No one has left the OWL.

There’s no way this comment will be approved because facts, scary, but xQc’s fine/ban has been picked apart really well on the competitive subreddit. It’s worth a look, though there have been some pretty awful comments on both sides of things.

This isn’t really anything new, especially for the Korean teams. Coaching was the core of basically every APEX winner.

They’re the worst team in the league, relative to the rest of the league they are terrible. Really pedantic point to try to make, honestly.

Coaching has nothing to do with it. They did not pick the team they should have, and instead filled the team with tier 2/tier 3 pros. If this was MY (and I’ve heard that MY’s coach is on his way to join Shanghai), they’d be a top-5 team. That said, pretty sure the MY DPS are underage, but if they had picked up the MY…

Players are living in LA for Season 1 only, and that’s because the setup process for the OWL needs some time...they’ll be playing in their respective cities for season 2, exactly the way it works in every franchised professional sport.

You’re wrong?

Sick OWL content, Kotaku. Love that you guys focus on the actual lea - oh wait, nope, majority of OWL content isn’t even about the actual OWL.

1) ping

Not surprising. Visas for Chinese and Russian players seem to be especially difficult to get, and has disqualified teams across numerous eSports from major events, but Koreans can still run into visa issues too.

Harbleu is not good enough for OWL, he was barely in the pro scene in the leadup to OWL and NRG was extremely unimpressive. Lateyoung should be in there though.

Miraculous Youngster was the Chinese team that should have been signed. They went toe-to-toe with Lunatic-Hai in a fantastic series from the OGN Super Cup but none of them were picked up by Shanghai initially. Their lfex support was signed very recently but if Shanghai had based their picks on talent, they’d have a…

One year deals with a second year there as a team option.

It levels the playing field between teams rather than allowing them to manipulate map selection to gain an advantage, for better or for worse. In this same vein, it makes it much easier for teams to prepare for stages instead of trying to have every map down or going in with notable map weaknesses.

This representation narrative is ridiculous. Geguri has been picked up because Shanghai tanked their roster instead of picking up MY from the start, can anyone name one other female player anywhere near OWL level? There’s not going to be representation until there are players good enough to make it into the league.

birdring currently the best DPS in the world imo. Fleta was really hyped up, and is a great player, but birdring is so consistent and has been for so long.

You’re the solitary redeeming feature of Kotaku’s Overwatch coverage. Really, really nice to be able to read content on the matches themselves.

I thought this was totally okay, by Kotaku’s logic?

The benefits of voice communication in a MOBA outweight the drawbacks by so much. You can mute players, why hold back the entire community because you’re unwilling to make use of in-game functions?

What are you talking about? They have 3 players from LGD, and then a smattering from other teams...with an 8 man roster. Miraculous Youngster was the right call for Shanghai but corruption in China created this subpar roster.