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Despite some fears among the community that the Overwatch League would supersede the established Overwatch World Cup, Blizzard have today announced the third edition of the global tournament will return in 2018, with the finals once again to take place at BlizzCon in November.
After a thrilling 2017 campaign saw South Korea defeat Canada to claim their second world title, the world cup will kick off again with group stages taking place from August through October, before the finals a month later.
The tournament will not clash with the Overwatch League and, as such, Overwatch League players will be fully eligible to represent their country – avoiding the headache representative duty often causes in domestic sporting competitions around the world.
Countries will qualify for the world cup based on the average Skill Rating (SR) of their top 150 players between today and April 29 – the end of the current competitive season. The top 20 countries will earn a place in the tournament alongside the four automatically-included group stage hosts in France, South Korea, Thailand and the United States.
Unfortunately, there will be no group stage event in Australia this year.
After the field of 24 nations is settled, the committee creation process will take place in May. Blizzard will select a general manager for each world cup country, but the top 150 players in each country will get to vote on their coach, while the wider community will be able to select a ‘community lead’.
Player tryouts will then take place – among each nation’s top 150 – from June 1 until July 5, before the rosters are then settled and the cup begins the next month.
The total of 24 countries is a reduction from the 32 who participated in last year’s tournament, but is still higher than the 16 that competed in 2016. Given the high number of uncompetitive matchups in the group stage last year, this is probably for the better.
Australia will be looking to repeat their gallant efforts at last year’s event, after they became the only team to progress to the finals at BlizzCon despite not finishing atop their group.
Convincing wins over Portugal and Italy in put them in a commanding position heading into the last day of the group stage last year, but they were knocked off top spot by powerhouses Sweden. A stirring victory over Japan in the round of 16, however, saw them book their tickets to Anaheim for the first time.
The Aussies were impressive in their quarterfinal against eventual runners-up Canada, actually taking a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series, before seeing it slip away in heartbreaking fashion as the Canadians emerged 3-2 victors.
At the time of publication, Australia are on track to qualify again – currently sitting 15th on the world leaderboard.