The Vancouver Titans have easily become a household name within the Overwatch League, although likely not for the reason that any organization would prefer to.
Signing the legendary underdog’s Team RunAway from Korean Contenders, they immediately skyrocketed to the top of the competition, holding their own against the New York Excelsior and standing toe to toe against the ever-brutal San Francisco Shock.
Then some bizarre internal fallout occurred between the players and the organizations, exponentially increased in speed and frustration thanks to a global pandemic that caught even some of the more hardy organizations by unfortunate surprise.
The fallout took weeks to finally come to a conclusion, marked by multiple Vancouver Titans players simply scrubbing their social media profiles clean of the Canuck organization one by one leaving fans fascinatingly desperate for any official news that never came.
Then the shoe finally dropped: the Vancouver Titans were to carry on in name only, dropping all members of Team RunAway and signing up Contenders in rare adherence to Blizzard‘s much-heralded, yet rarely used, Path to Pro. The strength of the roster dropped instantly, and the Vancouver Titans went from the cream of the Overwatch League to struggling against everyone.
Now, as they’re eyeing the upcoming 2021 season, concerns about strength are just as prevalent today as they were months ago: predictions are coming fast and furiously about whether they’ll be able to move out of the bottom of the rankings against twenty other teams, regardless of how the season will ultimately play out.
The Vancouver Titans assistant General Manager stated that their tryouts consisted of almost 120 players that were eager to step into the Overwatch League, and they’ve managed to cut through that number to figure out what their final roster is going to look like in time for the December League cut to prepare for the late start in April of 2021.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty lying ahead of the Vancouver Titans is reforming a fanbase, which is just as daunting of a task as building a new roster that can compete against the best in the world during the time of an unprecedented pandemic.
A fanbase was readily found when Team RunAway was signed to the League, and just as quickly dashed when the South Korean stars all went their separate ways (with some opting to simply quit the League entirely) on the back of allegations of mismanagement and culture shock.
As is always the case within esports (and a large reason they’re fascinating to get involved with), the Vancouver Titans could come out in 2021 and blow everyone away. Here’s hoping, at least.
