The Overwatch League season started off well, with teams traveling to sold-out homestands across the natio෴n. Many more were planned and ready in the US as well as in other countries. But the current pandemic has turned all expectations and organizations upside down, leading to many changes in how the and how teams handle practice and . However, no team has been so upended as the Vancouver Titans.
Two weeks ago, the Titans surprised everyone by parting ways with HyunWoo "JJANU" Choi, considered by many League players and analysts to be one of the top off-tank players in the league. Fans barely had time to come to terms with this news, when the Titans announced they were parting ways with their head coach, Hwang "PaJion" Jisub as well.
And then came bombshell of an announcement:
"The organization and the team have been dealing with a very complicated situa👍tion which included sensitive information and player confidentiality made even more challenging by the COVID-19 pandemic," the letter begins. "The team started the season with two convincing wins but meanwhile the impact of COVID-19 was being felt across the globe and all businesses were being affected, including ours. With cancelled homestands and travel increasingly lꦡimited, the players were bound to their training facility home. Once it became apparent this would be an extended situation, and out of an abundance of caution, the players were flown to their homes in South Korea to be with their families."
But the troubles didn't stop there. The Titans weꩲre unable to make it through the logistics of having the team in South Korea and the management and fan base in Vancouver. The original plan was to have the Titans join the Asian division–alongside Shanghai Dragons, Hangzhou Spark, Guangzhou Charge, Chendu Hunters, and Seoul Dynasty–but with the difficulty of time zone differences and technical difficulties on the side of the players, this didn't pan out. The Titans decided to remain in Vancouver, and the players remaiℱned in South Korea, now no longer part of the team.
Management now had less than a week to find an entirely new team and coaching staff. And they did; they announced it just two days before t𝔉heir next match.
All the players are rookies as far as the League is concerned. Most of them moved up from Contenders, the "minor league" of Overwatch, and a few players were on their country's team for the Overwatch World C♑up. It was, as one of the casters said, a perfect opportunity for these former Contenders players to test their skills; a lot of Contenders teams claimed they would be able to hold their own against OWL ꦍteams.
Their first match... didn't exactly go their way.
The Justice have been struggling all season and lost their 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:best DPS players to VALORANT,ꦜ but the Titans couldn't hold their 🌞own. They lost 3-1, though the Justice had to fight for that win.
The new Titans seemed to be doing alright last week, but this𒅌 week was something of a ﷺdifferent story...
The Fusion absolutely destroyed the Titans on Sunday; they rolled over the Titans 3-0, and even finished out the last map by, as one caster put it, "playing with their food," c😼ompletely disrespecting the new team. It was painful to watch.
It may take a bit for the Titans to start to really get i🍌nto the swing of things. Not only do they have to gel with each other, two of the team members are playing on the North American server while in Europe and the Middle East, giving them high latency issues. But with the state of the world as it is currently, it is very possibl♚e they won't get the chance to play in a LAN environment until next year. Hopefully soon, they'll at least be able to bring all their players over to the US, giving them a better chance at fighting in the League.