Overwatch online tournaments series#
San Francisco Shock have been Overwatch League champions two years in a row (Picture: Blizzard)Īctivision Blizzard also promise improvements to the viewer experience, with a new, revamped virtual set originally utilised during the Overwatch League 2020 finals, along with boosting the quality of match streams, and a video series to spotlight top players and teams.Īs Sean Miller outlines below in our interview, a spoiler mode is in the works too, designed so viewers can catch up with matches spoiler-free on the Overwatch League website. To reduce the chances of connection issues, western teams will also be flown out to a facility in Hawaii to compete against eastern teams - putting less distance between them. This allows you to set a target lag value for custom games - meaning players who have latency lower than this minimum setting will automatically have their network traffic delayed to meet the minimum and, hopefully, make matches fairer. Teams in each group will play regular regional qualifier matches to decide seeding in four standalone tournaments across the season, which will feature top teams from both regions competing in one bracket.Īll regular season matches will contribute towards qualification for the 2021 Season Playoffs, but only the top teams will qualify and compete in the main four tournaments.Īctivision Blizzard is banking on the minimum latency tool added in Overwatch last October to make international competition possible.
Announced in a video with Overwatch esports vice president Jon Spector, the 2021 format will see teams divided into two groups between East and West.