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How Pro Gaming Will Change World of Warcraft
1up has a piece looking at the impact that commercial support of WoW Arena teams might have on the game. There are already two teams backed with corporate money, both pulled from prominent PvP guilds in the Bloodlust battlegroup. "It's a challenge to pick teams to sponsor in WoW's PvP: 'The same team that may be ranked #2 or #3 in one Battlegroup may be ranked #1 in another," said Stephen Schoder of Check Six. "this makes the proposition of scouting out the right team more difficult than most other competitive eSports. The arena system in World of Warcraft is much more complicated than the simplistic FPS and RTS games in terms of being able to immediately pick up on what is going on.'"
lol wut?
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
I want to see corporate logos on their gear if they're getting sponsored. Heh.
Or character names that reflect it: "MountainDewMage" and "RedBullRogue."
C'mon, if you're going to commercialize something, let's go the whole way, people.
On the other hand... I hesitate to think about what would happen with the characters sponsored by Bawls.....
Technological competence assures no more intelligence than any other form, just more elitism.
Companies are sponsoring gamers? To play a game? My question - WHY?
--Thomas J. Owens
While I don't doubt that these people are having fun playing WoW and all that, but I need to ask... isn't going just a little too far to get corporate sponsorship for a game guild? I mean come on, just have fun playing the game, why do we need to commercialize the gaming worlds that are out there? I just find it sad. What is going to come next, McDonalds ads inside my D&D Books, and dating ads in the middle of Star Trek XI when it comes out? I mean come on...
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Please. Lets not go there.
It's a game.
its just basically talking about getting sponsorships for doing well at pvp in wow, and how its harder than picking out who is good at fps games, like cs, or rts, like starcraft. it's more team based and less individual skill based.
:), i love watching good pvp battles.
still cool- as a former lvl 29 twinker (priest
It's got the stuff gamers crave!
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
OK, I have been playing for over a year, and seen a lot of changes since then. I know that there are a lot of players out there that love the Arenas, and are very serious about their time in there. But honestly, I did not see this coming.
It does make sense though. Anytime you have a group of gamers together they naturally want to compete and prove who is better. The Arenas give them that venue. Having pro sponsors is even more likely when you consider that Blizzard is already running a tournament to find out who is the best in the Arenas as it is.
I say good for them. If they can find someone to sponsor them, go for it. Although I think it might be harder to have the sponsor's name out there since we are limited in the way we name things.
Here I come to save the da... *thud*
I gotta get me a shorter cape.
They are right that it definitely changes the "pro gaming" landscape. On a game like Counter-Strike or BF1942 or Quake 3 everyone is playing on the same level. They all have access to the exact same character. WoW is a whole new ballgame with regards to talent builds and equipment. I'm not sure but I think that a character needs to be level 70 to compete in the arena. Getting to level 70 takes a long time. I've been playing casually for about 6 months and my character is only 62, but sure, there are guys out there who have gone from 0-70 in the space of a few weeks. Beyond the sheer time required to level up to the point where you can compete in the arenas there is the matter of gear. Hard to get gear requires raiding. A raiding talent build is different than a PvP talent build. I understand that there is arena specific PvP gear and I'm not sure how that stacks up against raid/quest gear. Whatever the case, I'm sure that the ePeen WoW egos will grow even bigger because of this. Not only can they brag about being the biggest p-killing bastard (not that I mind PvP, I play on a PvP server), but now they can brag about getting paid because of the size of their ePeen.
In an RTS or FPS...Counterstrike, for example, the playing field is always even (or close to). Teams start out with the same cash, same basic pistols, and the same list of equipment options. Any advantage that one individual gains over another is pure skill, or blind dumb luck. And you can't really get rid of blind luck.
WoW, on the other hand, is an RPG, where victory often means having the right 'spec' (character build) or gear to beat your opponent. And this is not chosen at the start of the match, this is built up over months (or years!) of playing the game. You can be a better player than Jonny549, but he has that [Crown of Destruction] and full Teir 2 set while you don't, so the odds are atrificially stacked in his favor. Not because he's better, not because he's done better in previous rounds...but because he got lucky on a few loot drops or has more free time.
WoW is still an RPG, where gear and character builds can overcome skill. It's a horrible choice for competative play, especially with sponsors promoting the 'skill' of the victor.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
This would make sense if PvP in WoW was actually skill based but it's entirely gear dependent. He who has the best gear wins; it's as simple as that. With a coralary (sp) rule that states among teams with equal gear, those whose timered abilities are up wins.
Sponsoring a WoW arena team is like sponsoring a math team. WoW has little skill involved in the game, hence why so many people are able to get into it. The game is all about numbers. Make sure your numbers are higher than your opponents. That's pretty much it. You don't cast fireball spells in any special way. You just cast the highest rank fireball spell you have. You don't have to aim at your targets. Critical damage is inflicted based on a die roll.
This post isn't meant to tear WoW apart. It's a decent game, and a lot of people have a lot of fun playing it. I used to as well. But corporate sponsorship for arena teams? How does that affect the team at all? I guess they could pay their rent so that they don't have to go to work anymore. Leaves more time for raiding, which is really the only thing that makes your character stronger in WoW: time spent raiding.
