On August 02 2012 01:44 Red2011 wrote: 1) There is no easy way to 'watch' a battleground take place as a spectator, unlike SC2 and LOL where the casters can watch the game and commentate on it. If Blizzard were to implement some sort of 'replay' or spectator type UI into World of Warcraft to allow casting to take place, I believe WoW PvP could become a valid option
My reason above is why I believe WoW (and, unfortunately, MOBA games like Dota2, HoN, LoL) fail for spectators. People who play the game actively know what's going on. That's fine for them. But anyone who doesn't play the game is 110% lost. If someone passes by a casted match of a game and cant understand it, they have no motivation to look into the game more and find out what it's all about. All they see is bright colors and units clumped up that somehow ended up good for one side or another.
As far as MOBAs are concerned their f2p nature gives them a substantial player base. It doesn't attract too much ppl who aren't playing the game but they don't really need it.
trancey United States. August 02 2012 05:55. Posts 420
I was once the most heavy advocate of pushing WoW esports into legitimacy, that all ended when SC2 came about.
-- a little about who I was --
Vhell, myself, and several others that now work at Blizzard were the first to create a PVP league during Vanilla WoW (BG9's WSG League). We were such die-hard PVP fanatics that when arena came out in TBC, we were the first teams that sponsors looked at when coming to the game as an Esport.
In 2008, I was on one of the two first teams to be sponsored for WoW PvP (Check Six Gaming's 5v5 team for the first BlizzCon). Afterwards, I played priest for WSVG's 3v3 tournaments than became an admin/referee for MLG's 3v3 WoW circuit, which I took upon myself to advertise for MLG on GameRiot and ArenaJunkies back in the day. (For credentials, I have 2 rank 1 titles and 9 gladiator titles on my personal characters.)
It wasn't very hard to be good at WoW arena, it just takes a mechanically-sound mind and the ability to network with other good players to achieve a high rating.
-- MLG, Esports, WoW and SC2 --
What would surprise you about MLG's current staff is that some of the veterans of the staff were former high-ranked gladiators and true esports lovers.MLG SC2's current tournament director was a high-level paladin and platinum-level LoL player. (I'm around 1500~ in LoL myself, as are many former pro WoW players.)
To be honest, the staff involved in WoW esports and spectators following the seen had grown tired of it. When SC2 beta started and people began to see the potential in that game, everyone jumped ship and fell in-love with the esport-minded game of SC2.
We once had a blogging site dedicated to the WoW pro-scene called World of Ming or Gameriot (and a community forum called ArenaJunkies), but it completely shut down due to lack-of-audience because of the SC2 Beta.
WoW Arena is:
#1 - Difficult to follow, too many spells on different classes to understand what is going on. #2 - Spell Caster cleaves are horrendous to watch. Warrior or Rogue based teams were what drove spectator eyes (see Orangemarmalade's RMP videos or Hoodrych's WLD). Once spellcleaves became popular and showed up at tournaments, viewership went steadily down. #3 - Constantly evolving and lacks an esport-based design philosophy. Game Designers at Blizzard have spoken in length how they despise WoW's attempt at being an Esport. In truth, Kalgan was very supportive of the PvP community except his superiors (Rob Pardo, the VP of Game Design at Blizzard) is completely against it. #4 - Length and storyline of matches -- games become too long and do not tell a story that's able to captivate viewers. In LoL and SC2, viewers can observe the growth of ones army (SC2) or characters items/gold-intake (LoL). Drinking water and healing your team back to full; create long, uninteresting matches that have no progression because they can simply "reset" the match.
On August 02 2012 05:37 Kurumi wrote: I watched WoW Arena tournament for like 15 minutes. 3v3. Nobody dies during 5 minute match for 4:30 minutes. Then somebody dies on one team and this team loses thirty seconds later. Add people jumping and casting whatever spells into the mix and camera shaking and changing place everywhere... It just made no sense from my perspective.
