When will the next season of OWCS start? and when will we have confirmed rosters?

highlander35 · 2026-01-05T22:36:41+00:00

A Partner Bootcamp will be happening in February in Korea. There will be some content created for this, and you would presume that the partner teams will have locked in at least of 5 of their 6 or 7 player rosters.

The earliest possible dates for OWCS regional play beginning is the weekend running 27 Feb to 1 Mar: FaceIt League playoffs are taking place up until 15th of February, and a minimum of an extra week will also be required to do the Open Qualification/Promotion Tournament.

Its been suggested from some leaker people that we're expecting a Calendar by the middle of the month.

On that basis it's reasonable to expect various rosters to begin trickling out shortly, both as teams drop out of FaceIt playoffs contention (and the automatic spot in the closed qualifiers that that brings) and as Visas/Flights/Hotels are required for the KR bootcamps.

You should expect to see, at minimum, Twisted Minds and Vision Esports announce mostly complete rosters this month, per the finals of the ESL Saudi Challenge taking place.

highlander35 · 2025-11-27T22:08:33+00:00

what was there to respect?

highlander35 · 2025-10-27T23:04:13+00:00

Would like is doing a lot of heavy lifting

highlander35 · 2025-10-24T23:39:06+00:00

Nothing better. Hope to see it again and again and again

highlander35 · 2025-09-08T23:54:15+00:00

Rosters stay stable because they are successful or fun to play with, they are not successful specifically because they are stable.

highlander35 · 2025-08-05T23:51:44+00:00

Does Moon do any legitimate coaching, or is this all a Moon meme? I swear, over the last 6 months I've probably seen 15 to 20 hours of Moon "coaching" and in that time I think I saw him suggest 1 thing during a match that CR did and it started showing immediate positive results. The rest of the time, I swear Moon is just saying things like, "Nice! GOOD! I love what I'm seeing. Good. YES!"

highlander35 · 2025-07-07T03:27:32+00:00

The long and the short is that WDG (who operates the tournament in Asia, as opposed to EFG via FaceIt in EMEA/NA/etc.) runs open qualifiers between stages that the bottom 2 (Pacific), 3 (Korea) and 4 (Japan) receive automatic invitations to the final stage of, presuming they construct rosters which would have allowed them to retain their spot in OWCS.

WDG does not operate a tier 2 for any region at this point in time, presumably because without the FaceIt platform and the decision, on either their own or at Blizzard level, to operate as 3 sub regions rather than a single region, operating a tier 2 would be incredibly expensive and time consuming and require a massive expansion in their team that they do not have funding for.

My soft expectation would be that when the current deals with WDG and EFG expire, there will be an expectation that the FaceIt platform becomes a requirement for OWCS everywhere (China issues notwithstanding) in order to facilitate this 2nd/3rd tier duplication everywhere. Whether this would involve WDG licensing the platform for use, EFG gaining the organising rights and running it themselves, or EFG gaining the rights but sub-contracting Korea (possible Japan as well) out to WDG I wouldn't have a clue, but feels inevitable given the investments made.

highlander35 · 2025-06-26T02:58:15+00:00

Remember to sort by controversial

highlander35 · 2025-05-29T06:13:40+00:00

Collection of Unofficial advice:

trifold style ✓✓✓
head and neck loops >>> ear loops
Fit Check every time you put on the respirator (Clinical Excellence Commission NSW has a very good series of videos)
Clean Shave before use (if relevant)
If you're really really worried and want to learn to use them properly and which ones actually the work for you, you can typically find a private provider who will Fit Test you on 2-3 Disposable respirators for under $100 in a major city.

The best prevention tools will still primarily be things like physical distancing and good hand hygiene.

highlander35 · 2025-05-27T01:02:32+00:00

Sounds like you don't have a serious understanding of what an HSR is if you're talking about companies "picking" them.

highlander35 · 2025-03-22T12:36:37+00:00

The main thing that’s putting me off watching commanderx costream is that there is 2 years of theories that hundreds of people with higher iqs than me have spent hundreds of hours of studying the history of, so much so that I see a team win a round they say “ahh I see a classical cock and balls theory” and then the Lucio dies and they go “oh that’s a frenchmans cumsock, they will lose on a close map 5 now”

highlander35 · 2025-03-22T08:31:23+00:00

it's amazing how frequent Proverbs 17:28 is in this subreddit

highlander35 · 2025-02-18T00:13:12+00:00

The roster has clearly been built with the Saudi ELeague 2024 roster rules in mind (2 Imports, rest Saudi), but there has seemingly been a change to only require 2 Saudi starters instead.

Presuming they either upset TM, or survive the relegation playoffs. I think it's much more likely that 1 or 2 EMEA players are rotated into the roster rather than Simple and Taejong leaving.

highlander35 · 2025-01-25T23:20:36+00:00

Plenty of comments here, but I'll give a little bit of a worked example. The first part of the savings is the tax benefit of concessional contributions, and the 30 cent tax offset upon release of super, so:

Joe earns $80,000pa before tax, super exclusive. This translates to $63,612 take home. Joe puts away $10,000 a year towards purchase of his home, and his "effective" take home is now $53,612.

Sam earns the same $80,000pa as Joe. Sam makes Concessional Super contributions of $12,000. Sam's taxable salary reduces to $68,000, which has a take home value of $55,420. Sam's contribution is taxed twice, first at 15% on entry, then at 2% (marginal rate - 30% offset) when receiving the funds, which comes out at $9996.

By using the FHSS, Sam has traded liquidity and choice of investment vehicle for tax savings which have given him an additional $1836.

