Love OWL

At some point in 2017, Robokun told me to come back if OWL was a success because he said it was never going to happen and that I was overly optimistic. This is that post.
Yes, there were some aspects that weren't always perfect- all the fines, some unfortunate balance issues, a couple viewership drops in the middle of certain stages. But overall, in my honest opinion, and I think a lot of people's, Overwatch League S1 was a massive success, exceeding the expectations of most. The teams, the players, the matches, the production, the casters and the desk, behind the scenes content, everything, has made these last 6 months very enjoyable for any Overwatch fan. I'm even happy to say that I've gotten a few people into OWL who are now diehard fans who hadn't even played Overwatch before. The storylines that have been created through these players and rosters are inspiring and emotional, joyous and devastating.
I am so proud of this League and everything it's become and I'm beyond excited for playoffs and the seasons to follow.

how happy YOU are with owl is not a measurement of success
just saying

remiska [#2]

how happy YOU are with owl is not a measurement of success
just saying

have to agree. I only rarely watched matches since s2. At first it was a new and interesting way to watch but it became more and more another match after another match for me.

remiska [#2]

how happy YOU are with owl is not a measurement of success
just saying

how seemingly disappointed you always are is not a measurement of failure

there's a lot more in the community with my views than yours.

remiska [#2]

how happy YOU are with owl is not a measurement of success
just saying

He hadn't even implied that in the slightest. He was speaking very generally about it and relating it to himself.

Hard to watch these days when I no longer enjoy playing Overwatch.

OWL is better than I hoped it would be!

I've enjoyed it a lot! It's gotten me to engage with this community more and that's been a really nice time :)

I wouldn't call it a "massive succes". Dropping viewership with a peaked player base, the season that is way to long, viewers outside America are unable to follow the scene actively, etc....

It's all about the viewers and at this point I don't see any reason why the should be able to increase the viewership, or even maintain it.

Guinea [#5]

He hadn't even implied that in the slightest. He was speaking very generally about it and relating it to himself.

literally 1st line contradicts you
and pixel i haven't said anything about being disappointed or anything that would imply it

I stopped following OWL around Stage 3, got a little bored with Overwatch, but mostly because it was live way too late for me to actively follow it/my team, and I'm not gonna bother with VODs

on the topic of viewship, i think it directly relates to how much people enjoy owl and also its success. since teams should get their own cities for sure by season 3, we can have more european and korean viewership once the streams are based in those regions

basically, low viewership is due to all the viewers being americans and we're really bummed from watching 6 hours a day

I love the storyline we've created on over.gg where Robokun is the number one villain

From a personal perspective, meh it's been fun I guess, bit boring as an EU fan not being able to watch games live and it has dragged on a bit too. The production is great when I do actually watch a game but there's no hype on my end anymore. I've had much more fun watching the recent PIT tournament where I actually stop what I'm doing deliberatly to watch the games by setting aside time, that's not something I can say I've done for OWL since stage 2.

Yeah its nice. The camerawork and casting has improved over the season. Was a bit disappointed with the dallas start and the xqc drama but its pretty understandable i guess. Overall i think its on par with the scene it replaced and thats really all i can ask for.

As far as being profitable / continuing well its obvious that that was a big risk from the start. Given how much outside investment they procured I dont think blizzard was ever too concerned about thier own financial risk. And i dont think anyone expected it to blow up like pro sports leagues. The real reason for it to exist is for fun / to make the game feel alive.

Someday esports will blow up. Overwatch still has potential. Blizzard has a tendency to slowly get things right. Right now its mostly an issue of balance patches, patch harmonics with league schedule, and report system effectiveness. As far as the execution of the league itself everything is fine.

I say its a success and i have posted some pretty critical posts about the whole thing before.

Where's the success? I mean I've not watched it because I fell out of love for OW between the scene "dying" and the OWL league starting but success isn't measured by viewers especially when you are essentially tricking people into viewing the league, remember when CS:GO had betting and the viewership numbers went crazy then died a fair bit when betting was banned?

