There are some names in sports that remain in our consciousness. Ronaldo and Ronaldinho from football (or soccer for you Americans);Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain from basketball, Michael Phelps in swimming. eSports is no different. And yet as we enter the second season of Overwatch League, more old stalwarts are leaving their teams or the scene altogether than ever before. Just yesterday, the Dallas Fuel released one of their longtime stalwarts and moved another off the active roster to become a coach. Sebastian ‘chipshajen’ Widlund is now a free agent, and Christian ‘cocco’ Jonsson is now an assistant coach for the Dallas Fuel.

And yet, they are just two of many Overwatch players who have had to leave the competitive scene. So many of the players who brought Overwatch from its humble beginnings in amateur tournaments when teams were still called ‘EnvyUs’ and ‘Faze Clan’ to its current multi-million dollar, glamorous state in the Overwatch League have left us along the way. And of those who remain, they have had to adapt in ways they never could have imagined, leaving us viewers with nothing except nostalgia and old VODs to remember their prowess by.

Teams Fall Apart…

Chipshajen and Cocco were part of the first great team in Overwatch history. We’ve all heard the stories of the ridiculous 57-game winstreak, the miraculous run through Apex Season 1 after Talespin left and the team made the biggest gamble of their lives on Mickie. Of the ‘Old-mou’, who would play Widowmaker whenever he wanted in a time when Soldier was the go-to DPS, and would grapple closer to enemy Widows and Tracers and Genjis looking to take him out, so confident in his mechanical ability was he. Of Harryhook’s tracking on Soldier after he took on the Lucio role. Of chipshajen’s Ana, regarded as second only to Ryujehong himself, and the crazy quad tank-Soldier-Ana defense that EnvyUs played on Gibraltar simply because chips was that good at solo-healing and simply because no one else could. And of INTERNETHULK, a leader of men who sadly left us before he could see the game he had poured so much time and effort into truly become the spectacle it is today. The Dallas Fuel, while keeping the EnvyUs members, will never quite be EnvyUs, for it plays in a different era, in a different meta, with different heroes and opponents, and those days are lost forever.

Lunatic-Hai, too, is a shadow of its former self,the Lunatic-Hai that won back-to-back Apex championships and looked like they would dominate the Overwatch League’s first season. Miro was the world’s best Winston and the first player to fully utilise him, Tobi and Ryujehong seemed to be telepathic in their support play and Zunba was the best Zarya in the world. But after EscA, their team captain, retired to play PUBG instead, the team had to continue on without him, and his role in stabilising the team emotionally showed as the Seoul Dynasty ended up missing up the season playoffs in 7th place and became one of only 4 teams to not participate in any playoffs at all, stage or seasonal. The feared support duo of Tobi and Ryujehong was pinpointed as a strong point, but with neither seeming comfortable on Mercy, Gambler had to be brought in, which in turn resulted in more turmoil. The team experimented with putting Apex S3 Finals MVP Gido on Zenyatta instead of his favoured DPS, and thought Miro’s play being too familiar to everyone might be a reason why they just couldn’t win against the London Spitfire. Nothing seemed to go right for them, and after starting strong with a 7–3 record in Stage 1, the Dynasty slumped to a 3–7 record in Stage 4. And just this week, the team announced they would be releasing Miro, Gido and Wekeed, ending the tenure of one of Overwatch’s most iconic main tanks, and with it, one of the most popular rosters in Overwatch history.

The run of LuxuryWatch Blue ended similarly. This was a team that was consistently in the top 4 placings in Apex, building around a core of Janus, Saebyeolbe, Mek0, and later Nanohana (who renamed himself to Fl0w3r but has since decided his old name was better). This was the team that gave us the fearsome DPS duo for South Korea in the World Cup, the team that beat the best team in the world Lunatic-Hai to win IEM Gyeonggi, a team that made runs time and time again to the semi-finals of Apex but just could not seem to find a way through. This was a team that, after joining the Overwatch League, went on to become the regular season champions by a margin that will probably never be seen again, finishing with an astonishing +86 map record. And yet its core, too, comes to an end.

Teams that were iconic even before OWL are gone too. There was the Selfless roster, featuring Dafran and Sinatraa on DPS (a fearsome duo if there ever was one) as well as Emongg, and famed for their relentless, almost arrogant aggressiveness. They made spawncamping on defense a legitimate strategy, if one only reserved for the most courageous teams. There was Rogue, the French team playing in NA, who ended EnvyUs’s 57 game winstreak. There was Gigantti, who contributed iconic names such as Linkzr, Fragi and the BigGoose-Shaz support duo to the OWL.

All of them split up or just disbanded, never to be seen again.

…And People Too…

Sometimes, it’s not a team that leaves a legacy. Sometimes it’s just one man.

