Right now, Blizzard is working their way through the group stages of the inaugural Overwatch World Cup. Sixteen countries are taking part, Australia included. But don’t worry, because we won’t be a part of it for much longer.
Apart from the bit where Blizzard is trying to make a serious jab at turning a first-person shooter into a global esport, the Overwatch World Cup is an interesting beast because of its structure. Australia’s captain and top four players, for instance, were picked via a public poll. The most popular then also got to pick two players of their own.
As someone who’s been playing and following tournaments in various games for almost a decade and a half, the thought of relying on the popular vote reminds me of the All-Star competitions held at the World Cyber Games. And it’s not just Australia: every country that competed in the preliminary qualifiers was selected in the same fashion, thanks to almost 3 million votes.
Unfortunately, popularity can’t buy you wins.
“Australia got one kill in that round,” the commentator quipped.
“The final total there is 119 to 7 … I think we’ve set the pace for this best of three.”
Fucking ouch.
Australia was paddling up crap creek when they were drawn against South Korea – that’s pretty much par for the course in any game made by Blizzard – but it didn’t help that Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) also came into the tournament with a cracking record. They actually showed off some of their practice results prior to the tournament, and while a 0-6 drubbing of Sweden is nothing to be proud of, beating Canada and China 3-1 is a better start than most.
And then there’s the small part where Finland has been really, really good at first-person shooters for like a decade. Their team is basically a core of players from professional outfit Ninjas in Pyjamas, with one of the best DPS players in the world (Taimou) to boot. Taiwan probably would have had a chance if they’d been drawn into another group.
As for Australia? Well, it probably says it all when the commentator kicks off the game by saying “well, they’re just happy to be here and I appreciate that”.
If you’re not going to win, you might as well have fun.
Comments
11 responses to “Australia Got Flogged In The Overwatch World Cup”
Canonically, the country is a wasteland in the game’s world so it only make sense it’s a wasteland of talent.
Nah, only the NT is a wasteland. The Roadhog and Junkrat comic shows Sydney thriving with humans and omnics living together.
As soon as I saw we drew South Korea I knew it was gg ez no re
Yeah, letting the public choose the captain was pretty much the nail in the coffin.. let’s pick troll video youtubers over actual good players (or more importantly, proven teamwork). This is why we can’t have nice things.
Results would be different if I was playing.
Yeah, no kills at all 😛
In Muselks defence, he always worries hat he was going to be a liability. That being said him on Lucio is not doing the Aussies any favours as it’s a character he traditionally hasn’t played much of before.
That being said Group C is an absolute hell group and the Aussies would have done better in a different grouping. Getting Finland and South Korea in the same group is like “well fucking gg, guess we might as well make the the best of a bad situation and enjoy our flogging”.
Well said. Most countries, even if they did train non-stop, most of the time they would have stopped short at South Korea’s natural god given gamer talent. Besides, Elliott was practicing Zenyatta the entire time, but I don’t think that he should’ve been Team Captain at all.
as much as i love Overwatch, find the pro games both thoroughly confusing to watch (too much editing and going between different people and teams, there never seems to be any form of logic to it) and thoroughly boring to watch… oh look there is a whole team hiding between a rein shield, oh look they are advancing on the other team who are all hiding behind their rein shield. yawn.
“This Video is Private”
May want to look into that, Kotaku
A couple of the videos have been taken down or set to private since the post went live. I’ve updated it again; you should be able to watch both games from the one video in the post now.
The videos are still up on the Blizzcon site, but I don’t think you can embed it.
Where does the commentator say Australia are happy to be here? Sounds hilarious but I couldn’t find the sound bite.