Sounds like Blizzard are the spawn of Hitler himself, I'd love for someone to tell me how this is good for e-sports never mind OW because this just screams of Blizzard trying to be the big bad dictator which I fail to see working for OW.

Do people still think Blizzard care about Europe? this isn't really showing that is it.

Get the feeling Sado was hated by everyone for doing very little wrong in my eyes yet this guy is toxic on every stream and has felt the wrath of Blizzard more than once yet people still defend him and act like he did nothing wrong, pretty sure if the roles got reversed and Sado was this toxic in Korea people would be screaming for harsh punishment but because it's a popular streamer nobody seems to give a shit.

Look at Dafran, he's still popular and a player most people want in the OWL yet if you do some account boosting it's a lot worse? bullshit. What Sado done is nothing in comparison but it's times like this where it pays to be popular.

Always felt this guy was a massive tosser and questioned him being in the OWL over better and more reliable/respectful players yet all the fanboys claimed it was a good move because he's a popular streamer with a decent fan base, isn't looking so good now is it.

We need to get away from this favouritism towards big streamers acting like they single handedly keep OW going, much the same with Seagull before people acting like he's an OW god and helped make the game big and that, I feel we massively exaggerate how important streamers are to a particular game and that only inflates their ego which probably happened here.

Simply put, fuck the streamers and bring in better players, OWL is all about the best in the world not most popular.

What in the fuck? the team leader loses a month of pay because he can't babysit every player on the team at the same time and make sure they don't do anything stupid? jesus christ.

Ah, was expecting some hot chick presenting the whole shit who was a former pornstar, you killed my dreams :P

Is a baffling decision to be fair I've known about Semmler for years when he was doing dota or some shit with the 2gd studio team and even then nobody liked him, I honestly don't think you could find a more hated caster in e-sports over the years yet the guy knows how to get a gig that's for sure.

Who is the former pornstar?

Makes sense, snub two guys casting OW from the very beginning for a guy who not even people that followed CS:GO enjoyed, this guy was probably the most hated caster in CS from what I've read and is a fucking nightmare to listen to yet Blizzard think he's better over ZP, Hex and Kaplan?

I'll be a bit biased but when I got into OW before launch I got the feeling Hex and ZP casted pretty much everything, even doing the NA and EU GG weeklies on the same weekend and always considered them very good casters who I always enjoyed listening to, they put in more work than any caster duo out there yet for some reason have been overlooked for guys I can't stand so it's a massive kick in the teeth for people who have been here right from the start and have worked as hard as them to not get a gig for the OWL.

I hope to god Semmler ain't casting any OWL, that guy is straight up aids to listen to and probably explains why very few CS:GO tournaments hire him as a caster even though he's partnered with Anders who always gets an invite, please stay the fuck away from OW.

I'll go with the obvious one, Prodigy - Spitfire, not only are Prodigy an iconic British group the music is enough to get one pumped walking onto the stage.

Most sports do have a fair share of foreigners but nothing to this extreme, you won't get an entire NFL team full of Spanish players nor will you get an entire MLS team full of English players.

I can understand getting in a few UK players to the UK franchise would be a wise move but at the same time will be an absolute nightmare to put into practise, it's not like they signed a team with basic English skills, they signed a team where neither of them probably have basic English skills so that idea would never work.

They need some British representation for contenders and hope the Brits support the entire franchise, aka all the Koreans in OWL but at the same time being a Brit myself I honestly don't think the fan base id there for e-sports, can't think of any big e-sports title where there's a good backing from British gamers in all honesty so time will tell.

So they kicked him AFTER he walked out and retired? that's like dumping someone after they've just dumped you, why not just say he left instead of all this he-man bullshit.

Until it's official the title should be "Philadelphia Fusion, SADO or SADONT"

I'm bitterly disappointed though, I need to be even more negative so I have to up my game and get rid of that bit of a star!