It's easy to say OWL is a success when it has say 80k views yet when you are giving people free shit for being there it's not a fair reflection, I'm not a Twitch streamer but if I made a big song and dance about me starting a new stream where I gave away a ton of free shit I'm pretty sure my stream would be a success, but then what happens when I stop? if these figures are hard figures without folk taking advantage of free shit then fair enough but come on, did you not watch the EA Fifa 18 competition that gave away free shit for FUT where the chat was literally 18 thousand people spamming the giveway command?

Has it been a success financially? I mean it's easy to put on a league and have good viewers yet considering OWL is the most expensive league in the history of e-sports has it been a success? have all these big billionaire fellas made money from the first season? have they been blown away watching the same teams play each other umpteen timesI very much doubt it, so where's the success?

Has the OWL been any more special than say the APEX seasons? was it a lot better to watch than any OWL LAN before it? don't be so naive to judge the success of a season after 1 season where it's common for shit to go downhill rather than improve a great deal, unless Blizzard can keep coming out with free stuff to get people into the stream I'll be shocked if those numbers don't drop.

APEX had everything you've listed yet how many millions did that cost? let's see the success it has when there's more teams and people are flying around the other end of the world to play a bo3 of overwatch then flying back the way they came, how many miles will teams have to fly from the US to AUS for a game of OW?

I never really questioned where OWL would be a success but more the way it all came about, when you pump that much money into something it's hard to see how it won't work to some extent but OW outside of OWL is struggling to stay alive, when they announce an extra 4 teams or so for season 2 do you honestly expect 48 players to step into these 4 teams and be able to compete with the rest of the top OWL teams?

The gap is massive, the gap in the OWL was massive for Mayhem and the Dragons yet it's going to be even bigger in season 2 because the strength and depth isn't there to make a league this big with this many players. How many of these Contender teams do you expect to roll into OWL and compete with the top dogs?

Wombat [#13]

I love the storyline we've created on over.gg where Robokun is the number one villain

From a personal perspective, meh it's been fun I guess, bit boring as an EU fan not being able to watch games live and it has dragged on a bit too. The production is great when I do actually watch a game but there's no hype on my end anymore. I've had much more fun watching the recent PIT tournament where I actually stop what I'm doing deliberatly to watch the games by setting aside time, that's not something I can say I've done for OWL since stage 2.

Anyone who disagrees with the vast majority is a villain.

Do agree from a European perspective though, sure we can watch the vods later but that's not the same, I've watched a ton of football over my years yet never watched a replay of a football match, watching something live is completely different and it's not possible for us to do really, maybe one match if you're lucky but if you work early mornings and need sleep you're fucked.

remiska [#10]

literally 1st line contradicts you
and pixel i haven't said anything about being disappointed or anything that would imply it

No it literally doesn't. All he is saying is he would come back if it was successful, that doesn't imply that the success of it is measured by how content he is with it as a matter of fact it more-so implies that his happiness with it is measured by it's success, which isn't necessarily a good thing either if you ask me. It seems pretty obvious that he meant he was expecting it to fail and it didn't, and it didn't undeniably.

https://hbr.org/2012/10/the-true-measures-of-success

robokun87 [#15]

Where's the success? I mean I've not watched it because I fell out of love for OW between the scene "dying" and the OWL league starting but success isn't measured by viewers especially when you are essentially tricking people into viewing the league, remember when CS:GO had betting and the viewership numbers went crazy then died a fair bit when betting was banned?

It's easy to say OWL is a success when it has say 80k views yet when you are giving people free shit for being there it's not a fair reflection, I'm not a Twitch streamer but if I made a big song and dance about me starting a new stream where I gave away a ton of free shit I'm pretty sure my stream would be a success, but then what happens when I stop? if these figures are hard figures without folk taking advantage of free shit then fair enough but come on, did you not watch the EA Fifa 18 competition that gave away free shit for FUT where the chat was literally 18 thousand people spamming the giveway command?

Has it been a success financially? I mean it's easy to put on a league and have good viewers yet considering OWL is the most expensive league in the history of e-sports has it been a success? have all these big billionaire fellas made money from the first season? have they been blown away watching the same teams play each other umpteen timesI very much doubt it, so where's the success?

