Blizzard‘s Overwatch League has ended its first day of semifinals with all players now having passed the mandated quarantine of two weeks, and its offering quite a spectacle as Blizzard becomes one of the first, if not the first, to offer LAN play between North American and Asian regions.
The first day of the semifinals saw a peak of 107,076 viewers with almost 360,000 hours watched, with both broadcasts combined taking four hours in total.
These numbers are notably lower than the 2019 semifinals, but that shouldn’t be relegated entirely to the confusing move from Twitch to YouTube; the matches are being played at bizarre hours for North American viewers as they’re all being played on LAN in South Korea leaving match times starting at 0500 EST; include with this the vast amount of ‘filler’ within the segments and it can frankly be an onerous task to sit through the early morning matches.
No fear: both matches can readily be watched here and you can skip through every advertisement and stall that the League is becoming known for.
The first match pitted the Dynasty versus the Shock in a blow for blow first to three that went the distance to five maps. While both teams were readily trading blows across all five, the compositions were relatively stagnant. If you’ve been following the developing meta, you won’t see too much that will take you by surprise in this one.
The final running time of the Dynasty versus the Shock, with five maps played, is two hours and four minutes.
The second match-up was a bit of a disaster as the Philadelphia Fusion faced off against the Shanghai Dragons, and it lasted a bit less. We won’t spoil until after the video.
The Fusion lost three maps in quick succession with playtime that lasted roughly 30 minutes at best, and the entire video takes almost two hours.
The Fusion were consistently overwhelmed by a far superior Shanghai, and it is starting to look as though Philadelphia will become a bit of a whipping post within the semifinals if their performance today is anything to go on.
An interesting aspect of this match, however, was watching Carpe battling his long-time friend, Diem, as both hold DPS roles within the two teams resulting in consistently fantastic clashes around the three maps. Also, Jake Lyon wore an ascot.
Tomorrow’s matches begin at an astoundingly early 0420 EST time slot, and we’ll once again offer a brief recap of the action as well as linking the videos to ensure an easier viewing experience.