Blerg.
It's actually pretty nice having corporate sponsorship when you're on a gaming team. I used to be on Pandemic's CS team way back in the day and our manager happened to be the owner of the Arkansas franchise of Subway. All of our trips to Dallas for the CPL were paid for, and plane tickets were bought for me to fly to Arkansas for local tournaments. Saved me lots of money. All we had to do was wear a "Pandemic" shirt with a subway logo on it when we went to the CPL... big deal. It's nice when you actually want make little cash off of professional gaming. It's really hard to do that with out some sort of sponsorship.
There is a lot of people out there who really believe pro gaming will become mainstream someday, I'm a little skeptical of this, but you never know.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
To be fair, TFA makes it seem like the guilds were just having fun playing, getting "World Firsts" and all and Team Pandemic and CheckSix just approached the guilds. Also, this has nothing to do with ad-sponsored gaming. Blizzard didn't team up with the sponsors to offer ads in-game. TFA specifically states that you won't see "big companies logos placed all over your character's armor like a NASCAR driver's suit". If I was in one of the top WoW guilds and someone approached my guild and said that they'd give us money to continue doing what we've already been doing, I'd be stupid to turn it down. I'm not sure exactly what Team Pandemic and CheckSix are getting out of this deal since there isn't in-game advertising, from their websites it looks like they're hoping for advertising at big LAN tournaments. They both mention rumors of WoW being included in such tournaments so I imagine they've got some inside information. They're trying to grow their business and WoW is huge so why not try this?
as you zone the areas in the text you see display will be
WESTERN PLAGUELANDS "we bring good things to life!" - GE®
MOLTEN CORE "obey your thirst" - Sprite®
IRONFORGE AUCTION HOUSE "what's in your wallet?" - Capital One®
WARSONG GULCH (pvp area) "Is It In You?" - Gatorade®
DUROTAR ZEPPLIN TOWER "The ultimate driving machine" - BMW®
This is just a result of the fact that, for a significant portion of the population, it takes so little effort to generate necessities that some means of justification to give people who aren't producing the necessities those necessities must arise.
Wow, that was a mouthful. Basically, in many countries it is so easy to produce food that not everyone needs to produce food. However, everyone still needs to consume food. So what happens is people decide they're willing to give people food if they do certain things. In this instance, people are willing to give gamers food in exchange for saying that they are playing the game because of the guy giving them food.
It's slightly more complex than that because monetary systems remove many activities quite far from actual food production, but the basic concept holds.
If it were much more difficult to produce food, you couldn't have this type of society, because nobody would be able to have enough extra food to just give to people for playing games. I'd say this is just a natural consequence of sufficient advances in farming and services trade.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Most CS servers have some sort of corporate sponsoship and have even back in old beta CS. Someones gotta pay for the phat pipes and servers. It was usually ISPs and webhosting type services that did it for publicity. I guess this is different, maybe they buy you gold or something. I wonder what sponsorship entails. I guess if they baught you a new PC every 6 months and paid your internets bill I could see people doing that. Personally, I would think that being a slave to a corporation is something you would only voluntarily do for real life money. Even then I would think that you want to leave that as much behind as pôssible when your playing a game. This is of course wow players we are talking about though, and wow is pretty much like a full time job already. Some people just like being corporate or guild slaves. Same thing really.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I don't pvp, I'm not into that style of play. But every time I run through STV, I stop by Gurubashi Arena just to watch players beat each other up over that stupid chest.
I wish Blizzard would develop a facility by which one could simply be a spectator at in the new arenas or the battlegrounds. Maybe create a special portal into these zones so you can see the action but not affect it.
Wow PVP takes no fucking skill at all.
That makes this rather funny.
And that's Tribes Vengeance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpc77KvfP0g
Food was never the only currency even in old times. Flints, skins, furs, knives, wives, etc... Much of it convertable to food, but food had a rather cyclical economy (a bag of berries isn't worth much right after the hunt, but quite a bit in winter) while durable goods or just plain status was a better stock in trade. So while a lot of things can boil down to food, tying it back to farming efficiency is a bit of a post hoc argument. Efficiency creates specializations, specialization creates interdependence, interdependence creates economy, and economies create some pretty weird relationships, as we're now seeing.
It's not that weird though. It's a leisure activity and as such a sport, at least in the eyes of the sponsors.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sponsoring is all about pvp, which is terrible in WoW. Warhammer's pvp will blow the doors off of WoWs. I was a hardcore WoW player for over 2 years and recently gave it up because it's gotten so stagnant and repetitive. Seems silly to me to start a sponsorship two years into the games lifespan when it's population is dropping like flies and its pvp system is a joke.
As for my comments about the population dropping like flies I'll just say this. They claim 8.5 million subscribers but don't tell you how many are the hourly China accounts (they inflate that number a great deal). They also forget to tell everyone they only sold 3.5 million copies of the expansion. I can also tell you from person experience that a large number of people who've bought the expansion have quit. Blizzard has dozens and dozens of dead servers right now, huge population imbalances and broken pvp. Any company sponsoring a team under these circumstances is throwing away money.