Has the OWL been any more special than say the APEX seasons? was it a lot better to watch than any OWL LAN before it? don't be so naive to judge the success of a season after 1 season where it's common for shit to go downhill rather than improve a great deal, unless Blizzard can keep coming out with free stuff to get people into the stream I'll be shocked if those numbers don't drop.

APEX had everything you've listed yet how many millions did that cost? let's see the success it has when there's more teams and people are flying around the other end of the world to play a bo3 of overwatch then flying back the way they came, how many miles will teams have to fly from the US to AUS for a game of OW?

I never really questioned where OWL would be a success but more the way it all came about, when you pump that much money into something it's hard to see how it won't work to some extent but OW outside of OWL is struggling to stay alive, when they announce an extra 4 teams or so for season 2 do you honestly expect 48 players to step into these 4 teams and be able to compete with the rest of the top OWL teams?

The gap is massive, the gap in the OWL was massive for Mayhem and the Dragons yet it's going to be even bigger in season 2 because the strength and depth isn't there to make a league this big with this many players. How many of these Contender teams do you expect to roll into OWL and compete with the top dogs?

Yes, the first season of the OWL was actually revealed to be profitable in a recent interview between FOX and Nate Nanzer, so financially, the league performed beyond expectations and will only help with more sponsors in the future.

You also keep developing new ways to criticize the league rather than appreciating what it's accomplished so far. There's obviously many things to improve but for a first season it had a very strong start. I think you're just running out of things to argue.

darkcvc [#18]

https://hbr.org/2012/10/the-true-measures-of-success

LUL

I enjoyed OWL but please HAVE A SLIGHTLY EU FRIENDLY SCHEDULE at least on Saturday because realistically it's difficult to watch from 10 pm to stupid o'clock in the morning and watching vods just isn't the same as watching live

Rooky [#21]

I enjoyed OWL but please HAVE A SLIGHTLY EU FRIENDLY SCHEDULE at least on Saturday because realistically it's difficult to watch from 10 pm to stupid o'clock in the morning and watching vods just isn't the same as watching live

Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen until teams move to their home locations. With every game on the west coast of the U.S and it being a necessity for times to be as friendly as possible to their potential live audience at the arena, it will be difficult to schedule games at EU friendly times. They can possibly schedule matches early on Saturday, they just have to be careful with which teams they schedule when.

It was better than how I feared it could be, so that's a positive but I would lie if I said I didn't have some "viewer's fatigue" at the end.

Part of it due to time zone, of all the possible timezones western coast one is the worst for me (I wake up at 5AM if the matches always start at 1AM...), also so many games in a row always on the same map pool made the end of each stage look a bit repetitive (always my personal opinion).

I have to admit I enjoyed watching lower tiers team in the various Trials more than watching some of the latest OWL matches.

For me personally is not about the season being too long (is actually the contrary, now we'll have 5 months without OWL, at all), but the stages and map pools not being organized properly.

What would I change?

• Probably forcing live patch and OWL one to be on par, it helps to watch pros playing the game you are currently playing and not the one you were playing 2 months ago.
• Shorter stages with longer pauses in-between, more time for the teams to pèrepare/scrim and for sure to take well deserved breaks
• Map draft with all maps instead of fixed maps, yes teams would be struggling with this (this might even reduce slightly the gap between Koreans and Western teams/players, have to admit they simply are better at methodically preparing for something).
• For sure different timezones/hours and finally for OW to become REALLY global also at its highest tier, I know this is coming but will never be too soon.

EDIT: 'cause very important, get ZP in and IF you have to remove someone to make space for him, sorry but Semmler was the weakest, even at the end.

tamagao [#22]

Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen until teams move to their home locations. With every game on the west coast of the U.S and it being a necessity for times to be as friendly as possible to their potential live audience at the arena, it will be difficult to schedule games at EU friendly times. They can possibly schedule matches early on Saturday, they just have to be careful with which teams they schedule when.

True, but other classic NA sports (and OWL takes a lot from them) do that, NBA has matinees on Sunday, yes have to be properly planned so that all teams get the same amount of chances into them.