#r2e

After meeting with over forty players across nine teams, Roll20® is proud to announce that we are transitioning back into the Nexus with the former roster of the European Union Heroes Global Championship team Zealots. The roster is:

Matic “Zarmony” Mikec has been battling in the Nexus since the beginning in 2014. Having placed second in the 2015 Heroes of the Storm World Championship and second in the first 2018 HGC Western Clash, he is no stranger to the rigors of competition. Zarmony plays the offlane / melee tank flex position.

Daniel “Shad” González was not always trying to keep heroes alive. From the start of his Heroes career, Shad has played tank, bruiser, flex, assassin, and now support. He’s an extremely versatile player and since moving to support, he has made a name for himself via Stukov play.

Christoph “Cris” Gowitzke Having competed since January of 2015, Cris operates as the stalwart ranged assassin role, with recent specialties including Hanzo, Tracer, and Fenix. He is one of the most well-known streamers of Heroes of the Storm in Europe.

Dob “QuackNiix” Engström is one of the most decorated Western players in Heroes with back to back Blizzcon runner-ups and a Mid-Season Brawl championship. As the shotcaller for Roll20 esports, QuackNiix brings his signature assassins and cut throat core calls to the team.

Robert “robadobah” Purling, while new to HGC EU, was king of the Australia and New Zealand region of Heroes of the Storm for two years straight. No matter what team he was on, they always managed to be the top team in the region. He’s now brought his warrior skills to Europe to see if he can conquer another region.

James “Muppet” Ogilvy has been with Zealots as a manager since its inception at the start of 2017, working to handle team communication in and out of the game. He has been instrumental in introducing multiple players to the competitive Heroes of the Storm scene.

In October Blizzard announced to teams a new structure for the 2018 Heroes Global Championship, and part of that new structure was ownership of team slots. Organizations that had partnered with Blizzard ahead of the 2017 season were grandfathered into slot ownership, and those of us who came in later were not, with the ownership going directly to a single player decided on by the current roster.

Since October we’ve talked at length with our roster about a way to gradually gain ownership of their HGC slot, but conversations never got even so far as a true method or numbers. There were a great many factors involved: players wanted locked future job security, but of their own choices this roster only contains two of the initial five people we signed with in May; the fact that HGC is a relegation-style league so there are no full franchising guarantees; and simply the many organizations in esports that currently operate on bad faith principles and as such make any and all negotiations (understandably) difficult.

As such, Roll20® esports will not be part of HGC in the start of the 2018 year. We love Heroes of the Storm, and know that we were good ambassadors for the sport last year. As it stands, we feel our former players have absolutely earned their spot in HGC, and we are simply trying to figure out how we as Roll20 esports can earn our own slot going forth. That figuring is going to take a little time, but we want to come back and hope you all want us back as well. We’d also add that Roll20 the Virtual Tabletop has a really, really big year ahead and we hope you’ll stay tuned for what all that entails.

Many thanks to everyone who worked with us last year-- Charles for playing go-between, our brief runs with Orie, Dane, and Yusuf. Extra thanks to Daniel and Nevin for their work on graphics and videos, Chad for the banner, Raven for the sweet threads. A huge amount of gratitude towards the many folks at Blizzard who were a joy to work with, in particular Angela, Matt, and Kyle, as well as Troy from the documentary team. And finally the very best wishes to the daring Phase 2 / Blizzcon roster that really made this thing a success: Chandler, Francisco, Justin, Kyle, and Mike… we really enjoyed watching you all evolve.