It's the 24th of May 2016, and Overwatch had just come out. I found myself consumed by it. For the next month or so, I was consistently the highest levelled played in most of the matches I was playing. Since the progression system for accounts essentially tied level with time played, I was the biggest nerd around. The king of the kiddy pool.
The game did not include a competitive mode for the first month of its lifespan. As soon as it was released on the live servers, I instantly jumped on board. For the first season, spanning from approximately July to September, the ranking system was a numerical value. You start at 50, right in the middle of the ranking distribution, and your performance would move you up to the maximum of 100 and/or down to the minimum of 1. My performance landed me at, for my 2016 self, an unremarkable 56. In hindsight, that was a decent result, as there was not enough time for people to get evenly spread across the whole spectrum, so 60-65 would have been the realistic maximum for someone to achieve.
Come end of July, I had managed to get to rank 75. This was considerable, as seeing renowned, skilled players in my matches became more and more common. I was playing in the same ballpark as people who were objectively good at the game. As a support player, I have to admit that if I recognized a professional player's name in my team playing the dps role, I would do my best to keep them alive in particular. I put a lot of faith in their shooting skills, and it tended to pay off in a swift victory. Sometimes. When the enemy team didn't pick me off because they had a good flanker.
On the 7th of August, I received a mail from Blizzard. It went on to say that they have been "searching for exceptionally-skilled Overwatch players, and you have certainly proven to be just that!". They were assembling all-star teams from many countries around the world, to participate in their inaugural 'World Cup'. Were I interested, I would have had to let them know, and I would be added to the pool of nominees. I accepted. Naturally, I accepted, and was told to wait for the voting to begin.
The voting, which started a few weeks later, involved all Overwatch players from all participating countries assembling their representatives by democratic vote. I got everyone I knew at the time with an interest in Overwatch to vote for me, although that might not have been necessary. Overwatch requires teams of six, with two players for each of the three roles of dps, tank and support. For the support role, there was really only one other viable candidate (as in, was ranked over 70), so we both made the team easily. I got sent the congratulatory email on the 26th of August, but was told to keep it hush hush until the public announcement on the 29th.
With all the teams assembled, countries would duke it out to be part of the 16 that qualified to go to the USA for the main event. Of particular interest was the rule book's paragraph 12.1, which stated that everyone appearing on the main stage would be paid a $3000 appearance fee. I was already thinking what I would be spending that money on. I can't say I remember now.
Our team captain scheduled the matches, and off we went. Somehow, I don't remember us partaking in much, if any, practice for the qualifiers. We straight up rawdogged it. And it showed in our results: we failed to qualify and only managed to win a single match. The most memorable match was our last one, where we played against a fan-favorite team composed of 4 prominent and strong players. I could feel that no one from our team really believed that we would win, or maybe I am projecting my mindset on the others. But I distinctly remember someone else, before one of the matches started, joking like: "if he tries a bit, he can solo us, or that other guy will just throw us off the map". For a bit, our comms were dead silent until he chimes in again and says "just kidding lol let's beat them". We didn't get *completely* demolished, and we managed to kill the entire enemy team a few times, even! Despite that, I could tell that the other team had practised before and were better coordinated, whereas our team felt more like a ragtag group of players who happened to be skilled.
After this little stint, I continued to play ranked seriously for three more seasons. I peaked at being Europe's 131st best player during the second season, an achievement I still look fondly back at. These days, I'm much more casual and tend to avoid ranked modes in the games I play, on the basis of lack of drive to compete at the highest level. Every now and then, I can't help but think about my attempt at the World Cup and wonder what could have been, had we qualified and appeared on stage.