Just because the game is set in the world war does not mean that the players have converted to an ideology or another of the era in which the game takes place. We could expect this then from several games set in the second world war that exist there (BF1 for example).
And yet the original BF1942 never became an esport. The old CoDs never became an esport. If you are trying to create an esport your fluff material has to be as inoffensive as possible Blizzard even removed the references to drugs in SC2 (stim pack sounds).
This is bullshit in my point of view. It's like saying that a GTA player is going to be a vandal just because he did that in the game.
The difference between CoH and GTA is that you can invoke Godwin's law very easily in a game about ww2. CoH2 came out and was bombarded with bad reviews by angry russians calling it a Nazi game and other choice stuff because of the campaign story. By the time CoH2 came out the e-sport market was already shifting from RTS. Starcraft 2 had been overshadowed by league. Dota was coming out and CSGO was getting itself together. Relic missed the metaphorical esport bus so as to speak. Instead of doubling down and milking the community with DLC, relic should have had invested more money into the scene itself with community funded stuff a lot more. Oh and balance the game better. Over time CoH2 would have had a stable online community and eventually become an esport by itself.
For what it's worth relic seems to be following this idea with DoW3.
I played Starcraft 2 for a long time, went high ranking, watched the game's championship events and everything. I see the mechanics of CoH2 MUCH better for the RTS game than there is in Starcraft 2. There are basically clicks-per-seconds that matter. CoH2 is like a chess. I know CoH2 is an old game, but it's a classic for min. And even if time passes and your graphics get more and more behind, still it will be fun to play it because of its mechanical and thematic and its soundtrack that is also exceptional! Honestly I'm sad to see a game so it's not a reference in E-sport.
Being a good game has very little to do with being an esport success. First and Foremost, you need a game that sells a metric shit ton. Total War Warhammer got an ESL league and less than 5% of the people in the game have played a single MP game. Despite the very barebones Multiplayer, the game has it's own organic multiplayer community now.
Yes, I agree that Relic makes unique and innovative RTS games in a genre that is largely stale (See SC2). But making a game like CoH that is fundamentally RNG dependent and has long playtimes is an uphill slog.
Could Relic have done it if they handled things differently?
Probably yes.
But that ship has long sailed. We are better off actually making the game play better via giving feedback to relic now that they are finally letting the community take the reins of the game.