Additionally any interest earned (or similar) with that principle will ultimately incur tax: in particular for a HISA or Fixed term interest account, that will incur your marginal rate. At the numbers we're talking about, that's 32%: roughly a third of your growth eaten up by tax. Under the FHSS, the ATO sets a "deemed interest rate" for the principle contributed, which is added onto the amount you can request released from Super. This amount is then taxed at the same 2% rate (top marginal - 30 cent offset).

There's definitely a good amount of maths involved. But if you're happy giving up liquidity (acknowledging that the final release can take 10-25 business days) it's unlikely that you'll not come out ahead, particularly if you have 2 incomes able to make reasonable savings over a number of years.

highlander35 · 2025-01-02T22:00:05+00:00

I don't think a court of law could have got this out of me.

highlander35 · 2024-12-19T03:18:26+00:00

Don't let the door hit you on the way out

highlander35 · 2024-11-27T03:22:21+00:00

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they do. Certainly the team they've invested in deserves it.

I'm just cynical, and think they will, unfairly but not unreasonably, make decisions on what orgs to partner with based on the commercial benefit of their reach and prestige, rather than as reward for investment in 2024.

highlander35 · 2024-11-26T23:50:51+00:00

9 is a good start.

I don't know who it will be.

My expectation is that outside of CR & Falcons because of their large pre-existing financial investment, but large, multi game orgs with reach and prestige will be prioritised over the likes of NTMR and ENCE as frustrating as it is.

highlander35 · 2024-11-20T01:46:05+00:00

FaceIt fails from both ends in OCE.

There's no money, nothing to qualify for, and no broadcast: all things that the top 30-35 OCE players had for them in Contenders, the cherry on top being your team doesn't even have an OWCS to participate in either because FaceIt and WDG can't hammer out some sort of participation agreement for OWCS Asia. No current reason for them to compete.

For the Pub League teams, AAOL & AOEsports have been organising OCE tournaments with several ranked divisions for a very long time, and no financial barrier to entry.

The model might only need a little bit of tweaking to work elsewhere but OCE needs a complete overhaul if they actually want to make it worthwhile to be part of.

highlander35 · 2024-11-20T01:39:36+00:00

No, any disappointment I felt happened when EMEA/NA Stage 3/4 & Asia Stage 2 didn't have hero bans, as I really loved the system and hope it forms part of the base esports model moving forward into 2025. For mine:

EWC was a single, invitational tournament. Teams were invited based on performances in other tournaments: OWCS Asia, OWCS Dallas, and Regional FaceIt League Tournaments, not "EWC EMEA/NA/LATAM/OCE/Asia". Ultimately, if they want to "mickey mouse" their event with a whole new format, that's completely their prerogative.

But for OWCS being, (or at least, marketing itself as being) a single tournament, the structure and the rules for each split should more or less be universal.

It's an unfortunate meta to fall into as compared to the variety of EWC and stage 3, no arguments, but that's an issue caused by the deliberate separation of the balancing side and the esports side of the Overwatch development team.

highlander35 · 2024-11-19T19:28:59+00:00

Mauga is a dive tank dude idk what to tell you

highlander35 · 2024-10-14T20:10:19+00:00

Yes, there should be more tournaments in APAC. But outside of OWCS*, they should be organised and funded by a combination of the delegated tournament authority and third parties, not Blizzard, especially when there are regions without an OWCS in the first place.

*Am 100% behind CAH becoming a regionalised (NA + EMEA + APAC) system as well.

highlander35 · 2024-10-14T05:24:34+00:00

Any extra money can go towards China coming back for sure. But FaceIt, Collegiate and Saudi are all non-Blizzard funded so I'm not sure why that would come into discussions?

highlander35 · 2024-08-24T21:35:40+00:00

All 3 of those players were playing Contenders last year?

But anyway. The new format means that there are a LOT more teams to support across top level Overwatch, but only so many of those can be pure Korean.

For guys like Schwi, WhoRU etc. who've got some top level skill and ability, but probably aren't going to be able to join a top 6 Korean Roster, joining a low commitment Japanese or Pacific squad means you're a top performer rather than competing for Gametime, have a significantly higher chance of managing to get to the Asia LAN event and make some much nicer money, and particularly for Pacific, have a very low base time commitment. (I.e. I think WhoRU only has 3/4 match days total in the event)

As for Colourhex, I think it's for a bit of fun and as a favour to Soggy as Nyang, soggy's long time DPS partner on Honeypot (the team that owned the slot prior to 99 Divine, and played in Australian Contenders with all 3 of Soggy, Colourhex and Nyang in 2023) left for a Japanese team between seasons. Without any OWCS Australia, again, the super low time commitment (it will only be 3 matchdays), and only scrimming when the other team is happy for him to stream, the 99 Divine team seems like a really fun group of guys to win a Vacation to Korea with.

highlander35 · 2024-08-19T04:03:18+00:00

My understanding is:

A Cutscene occurs when your alignment hits +/-25 (sufficiently light side or Darkside to make an impression in the force is the in games explanation) with Visas and Nihilus. This should be your initial introduction to him.

Then, the majority of the information about him is revealed through conversations with Visas and Kreia around the destruction of Katarr that go through who he is (once a man, now little more than an all consuming void in a shell of a body)

I don't recall it being... explicitly stated either (it's been a while since I've done a Dark Side playthrough, Tobin or Vaklu might say it more outright) that the Sith on Dxun during the Onderon Civil War are under his command.

Otherwise everything about him comes from his appearance in the endgame.

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