Overwatch World Cup

SYDNEY GROUP STAGE: OFFICIAL PREVIEW

Source: Blizzard Entertainment

Date 07/18/2017


Overwatch World Cup 2017Thirty Two National teams are competing in this tournament. Groups C and D are competing in Sydney Australia from July 20-22nd. Group C contains tournament host nation Australia as well as Italy, Portugal and Sweden.

OverwatchWorldCup2017-Button-LearnMore_OW_JP_320x80.png

Overwatch World Cup

“With the group stage of the 2017 Overwatch World Cup on the horizon, the qualified countries have been hard at work, crafting the perfect teams to represent their nations. These teams will descend on four cities across the globe, where they will fight for one of the eight spots in the Overwatch World Cup playoffs at Blizzcon in November.

Each World Cup group will play a round robin, after which the top two nations in each group will enter a single-elimination playoff bracket with their live event partner group. The first-place team in each group will play the second-placed team in their partnered group. The two teams that emerge victorious from these two matches will be advancing to BlizzCon.” – Overwatch World Cup

Why should you try Overwatch?

Overwatch is a competitive class based arena shooter.  Developed by Blizzard, high levels of production polish and game quality are evident in all aspects of Overwatch.

Overwatch offers a rich and expansive play experience: The characters of Overwatch are enthralling. Blizzard has invested enormous resources into providing appealing and well developed characters. Blizzard’s comprehensive lore for the Overwatch Universe, including well developed character backstories often including short films, webs comics and ex origin stories

Official Blizzard Release:

Last week, we saw Team China and Team France fight their way to the top in Shanghai, snatching up the first two places in the Overwatch World Cup playoffs at BlizzCon. This weekend, everything’s coming up explodey as Groups C and D take the stage in Sydney, Australia on July 20–22 . – Source Overwatch

Sydney Group Stage: Official Preview

In Group C, host nation Australia will be joined by Italy, Portugal, and Sweden.

Team Sweden has an intimidating lineup with four Misfits, one member from Team EnVyUs, and an ex-Movistar Rider. Qualifying into this year’s World Cup as the fourth-best nation in average skill of top players after an overall third-place finish in 2016, Sweden are expected to be a powerhouse in this group stage and an intimidating opponent for all comers. This weekend will tell if the roster has had enough time to gel, but if anyone can do it, Team Sweden are likely to do it better than most.

Already confident in their synergy, Team Australia includes the entire Blank Esports roster. After competing in and dominating the Australia-New Zealand scene, Blank moved to the Overwatch Pacific Championship, where they recently finished the inaugural season in a respectable second place behind Chinese Taipei’s Flash Wolves. They will have their work cut out for them here in Group C, but the home crowd loves an underdog, and will cheer for their nation until the end, whether it be bitter or sweet.

Don’t sleep on Team Portugal—two of the players are former K1ck Esports teammates, Nuno ‘kiler4fun’ Ferreira is already established as a strong FPS player in Europe, and two of their members are from the Laser Kittenz, who qualified for Overwatch Contenders Season One in Europe. They’re in a similar position to Team Sweden; looking to build match-winning synergy between members from different teams as they fight to move on to BlizzCon.

Rounding out Group C is Team Italy. Half of their roster is made up from members of UB Team, who were knocked out last month in open qualifiers for Overwatch Contenders Season Zero in Europe. On paper, that looks disappointing, but they only lost to teams that made it into the 16-team group stage out of over 750 squads. Italy’s true potential is yet to be realized, and spectators will cheer to see what the team can do in Australia.

OWWC2017-SydneyGroupStage-NADates_OW_Social_JP.png

Group C’s partner group in Sydney, Group D, consists of Finland, Japan, Spain, and Vietnam.

Team Finland qualified for the 2017 Overwatch World Cup as the fifth seed, just behind Sweden. Their committee has selected the entire roster of Rest In Pyjamas to represent Finland, save a DPS role going to Timo ‘Taimou’ Kettunen from EnVyUs. Rest In Pyjamas recently finished tied for fifth in Overwatch Contenders Season Zero in Europe, so they’re relatively formidable even without an Overwatch APEX champion by their side in Taimou. They’re the most dominant nation in Group D on paper.

Next, Team Japan. DPS and Support roles are filled by members of USG Iridata, a team that has consistently dominated the Japanese local scene. Two members come from Libalent Supreme, who recently qualified for Season 2 of the Overwatch Pacific Championship. Team Japan is definitely showing up with the best they have, and it’ll be interesting to see how they stack up against the rest of the world.

Like Team Finland, Team Spain is also fielding their local Team EnVyUs member, Jonathan ‘HarryHook’ Tejedor Rua. This will be HarryHook’s second appearance for Team Spain. Last year, he and the squad finished in the top eight at BlizzCon, and they’ll be looking to do at least that well again here in 2017.

Finally, we have Team Vietnam, which is made up of the entire roster of CyzoneVN. This roster took first place earlier in July in the Overwatch SEA tournament, dominating some of the best teams in Southeast Asia. Like Team Australia, Team Vietnam have had more practice than most working as a team, and are no doubt eager to see how their strategies fare against talented rosters from other regions. – Blizzard 

Additional Information

Developer: Activision Blizzard
Released Date: May 24, 2016
Official Website: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/
Twitter: @PlayOverwatch
Twitch Category: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Overwatch
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwatch_(video_game)

Ruin Info:

Ruin Website: http://www.Ruinnation.com
Ruin Forums: http://forums.ruinnation.com
Ruin on Patreon: Enjoy the work we are doing, support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/Ruin
Ruin Discord: Join the greater Ruin Gaming community on Discord voice communications! https://discordapp.com/invite/HAK6HgQ
Ruin Conferences, Events and Conventions: Do cool stuff with other Ruin members!
http://forums.ruinnation.com/forums/guild-conferences.287/