Welcome to Overwatch Live, I missed you

Today, the Dallas Fuel will host the first live North American Overwatch League game since March of last year.

When the Overwatch League began in 2018, the plan was to host live matches in a centralized location and eventually work to host live matches (dubbed “Homestands”) in each of the teams’ 20 national markets. 2020 was to be the year that the League has converted from its Burbank, Calif., soundstage to places like Dallas, Paris and Shanghai. During the first five weeks of the 2020 season, OWL made that dream come true. He hosted games in New York, Philly, Houston and Washington before concerns over the rapidly growing out-of-control pandemic forced the league to pivot to games from a distance.

In 2021, Dallas Fuel was the first North American team to host a live Monitoring match for over a year. It wasn’t your typical life Monitoring live. For starters, Dallas’ opponents, the Houston Outlaws, weren’t there. Instead, the team took to the stage at Esports Stadium Arlington, in front of a live crowd, but played an online game against their Texas rivals.

It’s poetic that Dallas hosted the first North American Homestand in 2021. In 2019, the Fuel hosted OWL’s very first Homestand at the Allen Arena. This was the first time the Overwatch League community had seen the idea of ​​the Homestand conceptualized, and it ended up being a great example of their potential to engage fans. At that time, neither Dallas nor Houston were particularly good, but due to the contagious energy of the crowd, that didn’t matter. Here is a video telling the story of Monitoring‘s first Homestand.

Although Dallas is the first North American team to host a live event, the revival of the Overwatch League Homestand makes it took place in China in June. The Hangzhou Spark set up the first live Homestand since the pandemic shut them down the previous season. It was the first live Overwatch League event in Asia since last year’s pandemic ended Homestands before an Asian team had to host it.

The return of live events (ish) marks the return of a kind of energy that OWL matches lacked. Live events allow teams to get creative in the music and multimedia packages they use. Yesterday my Shanghai Dragons had their first Homestand which included an absolutely fabulous walkout video that I have to share here.

Even though the Dallas Homestand was a weird and lopsided event, I can’t deny the smile on my face as I saw the players step out to the roar of the crowd. Being able to hear the crowd erupt with every Dallas elimination made what wasn’t a very competitive game (Dallas beat Houston 3-0) more engaging.

As more people get vaccinated and states resume their pre-pandemic operations (perhaps recklessly given the prevalence of a new variant of covid), the Overwatch League is slowly returning to competition on local network. Announced this year, Project Aloha has qualified North American teams traveling to Hawai’i to compete against Asian teams to take advantage of Hawaii’s low latency connection to Asian servers. It is not yet known if other North American teams will also take over hosting from Homestands.