Overwatch has not one or two, but three officially recognized Esports leagues. Here’s a quick guide to how the different leagues work!

Overwatch is an incredibly fun game in which you can fight exciting battles with up to five friends on many colorful maps. But it’s also a high-profile Esports title with hundreds of professional players who spend years training and competing all day. It’s one thing to get a Play of the Game on a Friday night, but quite another to lift a trophy in front of thousands of roaring fans and win some handsome prize money. Here we introduce you to the three leagues that make up Overwatch in Esports.

Overwatch Contenders

The Overwatch Contenders are the entry point to the world elite. Here, pros and semi-pros from seven regions compete in hopes of making it into the Overwatch League. Many of the participants are teams from the Overwatch League Academy, which are subdivisions of the largest Esports organizations in the world.

The Contenders are held in two – Season s per year. Each – Season consists of Contender Trials, followed by a single-elimination tournament and finally the – Season al Playoff.

The combined prize pool for the Contenders is $2,500,000.

The Overwatch League

The Overwatch League (OWL) is structured similarly to a typical American sports league e.g. the NBA or NFL. 20 home teams representing individual cities compete each year. Players do not have to be residents of the respective cities (there are currently more professionals from South Korea than from any other nation), but their organizations must be based in the city they represent.

The Overwatch League is divided into weeks, with each team playing 28 games in the – Season and a mid– Season all-star break. It all concludes in the incredible Grand Finals.

The prize money for the Overwatch League is double that of the Contenders – $5,000,000.

Overwatch World Cup

The World Cup is, as the name suggests, a competition of nations. Each country in the regions supported by Overwatch can qualify through a series of smaller tournaments. The big event culminates at BlizzCon, which takes place every November in Anaheim, California. While the World Cup offers a smaller prize pool than the OWL, it earns even more prestige and respect. Players who normally compete on different OWL teams join together for the World Cup to represent their home country, and that’s always great to see.

No details have been revealed yet for the 2020 World Cup, but we’ll keep you posted. Until then, you can train hard with these tips and tricks.

Overwatch

Overwatch is a computer game by Blizzard Entertainment (Diablo 3, World of Warcraft) and a first-person shooter with individual fantasy elements. The game was released in May 2016.

In Overwatch, the player must choose between 21 unique characters, which can be freely selected in a loosely held classification system (offensive and defensive class, support unit and tanks).

A character’s three to four different abilities can be controlled and activated through the mouse and keyboard. The game modes already vary from scoring points to cargo hauling. Team play is required in both modes, as each character takes on a specific role in the battlefield (e.g. heal teammates, provide backup, or secure defensive lines).

The name Overwatch derives itself from a fictional elite military unit that came together when robots tried to subjugate humanity in a near future. Individual characters are associated with this unit in the game, while others oppose it. It is not yet known whether the storyline will continue in multiplayer.

Brawl

Brawl is a game mode in which time-limited rule variations of the well-known modes are drawn. Sometimes completely new game modes are used in Brawls.

Rule variations include, for example, the restriction to certain heroes or classes, changes to the cool-down times or certain cards. New game modes that have been playable so far include a soccer game and a PvE mode.

Usually, Brawls are restarted as Brawl of the Week every Tuesday at 22:00 UTC and are then playable for a week. On certain occasions, such as – Season al events, Brawls may also be playable for a longer or shorter period of time.

The game mode is comparable to the card chaos from Hearthstone and was activated for the first time in the beta phase on March 22, 2016 through a patch.

Actions

• Arcade: More health, shorter skill and ultimate cooldowns, and faster resurrection after death.
• Girl Power: Female heroes only.
• Head’s Up!: McCree, Genji, Hanzo, and Widowmaker. Only head hits count.
• High Noon: High Noon on Route 66, only head hits with McCree count.
• Highly Offensive: Only offensive heroes. Limit is two of the same hero per team.
• Junkenstein’s Revenge: Soldier, Hanzo, Ana, Mc Cree only (1 each). The first co-op PVE mode in Overwatch. Part of the – Season al event Halloween Horror.
• Justice rains from Above: Only Mercy and Pharah playable.
• Moba Watch: Only unique heroes per team. No hero switching allowed.
• Mystery Heroes: Upon death, you will be resurrected as a randomly selected Hero.
• Overly Defensive: Only defensive heroes. Limit is two of the same hero per team.
• Show Your Support: Support Heroes only. The limit is two of the same Hero per team.
• Super Shimada Bros: Welcome to Hanamura. Only Hanzo and Genji are playable. Shorter skill cooldowns, longer ultimate cooldowns.
• Tanks A Lot: Tank heroes only. Limit is two of the same hero per team.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Only McCree, Reaper and Roadhog playable.
• We’re all Soldiers now: Only Soldier: 76 playable on control cards.
• Lucioball: Lucio only: Soccer mode, 3 vs 3.
• Yeti Hunt: Five meis against a yeti that has the characteristics of Winston.

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