For our final article in this series of 2016 overviews we’ll be taking a look at the biggest new title of the year with Overwatch and dive into the surprisingly long backstory of Fnatic in a game that got released not even six months ago.
2015: The Overwatch Alpha
The story of Fnatic Overwatch began before the game was even announced and the team was still successful in this other popular shooter called Battlefield 4. In late 2015, the squad of Morte, 2Easy, vallutaja, DRUNKKZ3, uNFixed and stormonster decided that it was time for a change of scenery as the team set their eyes on Overwatch.
At that point, the scene was still very small and almost non-existent as a result of the game still being in the alpha stages of development. Regardless, the team would participate in as many small and mostly weekly cups they could get their hands on for the remainder of 2015. Despite some roster changes they did quite well, finishing mostly top 3 in the Gosugamers Overwatch Weekly Cups and Alphacast Tournaments.
2016: A new beginning
In January, the Fnatic players decide to leave the organisation and continue under their own brand name, REUNITED, which they created to grow alongside the Overwatch community as the game would soon go into the beta stages. This meant that Fnatic was without a team upon the release of the game in May, but behind the scenes the organisation was hard at work to change that. It was former player Florian “DRUNKKZ3” Le Bihan who, as Team Operations Managers, would be scouting an entirely new team and find one in the then nubris line-up. This brought buds, coolmatt69, Custa, Vonethil, Stoop and Iddqd and coach Roflgator in under the Fnatic banner, just as the first major tournaments started popping up in the scene.
The team succeeded in qualifying for these events and got to play the ESL Overwatch Atlantic Showdown at Gamescom where they ended in 3rd/4th place after losing 3-1 to REUNITED and the old Fnatic lineup. During the Overwatch Open in September, the team saw similar results but this time they fell against EnVyUs. Hungry for a first place finish, the team has just qualified for DreamHack Winter and will be looking to bring home the gold at the event taking place this November.
However, this will require them to first of all find a replacement for iddqd. He stepped down from the main roster recently and will be looking at transfer offers after playing under the Fnatic name a final time during the Blizzcon World Cup event. While iddqd was a key element to Fnatic’s performance these past four months, we have no reason to doubt that the remainder of the squad will be able to sync with a new team member quite quickly. And who knows, with the right pick up the team might even show up stronger than ever.
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