I wished Blizzard would work towards a LAN outside of OWL where the top 2 of each contenders season meet on LAN and compete for something bigger, maybe at Blizzcon? not sure if everyone agrees but I'd much rather see this scenario than a gimmick world cup every year at least then these "contenders" have something to strive for other than winning their respective leagues which gives them nothing other than some money.

I'm probably alone in this but I'm not sure on the name "contenders" to me that's what you call a league where you have the ability to be promoted to the higher league yet the higher league is OWL and that won't happen here unless you fork out 20M$ which is then not a promotion but a buy-in, I can see the name making sense since it means "a person or group competing with others to achieve something" but at the same time all you're achieving is winning that one tournament, I much prefer the open division name since it doesn't make it sound like you're contending for something bigger. I can't recall the term contenders being used in e-sports before OW came a long.

Probably doesn't make sense, but if I put 6 teams together and called it the contenders I would assume that implies they are working towards something even bigger.

Bit late. we now have 12 man teams consisting of 2 Korean teams and a bunch of the best Europeans not even in the mix as well as so many new teams with zero experience in big games, it would've been good if we had that chance back when everyone was on the same team and in form don't you think?

Minor issue? having the best teams EU and NA have to offer on LAN and not making them play eachother is a minor issue? you kidding me on or what, what good is competitive e-sports if the best of each nation never play eachother? do you not want to see the best asia has to offer against the best na/eu have to offer?

Blizzard promoted the WC which was a mickey mouse tournament that didn't even involve any proper teams, it was a gimmick, why stir hype for a gimmick once a year tournament and not for one that actually matters? you don't promote one type of e-sports that's completely different to the one you're building up long term, that's as retarded as the NFL deciding to build a new super league then putting all the hype and promotion into a small gimmick cup that has nothing to do with the new super league.

Promote the OWL by having a LAN or at least a big online tournament involving the teams involved in OWL and have that as the pre-season then see what viewers you get, then that type of promotion would make sense but promoting the WC? ridiculous.

I think you are thinking too long term, do you know how many things have failed in life that had as much if not more ambition and vision? that doesn't equal success just so you know, Blizzard have taken a game with very little scene in e-sports and tried to make it absolutely massive, they could've taken baby steps to test out the water yet theyv'e dived right into OWL worth hundreds of millions on the back of ONE tournament and a WC that doesn't mean shit as well as averaging about 50k viewers?

You don't have to make large moves, you build up success yet Blizzard want to have success overnight, it's probably the most ambitious plan in e-sports history yet they have absolutely nothing to build on, one LAN that didn't even pit NA vs EU and a mickey mouse cup in the WC so no shit people are short term.

Rogue moved to NA and beasted all over the entire NA OW scene yet because they didn't win anything in Korea they are over rated according to most people, even Chinese teams winning a few local events are rated higher than non-Asians, not quite sure why people rate the asians THAT highly but whatever, let's see how they do on American soil under completely different circumstances then rate them as high as you wish.

Not sure, I'm going senile but how many tournaments have Blizzard actually done apart from the WC and contenders finals, which btw the decision to NOT have EU vs NA on LAN is still fucking farcical and because of that I have very little hope Blizzard can do a good job but I hope they do.

As far as e-sports go it's been very lacklustre, when gosugamers had weekly cups when OW first came out why didn't Blizzard do some of that monthly? when OW first came out I always watched those GG weeklies and very much enjoyed it yet when that all died down where was Blizzard? nowhere, when we're crying out for LANS where was Blizzard? nowhere, you don't need 100$m investments from some rich guys who probably know nothing about OW to run an event yet unless Blizzard where gaining from it they didn't give a shit.

When it comes to making games Blizzard are as good as anyone but when it comes to e-sports they are a joke, what have Blizzard themselves done for ANY game they have released over the last decade? I know nothing about Hots but how many tournaments do they run for that? or HS? or back when WC3 was huge how many did they run? they run like 1 arena tournament a year at Blizzcon for wow, why not throw in some chump change and host monthly tournaments? Blizzard are sitting on a massive pot of money yet still want investment just to run tournaments for their own games.

