided almost 3 days to prepare for the next week’s matches, it is not sufficient time for the teams to practice. It is also very unfair to the team that has to practice potentially eight different maps as opposed to a lower potential of 4 maps only. This is a huge factor since the teams require time to study their opponents and their individual performances on specific maps.

The subsequent seasons of Overwatch league need to fix their format. They need to ensure a level playing ground with similar map pools for every team. But apart from deciding the maps beforehand, what about ensuring a map veto. This is something that Blizzard seems very averse to doing, however having map veto could actually prove to be useful.

It is a matter of preference, but other esports titles successfully employ map/hero vetoes in their games. Of course, hero vetoes is not a possibility in Overwatch simply because the game will become too one-sided in its current state. But map vetoes are not out of the ordinary. Previous Overwatch LAN tournaments employed Map vetoes successfully.

What do you think about the first season of Overwatch league? Was it all that you expected? Or would you like to see some changes?