I am an OCE player, much like how Australia is depicted in the overwatch universe as a barren hellscape, the Australian servers are not dissimilar. With a population less than 1/10th the size of the united states, and a much less pronounced PC gaming culture, Australian servers will have a difficult time maintaining player numbers even at the best of times. Deathmatch, Mystery Heroes, and Arcade are dead. In the remaining comp/quickplay modes the low player count exaggerates issues seen in other regions. Where an NA GM may wait half an hour for a game, imagine the que time with 1/10th the player base. Matchmaking issues and imbalances are exaggerated, and smurfing/deranking is widespread. If you get matched against a smurf holding a lobby hostage there is a very high likelihood you will get matched against the same person 3 more times that night. There are straight up dead times where games can not be found whatsoever between 4am and 9am (not an issue for most, but for the community of night workers that I used to be a part of is brain melting).

Most people who reach higher ranks have the sense to VPN to another region, I can’t. I am a University student who lives on campus. VPN’s are against my tenancy agreement. It feels like I spent a lot of time and effort improving at a game only for blizzard to take the whole “Australia is a prison colony” thing a little too seriously. At this point it’s either move houses so I can set up a VPN, or find another game, which is a shame because I’m one of the few active players who doesn’t dislike the game at it’s core.