I wish the people that say Blizzard care about e-sports would actually prove it because I ain't seeing it.

How does Blizzard taking it over make it any more connected than it already is? if you mean like a professional league system owned by one organization with different tiers for different quality of teams then sure it makes it connected but how can one do that with leagues all over the world?

Having multiple different tournaments ran by different production groups brings more diversity in terms of sponsors and teams signing up as well as different systems, I can't think of anything e-sports related that's worked best with 1 group running every single tournament but hey, time will tell eh.

You guys get way too uptight if someone has a separate opinion from you. >

Pretty sure you call me negative and all that whenever my opinion differs from yours, that's just how this place works, someone disagreed with you? they are negative, downvote them!!

Don't hate you bro, I'd have your babies no joke.

How does that make it better? that means we rely 100% on Blizzard doing as many offline events as possible, I'm not sure this has anything to do with them making OW more "connected" as it is them trying to rule the game with an iron fist, Blizzard seem to be looking at the way e-sports has been ran over the last decade and trying to do the opposite, how many games have events only ran by the people that made the game?

What next, Blizzard owning the rights to every team and player so they can do what they want and hold auctions for the players to make even more fat bank? fucking ridiculous in all honesty. Blizzard have taken the best ran OW event since the game has been released and taken control of it and people think this is better for the game?

Beginning to wonder if Pixelfish works for Blizzard never in my entire life have I seen someone so positive on absolutely every single thing a company does, I love Blizzard as much as anyone but come on man, we ain't gonna kill you if you're even slightly negative about anything they do.

It was great having the contenders but the decision they made regarding that was shocking and a massive anti-climax at least for me.

Indeed but that's to find talent rather than hoard it, it would be different if a massive franchise in the NFL had 4 sister teams full of world class NFL players no other team could buy wouldn't it.

No I'm saying it should only count for teams already in the OWL because if not then every OWL team would have a b team with 12 of the best free agents around and then we end up with pretty much all of the top players being signed to the same 8 or so orgs already in the OWL

Do you value two apex championships more than a $150K contract? I’m curious if there are differing opinions on the matter.>

Seems that people also can't understand the second part of the question, do you consider a football player who has won 4 lower league trophies more decorated than a football who has won the world cup etc? question shouldn't be "most decorated" because you could then write down players who have won every tier 4 tournament OW has had and say they are the most decorated theoretically right?

Put it this way, we will see how good Koreans are with the OWL and in future OW when they perform outside of Korea, if Europe had as many tournaments as Asia did and Asia had as many as Europe had (barely any eh) I'm sure we wouldn't be rating Koreans THAT high but it's all we have to go on.

Aye an OWL team can pretty much snap up 12 of the best free agents and tie them down, hopefully there's something in place where that doesn't happen, ie a contract for the duration of Contenders meaning once it's done they are free to speak to potential OWL teams.

Real sport and you list American pish, you do get sent off if you swear in football (real football) in Europe, not sure about the other sports barring cricket since nobody gives a shit about them outside of the US, neither of what we say change anything and him saying fuck you isn't even the real problem stop deflecting from the real issue here.

Really? I thought CS was popular right off the bat considering 1.6 was hugely popular, sure it got more popular thanks to betting and then skins but it was still popular enough, Valve found a way to take CS into the main stream and did so, whether they milked money from gamers or not doesn't mean shit, they found a way to make money and put a big chunk of it back into e-sports, tell me what Blizzard have done, they've made a big chunk of money and done what with e-sports?

You didn't know Activision bought Blizzard? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment

Between the massive successes of these two companies in the past decade they have put next to nothing back into e-sports, even this OWL isn't Blizzard putting money into it, it's everyone else doing that.

