It’s unfortunately old news at this point that the Tier 2 scene for Overwatch has been crumbling in the past year or so. The dissolution of various T2 academy teams that were supposed to feed directly into the Overwatch League has publically begged Blizzard multiple times for any form of help in promoting the league and helping retain visibility of the players that waged war for the dream of joining the ranks of the Tier 1 scene.
For three years they’ve been asking for help and support, and Blizzard has made a minimal motion towards helping them with the gargantuan task.
Academy teams, which are a subset of Tier 1 teams that use the T2 scene to groom up-and-coming players, have been crumbling and collapsing in frustration amid the difficulties that they’ve posited multiple times publically, Tier 1 teams are more likely to hire meme streamers to their rosters in an effort to boost their popularity.
T1 teams skipping over T2, however, hasn’t been the only consistent thorn in the side of Overwatch Contenders, however. While the league was still on Twitch, Contenders operated completely separately from T1. On a separate channel, away from the litany of subscribers and followers, Blizzard instead opted to host reruns of the past matches instead of helping bolster T2 viewers.
This changed in Season 2 of the League, although only slightly: the official Overwatch League channel began to host certain streams of various Contenders matches. Finding the matches and their schedule was still a bit of work, as Blizzard opted to keep T2 at the proverbial arm’s length from their ‘pristine’ T1 scene.
Now, as Contenders is a mere shadow of itself in earlier seasons with only a few teams remaining, and many of them allegedly considering a way out as well, Blizzard has added Overwatch Contenders information to the Overwatch League website.
While you can still celebrate this, this has been regarded by many as a bizarre case of making an attempt after the trial has concluded. Otherwise known as ‘too little, too late.’
It’s difficult to imagine what Contenders could have ultimately looked like in its present form if Blizzard chose to support the T2 scene from the beginning, acquiescing to a modicum of requests from teams and players. T3 is still in absolute shambles, but it’s admittedly difficult to point out the bush fire when the entire barn is engulfed in flames. It’s very unlikely that Overwatch League, or Contenders, will be going anywhere in the near future. It’s also unlikely that they will recapture the magic of Season 1, at least for quite a while.
