Oh man, that's Life? I used to look up to him when I was a little baby aspiring AF medic. That's so awesome to hear; half the fun of watching anything OW related is seeing old TF2 players succeed.

would you rather they signed some shitty tier 2 uk players that no one's heard about instead of tier 1 koreans that anyone who cares about the scene knows about

yes you bellend lmao

so they could lose to every other team and be the joke of the league like the shanghai team?

no so you can be proud to be represented by your fellow country men in the scene

team actually has to be good, pretty sure there arent 6 uk players that are even close to owl level

Glad to follow my local team (all players are from a country 6000 miles away btw).

i think the problem is is that these are supposed to emulate sports franchises where you build a fanbase and sell merchandise and shit
its not as obvious now but once teams have home and away locations it makes more sense
if youre a new viewer that knows nothing about overwatch going to a home game and seeing that your team is composed of 12 koreans who dont speak your language and are culturally very different than you can make it hard to get invested in the team and therefore the sport
i think the idea that an american org can buy the only european spot and instead of taking advantage of that fact and building a strong european roster, importing two korean rosters and mashing them together seems like a lazy decision that threw away the fantastic opportunity they had

Players earn the right to be called professionals and be paid 6 figure salaries. They shouldn't get to play in the league just because they happen to be from a certain country. Nobody in the U.K. except for Numlocked and maybe Mike has earned the right to represent anyone in the OWL. If you want national representation, you watch the world cup. Pro leagues are for the players who are genuinely good enough to be pros.

boombox is in OWL and kruise could be, but youre probably just naming players that TFTV would know

I found it almost impossible to watch on Twitch yesterday because every team fight looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, but today I'm watching it on MLG TV instead. The bitrate on MLG TV is 7 Mb/s for 720p@60fps(instead of 5 Mb/s on Twitch) and 12 Mb/s for 1080p@60fps(that is double Twitch's 6 Mb/s). Blizzard's signature oversaturated busy art style still isn't helping with visual clarity, but it is literally three times easier to follow for me on this higher bit rate. Your mileage may vary.

you can use overwatchleague.stream to view the MLG stream with twitch chat, if thats what you want for some reason

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/future-esports-arrives-overwatch-league-launch-52276241

not sure if anyone cares but seagull was mentioned briefly in this article

Ah yes just like Chelsea and Mann United are running with mostly brits right. better players give better results which in turn boosts the teams prestige and income.

https://image.prntscr.com/image/sw0g53u4SiqVFJdLSsmVqA.png

outlaws is the people's team

Okay SDB is fucking insane

^ also sad to admit, clockwork got smashed :(

Also 1v1ing shadowburn on soldier, what did you expect?

Clockwork was a lot better at tf2 than he is at OW. It's a shame, because he's such a nice guy, but he's really never showed the skill that made him such a god at tf2.

Seoul Dynasty
xepheR aka Friez3 - one of the players who were planned to attend i-series that one time we tried to make a team
Wekeed - don't know much about him myself but he was often part of the korean superteam rosters

NYXL
Pavane aka crp / creep - he was at one of the older i-series and was on the failed i-series team mentioned above. coaching nyxl
Fl0w3R - prodigy
Pine - highlander sniper
Janus - Med main

and outlaws tairong :)

God fucking damn it no. Is Pavane actually Creep? This cuts so deep.

Around November in 2017, Tairong vented on Twitter about Valve's treatment of competitive TF2 leading to the transition into Korean competitive OW. Tairong mentions he stressed to Fl0w3R and Pine, who were reluctant at the time to switch to OW, "this is our future". He also mentions Pavane, a player who wanted to revive the Korean TF2 scene, that he shouldn't do it either, but Pavane wanted to keep going - only to eventually be burnt out.

At my first LAN which was i55 around 2015, while I was looking through photos or something, Mana came up to me with a dude by his side, and he was like "yo, this is Creep! He plays in AsiaFortress!". I was surprised this dude had flown all the way to i55. I never forgot that moment and will never forget that moment Creep, with stars of hope in his eyes, this determined Korean player who was one of the top in his respective scene, telling me: "one day, I want to bring an Asian team to a future iSeries!".

It was just never going to happen in their favour, even if they had chosen to go.

I am happy seeing Bren and Sideshow sitting on the analyst desk. I am happy watching faces from all over the world - Muma, cw, Seagull, Zebbo, Zappis, Haffi, all of these players from back in the day - in Contenders or what's now a sold-out arena, viewed by 250-300K people rather than the initial predicted 30-50K on the internet. I will be happy for these people who have found what they wanted, even if it's not here. I'm so sorry you couldn't find what you wanted here. I understand.

I don’t think I anyone’s mentioned it but Super is on San Francisco but can’t play until he turns 18

Shadowburn on Pharaph today was hitting shots like in his frag vids, I began hearing edgy music in my head. ;)

What was the whole OW Contenders about sometime last year?
What happened to teams like NRG and Misfits? Was the entry fee too high for OWL?

florida mayhem = misfits
nrg didn't have a team (it kinda fell apart) so they didn't invest I don't think

NRG is San Fran Shock.

This has nothing to do with OWL but will correct you anyway.

Chelsea and Manchester United like most football teams have a century old history and heritage, they are built around their locxl communities and though their global brand and success has given them a new far reaching audience, the core of their fanbase is geographically built from generation to generation. When these teams formed back in the 1800s up to before TV took English Football to new heights in in the 60s, each team represented their local community with majority of players being local and homegrown from their youth teams, hence the development in the fanbase being focused on locality.

The Premier League was formed in 1992 to better tap into the huge potential for TV rights and increased revenues which in turn led to the global spread of the Premier League. It was not formed for teams to get better results and players and results (English teams pre Premier League era and pre Heysel Disaster ban we very successful in Europe), it was purely financially motivated but as a result over time has attracted better players due to higher wages and also the increased competition.

Even today the core fanbases of Football clubs will be bred from historical following based on locality. British players have less to do with it than long established heritage.

This is why I think the idea of franchises will not be successful if they just take the London team fill it with Koreans and Americans nost of whom probably have no idea what a Spitfire was, they cannot expect people to connect with the team on a geographical scale which was the purpose of setting up the OWL in this manner.

....

....

Plus the game is really fucking confusing and shite anyway.

Wow, didn't know Tairong is life. One of the best Asian medics to have ever played the game, I remember watching his casted matches when I first started playing 6s

Don't worry, for the next 2 years they'll play both their home and away matches in a city less than 5500 miles away from the city they're representing so the home crowd should easily be able to make it there to cheer them on.