Talk shit about Valve all you want, fact is they are making mad bank, pumping millions back into both games and have games a million times more popular than anything Blizzard have ever achieved, I love Blizzard games but when it comes to actual e-sports Valve take a massive shit all over them.

Bad example using NFL considering it's an American sport, put it this way, you do that shit in pretty much 98% of any real sport you're going to get punished, whatever way you look at it what this guy done was bad and the ban is without doubt justified.

Exactly, guy had like 6k viewers and how many of them thought it was funny to do the same? Blizzard probably had thousands of false reports thanks to this guy alone, yet people STILL defend the guy? christ.

Exactly, they are making money and putting half of it back into tournaments, how much do you think Blizzard have made over the years since they started with D2 and SC1 and how much have they put into tournaments or e-sports in general? Blizzard have gamers money yet what have they done with it? how much money has Blizzard and Activision made in the last 20 years from gamers money and how much have they put back into e-sports?

How many tournaments have Blizzard themselves or officially backed for any game they have created? never mind expansion packs, SC1 was one of the most popular games on the planet yet had like 1 or something didn't it? WC3:TFT didn't have any yet it was huge, Quake 3 didn't have any yet it was huge, LoL/DotA doesn't have any yet are huge.

This is e-sports bro, we don't want expansions we want e-sports, we want tournaments all over the world with the best players/teams competing for juicy prizes.

Where does all that money go? Valve take the money yet put millions back in the form of majors, name one big tournament Blizzard have done outside of Blizzcon for any game since SC1?

Blizzard barely pushed wow arena as an e-sport even though it was popular expansions ago, can't remember Blizzard doing big LAN events for WC3 even when it was popular as fuck, Blizzard take money and put it back into games but never do anything for the community in terms of big prize LANS other than OWL and even then, how much money did Blizzard pump into OWL?

I'm pretty sure if you looked at how much money Valve and Blizzard have dished out as prize money for their respective games that Valve would take the biggest shit all over Blizzard, who cares about expansions? CS and Dota2 are massive games where you have the potential to make millions any given year playing them, when was the last time you could say that about Blizzard games? never.

Ask yourself what you want as a professional gamer, millions of dollars or expansions.

That didn't include the videos, wasn't it you that said he didn't report people or was it someone else? either way, someone said he didn't do it and for someone to find the clip and prove it, here is the clip that proves it 100% that he's a twat who 100% deserved the ban.

They are there because of ability but you also have to be professional so of course it matters if someone is an ass hole, can you imagine how long this guy will last in the OWL for Dallas if this is the type of shit he does on a weekly basis? do you see professional NFL players running around saying fuck you to the opposition? they'd get punished and this xQc idiot isn't special so he too got punished, I hardly think him getting banned for 3 days for trying to get other people banned and writing abusive shit in the report going directly to Blizzard is a bit much if anything it's a bit weak.

Care to explain how this has been taking out of context?

His life and career won't end because of what he did, he got banned for 3 days which won't affect him hardly nor did it ban him from OWL since it hasn't started yet, if he carries on being a tosser then I honestly hope to god his career does end.

But they don't have the bestest tournament in the entire world that will be a guaranteed massive success and change the face of e-sports and make OW a hugely popular game with hundreds and thousands of viewers with tens of thousands in attendance at LAN in season 2, do they?

Flags are kind of weird across most e-sports, SK in CS us a Brazilian flag even though they reside in the USA and represent a German organization and I considered it pretty dumb when Rogue suddenly became American after they moved to USA from France and likewise if a full Korean line up suddenly end up wearing Union Jacks because of London Spitfire so where do you draw the line?

Not sure what worries me more after watching that clip, the fact this guy is on an OWL team or the fact people defend him saying he got banned because he was a streamer and not because he's an immature prick.

If only he was popular that wouldn't matter, but not having a fan base sadly matters.

