by JR Cook - 7 years ago     show comments

If you are anything like me this past year of Heroes has been a bit of a mixed bag. The game now feels more stable than it’s ever been but watching Esports still feels like it’s missing something. The production values are great with top notch commentary so the problem doesn’t lie there. The wait times between games can be a bit much but downtime isn’t really what bothers me as I can do other things while I wait. The thing about sports is that it needs to give you a reason to tune in. A rooting interest is built into most sports because of a lot of people having a hometown team and let’s face it, our Esports hometown teams are abysmal.

The NA performances at the fall championship were brutal to watch and much like children sitting at the adult’s table, it felt more like an extended courtesy to humor them. I need my team to be competitive to want to tune into the “game” and as a lifelong Lions fan, I’ve learned when to throw in the towel on my time spent watching a lost cause. Denial and Astral Authority didn’t look like teams ready to provide a competitive series against any of the teams from Europe or Korea. MVP Black did a great job all year of fulfilling another role that’s very important in the sports viewership experience. MVP Black became the villains most people wanted to see crash and burn. For a solid six months they were the New England Patriots of Heroes of the Storm and when the Fall Championship was about to start all I kept hoping for was that one of my teams would smack the smugness out of MVP. As it played out I got my wish but not from the region I had hoped. Fnatic did the impossible and topped MVP Black in probably one of the most exciting sets of Heroes all year due to the sheer absurdity of it.

Pictured above is the leader of the Korean Defense Force: Captain Quacks

Personally, I root for the NA team Astral Authority. I need them to have their Fnatic moment during the 2017 global circuit. I want them to punk some cocky team taking the NA lightly so I can feel some national pride when I watch. As a viewer, I’m tired of feeling like my region is inferior to everyone else. Why do I get the short end of the stick when it comes to watching my teams? Is this what it was like to be a Cubs fan before this last season? I put my hopes in Astral Authority because they’ve shown flashes of brilliance when they were Murloc Geniuses during the early 2016 season. I’m hoping that this future Global Circuit will help provide the consistent competition the NA needs to step up their game to the level of our current champions team Ballistix.

The 2016 Fall Championships did not inspire much confidence in my fandom for Astral Authority. I’m not going to try to name names or pin blame but they got rolled by Dignitas who in turn got rolled by Ballistix. The flow chart goes like this Ballistix>Dignitas>Astral Authority and of course at the bottom is NA. I’m going in optimistic this time around and rooting for my team to win but I need much better performances from my teams to keep me interested. My team looked scared and that’s the last thing you want as a viewer.

To be fair no one looked ready to handle Ballistix this season. It looked like the members of Ballistix needed to feed on weaker players for sustenance and the Fall Championship was their buffet. I hope that next season rosters stay a lot more stable, not that I don’t love watching Equinox changing teams every fortnight and the competition is just that, a competition. Sports is only fun when there are rivalries, a rooting interest and you can’t have that when your teams don’t look like they belong on the same stage as the rest. The future of Heroes Esports looks pretty bright at the moment but it will be dulled rather quickly if it’s just Korea face rolling everyone to another championship. I obviously don’t have the answer as any member of any team on the NA side could regularly embarrass me for hours on end in Heroes. All I have is hope and wishful thinking and it would be amazing if the NA delivered.