You need to be at least duelist (which is the best 3%) to really understand what's going on, and even then its really hard with this crappy ui. Also healing is too strong, games getting boring this way. This are the 2 main problems I see, and random resists (a small chance that your spell just has no effect) and crits aren't helpful eighter but blizzard doesn't care it seems.
dudeman001 United States. August 02 2012 06:04. Posts 2146
On August 02 2012 01:44 Red2011 wrote: 1) There is no easy way to 'watch' a battleground take place as a spectator, unlike SC2 and LOL where the casters can watch the game and commentate on it. If Blizzard were to implement some sort of 'replay' or spectator type UI into World of Warcraft to allow casting to take place, I believe WoW PvP could become a valid option
My reason above is why I believe WoW (and, unfortunately, MOBA games like Dota2, HoN, LoL) fail for spectators. People who play the game actively know what's going on. That's fine for them. But anyone who doesn't play the game is 110% lost. If someone passes by a casted match of a game and cant understand it, they have no motivation to look into the game more and find out what it's all about. All they see is bright colors and units clumped up that somehow ended up good for one side or another.
As far as MOBAs are concerned their f2p nature gives them a substantial player base. It doesn't attract too much ppl who aren't playing the game but they don't really need it.
I agree, f2p helps bring in a lot of people. But MOBAs have their own barrier, which is learning what every hero can do. Some people are willing to learn, and it especially helps if they have friends trying to pull them into the game. But I still believe people are lazy and anyone without concrete motivation to start playing a MOBA will get discouraged and leave.
I was worried about my midterms today, but I saw someone walking around in a cow outfit carrying a skateboard. It was at that moment I knew I was ready.
DongLongJohnson Germany. August 02 2012 06:12. Posts 143
WoW is just a terrible, terrible Casualgame. The playerbase are 12-year old kids and 45+ year old women. WoW is like "The Sims" - its like playing with Puppies. WoW now is: Companion Pets, more Companion Pets, Pokemon, Pandas...
dont' know if it's been said already but theres 1 reason why wow isn't a successful e-sport and 1 reason only.
the reason is that the game is 98% pvers and therefore blizzard cannot balance arena/bg's without considering pve. that's the reason arena sucks. blizzard tried to remedy this problem with resillience, but double shadowmourne TSG's just destroyed everyone.
the pve also drew many pvpers away, furthermore the underlying problem is how hard it is to see what people are doing. of course i still think the first reason is the most important.
afrocentric asian, half man half amazin
Hall0wed United States. August 02 2012 06:25. Posts 7370
On August 02 2012 06:12 DongLongJohnson wrote: WoW is just a terrible, terrible Casualgame. The playerbase are 12-year old kids and 45+ year old women. WoW is like "The Sims" - its like playing with Puppies. WoW now is: Companion Pets, more Companion Pets, Pokemon, Pandas...
Thats what I mean with most people don't understand and blizz doesn't care.
AzureHath Bulgaria. August 02 2012 06:30. Posts 154
On August 02 2012 01:48 amazingxkcd wrote: Its really hard to spectate WoW on the offical servers. Also, WoW is gear dependant as well, not skilled dependant. If blizzard allowed for private servers or ways to easily practice, then maybe it's possible.
Though I will say that IMO the biggest issue is the gear dependancy that killed it.
On August 02 2012 06:12 DongLongJohnson wrote: WoW is just a terrible, terrible Casualgame. The playerbase are 12-year old kids and 45+ year old women. WoW is like "The Sims" - its like playing with Puppies. WoW now is: Companion Pets, more Companion Pets, Pokemon, Pandas...
User was warned for this post
So, why was someone warned for posting an opinion? This man's concept of the average WoW user is pretty spot-on.
OT: WoW is not an e-sport because of RNG and gear progression. Skill is not a part of the majority of games played, vice something like CS or Quake, where skill and teamplay is the only thing that matters, not how many teams you pubstomed for the gear you get.
Also, 12.3% of the time, you will win every game based purely on RNG proc wins. Perfect example, back in BC the warrior (if specced for Sword) would demolish the sustain portion of them team in 3 GCDs and walk away with a free kill. That's not skill, that's RNG.
Last edit: 2012-08-02 06:32:44
We live in a world that could have been dreamed up only by Graham Greene and Franz Kafka on a Bender, with George Orwell to write slogans.
