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Sit down and let me tell you a tale about a former OWL champ turned to ashes in the Shanghai Dragons.
Typically in professional sports there’s an obvious reason why a team goes from hero to zero. Roster changes, management expectations, burnout. All acceptable reasons for a pro squad squandering its glory days and moving into a flop era. But what aboutthe Shanghai Dragons? Has there been a team in Overwatch League with a more complicated history?
Once the laughing stock of professional esports withthe longest recorded regular season losing streak, the team moved past that and on to glory. A former Overwatch League Champion, Shanghai has almost always been in the discussion as one of the best teams. Fast forward to 2023 and theSpring Knockoutsand the team faces full elimination after losing to the Korean Contenders squad Sin Prisa Gaming over the weekend.
What went wrong? Is there a fix? It might just be that we’re seeing the esports equivalent ofquiet quitting.
NetEase destroys World of Warcraft orc statue on livestream
NetEase dismantled Blizzard’s World of Warcraft orc statue and the iconic Gorehowl on livestream. Here’s what led up to it.
Amy Chen
The state of Chinese Overwatch fell into jeopardy at the start of the year when relations between publisher NetEase and Activision-Blizzard fell into disarray. A series of miscommunications and slights led tothe expiration of publishing rights for all Blizzard titles in mainland China, with both sides blaming the other. This went as far as NetEase livestreaming the destruction of a Warcraft statue that was on the publisher’s campus. Which, in the grand scheme of things feels like a pretty definitive statement.
But the question remained: What about the Chinese Overwatch League teams?
It’s been hit or miss. Ghanzhou and Hangzhou have thrived so far in the 2023 season, but those squads also aren’t owned by NetEase. In the case of the Shanghai Dragons it’s hard to ignore that their current woes may have began with the breaking of that statue. Part of the selling point for the Overwatch League back in 2017 was that it was reaching an international status and breaking barriers in a typically gaming unfriendly China.
But something seemed amiss when it took until March for the Dragons to even announce a starting roster.
Shanghai Dragons assuage fears and announce 2023 roster
The former champion Shanghai Dragons roster for 2023 is here, and with it a calming of worries for the league’s Chinese-based teams.
Will Jagielski-Harrison
So, there’san old baseball movie that I truly love called Major League. If you’re an Ohio native like me then the film is almost required viewing, as it highlights the then–Cleveland Indians. However, as with all things there’s a bit of truth in the fiction. The movie is the story of a hardluck Cleveland baseball team known as perennial losers–based on a true story, in this case.
The manager and team are still trying their best, but are faced with a hard reality: The owner of the team doesn’t want to sink any more money into the franchise and is looking to move the team and get out. What follows is your typical plucky American sports film plot where the squad shapes up, improves, and sticks it to the evil manager.
There won’t be any sticking it to anyone in the case of the Shanghai Dragons. However, the team’s failure felt like inevitability.
The announcement of a six-man roster came as a shock, but not as much as the reveal of Byungsun ‘Fleta’ Kim starting at tank. The 2020 regular season OWL MVP and one of the best DPS players in league history, he suddenly found himself as the lone tank player. Of course, this kind of move has worked in the league before, most notably with former Houston Outlaw-returned LA Gladiator Danteh.
But this isn’t that. Danteh’s move to tank was on the back of his play as Doomfist. The inclusion of Fleta at all on the Shanghai Dragons roster in 2023 was a larger surprise since he left the team in November of 2022. Returned in 2023 and now the one holding up the proverbial wall, Fleta’s play leaves something desired.
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It starts at the tank
The stats show a tank player attempting to attack like a one still playing DPS. This wouldn’t be a bad thing in a better situation where the tank has an actual team supporting the aggression. However, this isn’t the case and by comparison Fleta has almost 100 more deaths per ten minutes than the likes of 2022’s best tank, Fearless. Fleta also shows an astounding inability to properly time his Ultimate usage–once again, playing more like a DPS and not a tank.
But the Shanghai Dragons' issues aren’t all on Fleta. It takes a team, after all. Despite having a roster of top-tier talent they also look wholly uncoordinated. Bright spots include former Houston Outlaw Kim “Ir1s” Seung-hyun on Ana, but there isn’t much else to highlight or hope for. As the commentary team put it after the first map against Sin Prisa, “Fleta’s hero pool is irrelevant here, this is a DPS player trying to play tank. What you need to focus on: What Heroes are Heesu and Viper good at?”
Perhaps Shanghai doesn’t know what their players are good at. That feels like the only statement worth saying when a former championship franchise now finds itself spawn camped by a Contenders team, as seen above.
Chengdu Hunters disband? OWL team omitted from upcoming season schedule
Are the Chengdu Hunters extinct? It appears that one Chinese-based OWL team isn’t on the schedule for the start of Spring Qualifiers.
It feels obvious that the Shanghai Dragons' management isn’t making the team a priority any longer. Whether this has anything to do with the relationship between NetEase and Blizzard is all conjecture. That said, you aren’t setting up your franchise for success with a restricted roster of now-six players, a tank that isn’t a tank, and a squad that looks extremely unmotivated.
Maybe the Chengdu Hunters were right to get out of dodge and just disband.
I’ve said a lot this year that what Overwatch League looks like next season is going to be drastically different. Given the Activision-Blizzard merger into Microsoft, theOverwatch League’s own investing woes, and the general shifting of the wind of esports, it’s likely OWL won’t be left unharmed. Part of that may be cutting bait and reducing the number of teams, if that is even possible given the franchise costs at work.
Regardless, we may have seen the best days of the Shanghai Dragons pass them on. Will O2 Blast eliminate them from Springe Stage this weekend? All signs point to ‘yes.’