Seagull, the first to truly bring attention to Overwatch, retired from competitive play last month. No one has done more for the competitive scene, from years upon years in Team Fortress 2 and small Overwatch tournaments to the 2016 USA World Cup team, to his stream which showed so many the promise and joy that Overwatch could hold, to inspiring multiple players to become greats themselves, to finally living the dream himself as a member of the Overwatch League. Birdring chose his in-game name because of Seagull. Miro’s username on Twitch is A_Miro because of Seagull. A well-spoken, highly entertaining and extremely intelligent player, there will never be another quite like Seagull, for in those dark early days of Overwatch he was the one shining light for others.

Shadowburn was released by the Philadelphia Fusion, officially bringing an end to the famed ‘Carpetburn’ DPS duo consisting of himself and Carpe. This was the one DPS duo every team in North America feared before OWL: the cold-blooded Russian killer and his equally unhappy Korean fish, able to play any hero in any situation, each capable of popping off at any time if left unchecked, each a deadly threat in their own right who could put the team on their backs and drag them to victory.

Why Remember?

Some might say that I’m just being nostalgic. That these players, iconic and famous and wonderful as they were, must go. Everything changes, and nowhere does it happen faster than eSports. Metas come and go, heroes fall out of favour, new blood comes up from the depths of the competitive ladder, and sooner or later, a player or two must leave the scene. Make way, make way for the new kings of Overwatch, they say.

And yet, these players are more than just players. These teams are more than just teams. For the fan who never watched any tournaments before OWL, these teams must seem a mystery, especially when they fail to show their supposed prowess in games. Yet for those who saw them play live, who had their minds blown by a Ryujehong sleep dart, who leapt from their seats when Miro jumped off the map to chase a Mercy, who would never hear of an up-and-coming player until he suddenly destroyed one of his favourite teams, these teams and players represent memories. Memories of low-quality Twitch overlays, of tournaments in front of hundreds of screaming Korean fans on a flashing stage far more epileptic than the calm team colours we see in the OWL today. Of the muffled sound of casters speaking into cheap microphones and discussing the game excitedly using pixelated webcams. This was an era when anyone with a couple of mechanically talented friends could make a team and make it big, could win glory and fame far beyond their dreams.

These players influenced countless players and coaches. In an age where everyone was trying to figure out how to play the game, some players went above and beyond with their skill and their leadership. Miro redefined how we look at Winston, and reportedly even convinced Jeff himself that Winston was in fact not in need of a buff; it was just that people hadn’t figured out how to play him yet, and Miro was the only one who had. Seagull brought Overwatch itself to countless viewers on stream, and every once in a while one of them lights up the Overwatch League itself. INTERNETHULK brought together one of the most iconic rosters and would single-handedly bring up multiple other talents, including Fury of the London Spitfire and Mickie of the Dallas Fuel. Countless Anas have spawned and died in ranked games because of Ryujehong. Every player who first discovered how to best use a character became a revolutionary in their own right.

And the plays. The storyline of Runaway, how they somehow made it to the semi-finals of Apex despite having no funding, no coach and no team house, leading up to the Eye of the Kaiser. The Taimou grapple shot against Bunny on Dorado, or his winning duels against both Carpe’s Genji and Bunny’s Tracer later on Volskaya. Seagull’s nanoboosted Bastion 5K. The Agilities 5K blade on Gibraltar. Some of these players remain in the scene, while others wander in the void of LFT, or have left for other games. But their plays will be remembered forever in the annals of Overwatch.

Yes, these players are not dead, just temporarily teamless. But so much of what made a team a team, so much of that memory which we pick out every once in a while to remind ourselves of the ‘good old days’, is irreversibly tied to the players, and each player leaving is like a sixth of that memory gone. Or, in some cases, even half.

To The Future, And Beyond!

There has never been a better time to be an Overwatch fan. Yes, the Tier 2 scene is lacking support, but efforts by the community to raise awareness about it are more numerous and effective than ever. New teams and new players are joining the league. Ladder stompers are being flown out to Los Angeles to stomp OWL teams. Western teams are competing with Korean teams like they never have, and are more competitive than ever. The metagame changes not just from patch to patch as it did in the past but from map to map and even point to point. Players are adapting to new heroes and showing off their skill in front of more people than they could ever have dreamed of when they were just kids grinding a video game in their bedrooms. The League is all glitz and glamour, a far cry from the scuffed streams (that still clearly had had a lot of time and effort put into them).

And yet, as much as we as a community celebrate the success of OWL’s first season and look forward to the next one, it would do to pause, if just for a moment, to thank all those who sacrificed time and money and effort to get players onto teams, to get those teams signed by organisations or investors, to bring the Overwatch League, for so long a pipe dream, to life. To thank all the players over the years who have given blood, sweat, and tears in pursuit of their dreams and in so doing brought us some of the best memories of our lives. This game may not be the same as the one we played, but damn if it isn’t more fun.

Overwatch is dead. Long live Overwatch.