It's a PvE game, end of story. They're too stubborn to split the game in two, so it's never going to happen. They had it right with how they balanced Collossus smash, but it stopped there. Nor is it easy to spectate, it's too fast and messy.
That said I rather enjoy the PvP in WoW, but it needs more than too be enjoyable to make it as an e-sport.
dudeman001 United States. August 02 2012 06:36. Posts 2146
On August 02 2012 06:12 DongLongJohnson wrote: WoW is just a terrible, terrible Casualgame. The playerbase are 12-year old kids and 45+ year old women. WoW is like "The Sims" - its like playing with Puppies. WoW now is: Companion Pets, more Companion Pets, Pokemon, Pandas...
User was warned for this post
So, why was someone warned for posting an opinion? This man's concept of the average WoW user is pretty spot-on
Probably because it had nothing to do with WoW as an E-sport at all.
I was worried about my midterms today, but I saw someone walking around in a cow outfit carrying a skateboard. It was at that moment I knew I was ready.
HeeroFX United States. August 02 2012 06:42. Posts 1953
WoW can't be an esport its an MMORPG first, the competitive aspect of it is more like a side distraction. PvP battlefields are just for fun, and Arena again is not that amazing, it is just put in the game to give players something to do when they are not raiding/questing. Also It takes a long time to get new gear and stuff with pvp. And WoW isn't really a game that people can watch and say hey these guys have skill. And its a horrible spectator esports because you can't tell whats going on as a viewer.
Irre United States. August 02 2012 06:43. Posts 545
On August 02 2012 05:55 trancey wrote: I was once the most heavy advocate of pushing WoW esports into legitimacy, that all ended when SC2 came about.
-- a little about who I was --
Vhell, myself, and several others that now work at Blizzard were the first to create a PVP league during Vanilla WoW (BG9's WSG League). We were such die-hard PVP fanatics that when arena came out in TBC, we were the first teams that sponsors looked at when coming to the game as an Esport.
In 2008, I was on one of the two first teams to be sponsored for WoW PvP (Check Six Gaming's 5v5 team for the first BlizzCon). Afterwards, I played priest for WSVG's 3v3 tournaments than became an admin/referee for MLG's 3v3 WoW circuit, which I took upon myself to advertise for MLG on GameRiot and ArenaJunkies back in the day. (For credentials, I have 2 rank 1 titles and 9 gladiator titles on my personal characters.)
It wasn't very hard to be good at WoW arena, it just takes a mechanically-sound mind and the ability to network with other good players to achieve a high rating.
-- MLG, Esports, WoW and SC2 --
What would surprise you about MLG's current staff is that some of the veterans of the staff were former high-ranked gladiators and true esports lovers.MLG SC2's current tournament director was a high-level paladin and platinum-level LoL player. (I'm around 1500~ in LoL myself, as are many former pro WoW players.)
To be honest, the staff involved in WoW esports and spectators following the seen had grown tired of it. When SC2 beta started and people began to see the potential in that game, everyone jumped ship and fell in-love with the esport-minded game of SC2.
We once had a blogging site dedicated to the WoW pro-scene called World of Ming or Gameriot (and a community forum called ArenaJunkies), but it completely shut down due to lack-of-audience because of the SC2 Beta.
WoW Arena is:
#1 - Difficult to follow, too many spells on different classes to understand what is going on. #2 - Spell Caster cleaves are horrendous to watch. Warrior or Rogue based teams were what drove spectator eyes (see Orangemarmalade's RMP videos or Hoodrych's WLD). Once spellcleaves became popular and showed up at tournaments, viewership went steadily down. #3 - Constantly evolving and lacks an esport-based design philosophy. Game Designers at Blizzard have spoken in length how they despise WoW's attempt at being an Esport. In truth, Kalgan was very supportive of the PvP community except his superiors (Rob Pardo, the VP of Game Design at Blizzard) is completely against it. #4 - Length and storyline of matches -- games become too long and do not tell a story that's able to captivate viewers. In LoL and SC2, viewers can observe the growth of ones army (SC2) or characters items/gold-intake (LoL). Drinking water and healing your team back to full; create long, uninteresting matches that have no progression because they can simply "reset" the match.