I'm still sure he's worth taking a punt on if he's been playing high ranked and looking good but considering nobody has heard much from him for the longest time he probably isn't interested in OWL.

Wait what the actual fuck, you honestly wonder if Blizzard banned an account because the dude stayed on 1 character and didn't join voice chat? jesus christ. It seems the vast majority in here say the same about xQc and that he deserves it and I've seen other people saying he's a twat on Twitch so the general consensus is, he's a twat and most likely deserved it, but hey don't ban someone for abusing the system just ban the guy refusing to join voice chat, hilarious.

As far as I know playing one character and not joining voice chat isn't against any Blizzard ToS so saying this is a "legitimate report" is completely delusional.

Isn't this xQc in the OWL? but hey he's popular right he can do what the hell he wants.

How can one say the system doesn't work when it banned someone for abusing it? how can one say toxic people don't get banned unless you have them all on your list and can verify that? how does one know thousands of people ain't getting banned on a monthly basis?

It was the same issue with wow, people going on forums saying the system isn't working just because Blizzard aren't transparent in who they ban, when they ban and why they ban them, they keep that shit secret yet secret doesn't mean it isn't working.

I highly doubt they banned this immature prick because he's a streamer considering he's in the OWL and has a good fan base of 12 year olds behind him, he abused the system and got punished for it and to me it's incredibly simple.

I know Jeff says the reporting system is working and people need to use it, but frankly I've not seen any evidence see centre of it. All I've seen is a few streamers get banned for very borderline offenses, while every session I play I get at least one game with someone screaming abuse down their mic.>

That's the problem as I said above with Blizzard not not detailing every ban etc but they never have and never will, just because there isn't any evidence it works doesn't mean nobody gets banned, I've been banned playing wow for "toxic banter" with people obviously come about from reports, it works.

If enough people report that guy screaming abuse down the mic he will get banned as well, how do you know enough reported him, how do you know he didn't get banned? that's the problem, unless we see results we assume nothing happens.

Wonder what rules are in place for sponsors, ie gambling/alcohol and all that jazz and how many you can have etc, would love to know.

I thought every player was a free agent though or was that only to begin with? if orgs do get a buyout fee for the players then it would be massive for any org not involved with OWL to build a team in that case for sure not just to get the fee but in the hopes they get financial backing if they do well.

Problem is why would orgs pick these players up and pay them knowing they lose them for free in a year if they end up in OWL? then if you ain't getting paid can you see all the best Europeans playing for nothing at the highest level in the hope they get picked up next season? a lot of risks to be taken by Europeans whether it's the players or orgs tbh.

Correct me if I'm wrong but we will most likely only have Contenders in Europe to deal with, why would any org pick up these players and pay them only to lose them in a year if they impress and get snapped up from an OWL team, that org for example Misfits wouldn't make a dime from them being "Moved over" would they?

I can definitely see some orgs having a feeder team like Misfits, picking up 6 of the best Europeans left and basically saying impress us and you might join our OWL squad next season.

How does the mid season window work, can a team get rid of a player half way into the season or can they only bring in extra players and not replace any?

I guess this will work in the future with about 16 teams or whatever and Blizzard want to have the structure in place for years before that happens so it makes sense from that point of view but still not a fan of the American divisions they have in every league, then again America is massive so what can you do.

No the fact I don't agree is what causes ire my choice of words is reserved for afterwards, anyway let's not fill the thread up with off-topic pish because this is the way over.gg words and it's all good, I'll keep disagreeing with the masses and collect my downvotes :)

What's really negative is the flat out immaturity whenever someone doesn't agree with the general popular opinion or says something remotely negative about one of two gods, Seagull or Dafran. This concept of downvoting someone who doesn't agree with you is the dumbest shit on the planet hence why I've probably had more downvotes than anyone else on the site because I'm not a sheep.

Still couldn't care less unless there's a hidden system in place that bans you after so many downvotes :P