Shanghai came so close to winning the 2020 season and this year they still look to be in top form. The Dragons had another amazing season earning two tournament wins, the top spot in the standings, and an automatic pass into the playoffs. The Hunters have made appearances in two of the four tournaments earning them extra points, while San Francisco - the one-time gods of the league - never managed to escape the knockout rounds.Īfter dominating for two years straight, the Shock’s slight decline opened up opportunities for new teams to fill the space they left behind - namely the Dallas Fuel and my Shanghai Dragons.
The Chengdu Hunters - the team in the Asia Division notorious for their unorthodox (and at times inconsistent) play style - rank higher than the defending champions San Francisco Shock despite having a slightly worse record. The introduction of league points created an additional level of competition complexity and produced some amusing shake-ups in the rankings. Instead of regular season games existing as little more than filler for the higher stakes of the playoffs, the tournaments were a way to keep regular season play fresh and exciting.
The tournaments were a welcome continuation from the previous year. The top two teams in each region competed in a final tournament in which the participants received cash prizes and league points that will be used to determine seeding during the playoffs. In season four, teams participated in four alliteratively named tournaments (May Melee, June Joust, Summer Showdown, and Countdown Cup) consisting of three weeks of qualifying matches, a knockout round, and a final, double elimination bracket. Now reports are circulating that the league may take an extended break once the playoffs conclude in September in order to ensure the start of the new season coincides with the release of the long-in-development Overwatch 2.īut before we can contemplate what’s to come for the Overwatch League, let’s take a look at how this fourth regular season unfolded. The pandemic knee-capped the league’s pivot to live, in-person events, and the employee discrimination lawsuit filed against its parent company Activision Blizzard has seen nearly all of the OWL’s sponsors revoke or pause advertising. The Overwatch League wrapped up its fourth regular season last weekend amid ongoing uncertainty of the league’s future.
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