Funny that you say it isn't very hard to be good at arena, when you recently made a reddit post in gw2 saying that wow arena has been dominated by same people for long time now and for new players to catch up it will take years. So playing years to catch up with the best arena players requires no skill to you?
Edit: Found your post, this you said:
The current WoW scene is dominated by the same teams and players, it's nearly impossible for newer players to break past the top players in skill because the top players in WoW have had years to master their craft, master multiple classes, the ability to maximize everything they can about the game - It would take years for a new player to gain that kind of knowledge plus skill..
On August 02 2012 05:55 trancey wrote: I was once the most heavy advocate of pushing WoW esports into legitimacy, that all ended when SC2 came about.
-- a little about who I was --
Vhell, myself, and several others that now work at Blizzard were the first to create a PVP league during Vanilla WoW (BG9's WSG League). We were such die-hard PVP fanatics that when arena came out in TBC, we were the first teams that sponsors looked at when coming to the game as an Esport.
In 2008, I was on one of the two first teams to be sponsored for WoW PvP (Check Six Gaming's 5v5 team for the first BlizzCon). Afterwards, I played priest for WSVG's 3v3 tournaments than became an admin/referee for MLG's 3v3 WoW circuit, which I took upon myself to advertise for MLG on GameRiot and ArenaJunkies back in the day. (For credentials, I have 2 rank 1 titles and 9 gladiator titles on my personal characters.)
It wasn't very hard to be good at WoW arena, it just takes a mechanically-sound mind and the ability to network with other good players to achieve a high rating.
-- MLG, Esports, WoW and SC2 --
What would surprise you about MLG's current staff is that some of the veterans of the staff were former high-ranked gladiators and true esports lovers.MLG SC2's current tournament director was a high-level paladin and platinum-level LoL player. (I'm around 1500~ in LoL myself, as are many former pro WoW players.)
To be honest, the staff involved in WoW esports and spectators following the seen had grown tired of it. When SC2 beta started and people began to see the potential in that game, everyone jumped ship and fell in-love with the esport-minded game of SC2.
We once had a blogging site dedicated to the WoW pro-scene called World of Ming or Gameriot (and a community forum called ArenaJunkies), but it completely shut down due to lack-of-audience because of the SC2 Beta.
WoW Arena is:
#1 - Difficult to follow, too many spells on different classes to understand what is going on. #2 - Spell Caster cleaves are horrendous to watch. Warrior or Rogue based teams were what drove spectator eyes (see Orangemarmalade's RMP videos or Hoodrych's WLD). Once spellcleaves became popular and showed up at tournaments, viewership went steadily down. #3 - Constantly evolving and lacks an esport-based design philosophy. Game Designers at Blizzard have spoken in length how they despise WoW's attempt at being an Esport. In truth, Kalgan was very supportive of the PvP community except his superiors (Rob Pardo, the VP of Game Design at Blizzard) is completely against it. #4 - Length and storyline of matches -- games become too long and do not tell a story that's able to captivate viewers. In LoL and SC2, viewers can observe the growth of ones army (SC2) or characters items/gold-intake (LoL). Drinking water and healing your team back to full; create long, uninteresting matches that have no progression because they can simply "reset" the match.
Funny that you say it isn't very hard to be good at arena, when you recently made a reddit post in gw2 saying that wow arena has been dominated by same people for long time now and for new players to catch up it will take years. So playing years to catch up with the best arena players requires no skill to you?
He probably means its not hard to get a good rating, and thats true because most player can't even get the basics right. Edit: Fully understanding a class takes a while tho, because I remember when I played my mage back in wotlk I had like 30 different spells that I used in the match, and all binded to keys obviously.
It is really simple: Unless you play the specific class/comp being shown at a high level, you will have no understanding oh what is actually going on.
Without understanding, the level of excitement is naturally much lower. Take a european and watch a NFL game with him, while you and your american friends who are familiar with american football will cheer and shout when a touchdown happens, he will just sit there in utter bewilderment. "What happened?" "What is going on?".
