This was recorded before the recent announcement that the first of the online matches to be held in California would be canceled. Due to the mandatory state-wide quarantine in effect the matches have been postponed.
The OWLs Nest is CheckpointXP’s official podcast dedicated to the Overwatch League. Every week Robbie Landis is joined by Jake Lyon to discuss the latest league moves, matches and more. This week they talk about the cancellation of all remaining March and April homestand events. Covid-19 (also known as the Coronavirus) has been shutting down events and scenes all across the globe.
The Overwatch League was one of the first organizations to suspend play and cancel an event due to the concerns of Covid-19. When the season started early February all home stand events that were to take place in China were postponed. As of these most recent cancellations over concerns of Covid-19, 100+ matches have been affected. This has led the Overwatch League to condense the four conferences into three regions to play matches online. All matches should be played by May 1st which will catch the league up with where it would’ve been in the season originally. The Overwatch League canceled the Mid-Season Tournament and moved the All-Star Tournament to the end of the season.
Robbie and Jake discuss how these changes affect pro-play from the introduction of ping into a professional setting and how the league works to minimize it to playing with no crowds. Teams who are in the Pacific Conference will have to play more frequently than their Atlantic counter-parts. With the addition of the hero pools and hero bans this makes preparation for matches much different that it has been in the past. Robbie and Jake also discuss the changes to the hero pool selection lottery.
Finally, they break down the first four of the online matches and select their match of the week.