It’s almost time for the new Overwatch League season to start – tellingly, the first day is on Valentine’s day of all things. It’s going to start with a bang too – we’re going to dive right in with a Grand Finals rematch between Philadelphia Fusion and London Spitfire!
Naturally, things have changed quite a bit since last season – the biggest change was, of course, the addition of new teams to the overall lineup:
- Atlanta Reign, Paris Eternal, Toronto Defiant, and Washington Justice will join the Atlantic Division,
- while Chengdu Hunters, Guangzhou Charge, Hangzhou Spark, and Vancouver Titans will join the Pacific Division.
The other big change (caused in no small part by the addition of new teams) is the severely relaxed tournament schedule. Where last season each team played a ridiculous 40 matches, this time, they’ll only be playing 28 per team, reducing the stress on the teams and players, something that was heavily criticised last season.
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The prize pool has changed significantly as well – the already respectable 3.5 million dollars last year has been upped to an even $5 million this year. For each of the three stages:
- the winner gets $200.000,
- the runner-up $100.000
- and the remaining teams either $50.000 or $25.000.
For the season play-off pool, the champs get $1.1 million, the runner-up $600k. Then, the next-best ranked teams get $450k, $350k, $300k, and $200k each. The matches in each stage will be chosen from a pool of 12 in total. The control matches will be played on Busan, Ilios and Nepal, hybrid matches on Hollywood, King’s Row and Numbani, assault on Temple of Anubis, Horizon: Lunar Colony and Volskaya Industries. The escort missions will be played on Rialto, Dorado and Route 66.
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