I played a Resto Druid in 2v2 and 3v3 to 2100 rating and a Holy Paladin in 3v3 and 5v5 to 2500 rating, and even i could barely follow what was going on, the only classes i could follow were my "own", everything else was a jumbled mess.
In Starcraft 2 i can see that MarineKing, a player who is far superior to me, make decisions around the 5-6th mark in SC2 time, what he is going to do. You dont have to be a GM player in SC2 to understand that if he builds 4-6 Rax at that time that he is likely going for some kind of allin, this creates tension and excitement, will his opponent find this out? Will his opponent be prepared? Will his opponent be able to fend off the attack?
WoW Arena just never had that anticipation, its just a slugfest, a barfight. For casual WoW players it just looked like a jumbled mess, there were plenty of strategy, cooldown managment, cc managment etc but this is invisible to most players.
On August 02 2012 07:01 Tyree wrote: It is really simple: Unless you play the specific class/comp being shown at a high level, you will have no understanding oh what is actually going on.
Without understanding, the level of excitement is naturally much lower. Take a european and watch a NFL game with him, while you and your american friends who are familiar with american football will cheer and shout when a touchdown happens, he will just sit there in utter bewilderment. "What happened?" "What is going on?".
I played a Resto Druid in 2v2 and 3v3 to 2100 rating and a Holy Paladin in 3v3 and 5v5 to 2500 rating, and even i could barely follow what was going on, the only classes i could follow were my "own", everything else was a jumbled mess.
In Starcraft 2 i can see that MarineKing, a player who is far superior to me, make decisions around the 5-6th mark in SC2 time, what he is going to do. You dont have to be a GM player in SC2 to understand that if he builds 4-6 Rax at that time that he is likely going for some kind of allin, this creates tension and excitement, will his opponent find this out? Will his opponent be prepared? Will his opponent be able to fend off the attack?
WoW Arena just never had that anticipation, its just a slugfest, a barfight. For casual WoW players it just looked like a jumbled mess, there were plenty of strategy, cooldown managment, cc managment etc but this is invisible to most players.
You are right. And this WoW spectators or bad players draw the conclusion that the game takes absolutely no skill just because they fail to see it, and post their crap online -.-
Irave United States. August 02 2012 07:29. Posts 7943
The players have continued to keep the scene alive. Every so often they run a weekend tournament that usually nets a bit over 10k viewers. The issue in the past was the ui, it just wasn't pretty to look at. With the addition of mods and player initiative its much prettier now.
Gear isn't the reason it failed. Lans had all types of limitations on the gear you could use. Other than titles the more important offline events happened on the tournament realm, also having limitations.
Flyinspageti United States. August 02 2012 07:37. Posts 42
Could be at least an ok game as an esport but Blizzard just goes out of their way to hurt it. Players first have to spend around 3days worth of time(maybe its changed) in order to level and get some ok gear. It would be like forcing SC2 player to complete the campaign before playing ladder at all. Blizzard refuses to seperate pvp and pve. It may be able to become balanced but they keep changing it drastically because of pvp so the class that you played for days may become useless and you have to start all over again to become competitive. In SC2 the campaign has a different set of units/abilities than the mulitplayer so I don't see why wow can't as well.
Around the time there were actually events going on was right before sites like twitch tv were around so it was hard to follow players. Events like MLG had bad stream quality at the time/fewer features. Seeing stuff like the timers on cooldowns and what abilities were being used were really important but you couldn't really see any of that on the low quality MLG free stream. Having a first person perspective like we have in SC2 could of really helped a lot but no one tried doing so. The amount of quality commentators were severely lacking. It's hard to practice commentating when you can only do so at a LAN event.
There is only a ladder system kind of like SC2 and no custom games so there is no way to practice vs a specific strat or just have fun vs friends. This also makes it impossible to do small online events like the playhem daily. These small online events can really help lesser known players break out but they were just not existent so the pro player pool was stagnant.
I don't see why wow couldn't at least get Halo/Call of Duty levels of viewership at an MLG if Blizzard just treated it like they treat SC2.
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and anyone without concrete motivation to start playing a MOBA will get discouraged and leave.
DongLongJohnson Germany. August 02 2012 06:12. Posts 143