(Pity that was an AC post - it's pretty interesting!)
I didn't mean to imply that food is the only currency, I was just using that simple example to show that specialization and efficiencies give rise to otherwise "illogical" situations, like people who can survive while only providing services rather than directly producing wealth.
It's a fascinating thing to see how services do facilitate the creation of wealth. What it all boils down to, though, is that there has to be wealth to support services. The fact that modern economies are very complex doesn't change that fact.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
For those who don't know, the winners of the tournaments are going to be character-copied to a private blizzard arena server, where they will be taking part in the final tournament.
I would be doing a similar thing, licensing a private server for use in this very matter. Why not have WoW:Arena Battles? If Blizzard can swing a private server for this, why not have [insert sponsorship group name] license a private server directly from Blizzard. The sponsorship group handles all the signups and whatever. When the lists are complete, they submit them to Blizzard for a character-copy to the private arena server. This would allow *ANY* character/group/team/guild to compete in a custom arena server.
I mean seriously... it wouldn't be that hard. They restrict transfer of characters from certain places to others based on the ease/difficulty of attaining rank/gear and such... but in the Arena server it wouldn't matter.
I think something like this would have to be a lead project by the sponsorship group. Lets say CheckSix decides to do something like this. They would have to contact Blizzard and do the licensing. Blizzard could have a Licensing System. Something that could do it would be like:
$50,000 USD for an Arena Server License (4month) - 100x5v5 Team Character Transfer (500 Characters) - 200x3v3 Team Character Transfer (600 Characters) - 800x1v1 Team Character Transfer (800 Characters) - Server Farm Rental - 5 GM Accounts for Management Purposes - Must be a known sponsor of tournament competitions (to avoid no-name groups getting their own servers)
Something like that...
A lot of people are saying there's no skill involved, it's all about your gear and how much time you spend raiding.
This isn't quite as true anymore, since the expansion. The best PvP gear comes as PvP rewards. Raiding offers nice gear, true, but most of it is more tailored towards raiding. You'll want more stamina and resilience stats that is way more available in the PvP gear rewards.
Blizzard is trying to draw the lines between PvP and PvE, and it could close the gear gap. If you really like to PvP, you'll eventually get the gear. Once everyone is in similar gear, skill and tactics become way more of a factor.
Play a MUD like Imperian if you want to see real PvP skill in a fantasy rpg setting. You need to think ahead and use all your coding skills to have a good offense and defense. Having high quality equipment/artifacts does not equate to victory there either. I'd never be proud of PvP skills in WoW because it's really not skill after a certain point.
Or to adjudicate in disputes, communicate with god(s), keep those nutters from the next village away from our goats ...
Thanks, but I think most of us have worked out that the agrigultural revolution had some far-reaching consequences.Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
World of Warcraft cannot support pro gaming. The arenas may be more competitive than previous PvP in the game, but they will never be able to support meaningful competition. WoW will always be an MMORPG you play for fun, not as an e-sport.
The biggest obstacle comes from the requirement that all games must be played on Blizzard's servers. This means no sponsored competitions can be hosted other than by Blizzard. Currently, this also means the inability to play prearranged matches. You're stuck playing random opponents on Battlegroups that represent 1/10th of the playing population. Don't expect this to change either. Private servers and the ability to play teams from other Battlegroups aren't very likely, as Blizzard is out to make a profit.
The other problem facing WoW is the huge time requirements to reach the point to where you can participate in this PvP. For the average player this will take 200-300 hours. This causes most players to be able to play only this one character. When class changes happen, or when the playing field changes to where a different group composition would work better, teams are unable to adapt without either cutting a player or going through months of leveling. A game that places the class and gear of the character above a player's skill cannot ever be competitive. Arenas were a great addition to the game, but don't expect to earn anything other than new items from the competition.
I don't play WoW, but I am a long-distance runner. If some company offered me free gear in exchange for running in a bunch of races wearing that gear I'd do it, as long as the gear wasn't too garish. I'd wear a jersey with an Asics logo on it in exchange for free shoes. I'm not nearly a good enough runner to get a deal like that (although, really, in most races there are more people that can see the midpack runners than the leaders, so it might actually be more effective to put ads on me than some elite dude).
About numbers, if both sides have the same items (and two sponsored teams would) then its back to who has the best strategy.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The next big hit MMO game will be designed from scratch to be a competitive sport, where skill will lie in knowing your opponent, guessing what their equipment load-out will be, using your load-out in the most effective manner, etc. While everyone can play, most will spend 60% of their time watching bouts between others, to learn tricks, learn future opponent's moves. There'll be pay-sites dedicated to dishing up details of each player's favorite tactics, weaknesses, etc - so people will pay to see opponents info, and their own info so they can work on avoiding weaknesses. The Pro's will have support teams to do their research for them and help design their load-out for a game.
Although not entirely relevant, he says the guild Nihilum(*) are trying to kill "Lady Vashj" - they are not trying anymore they did it several days ago ;)
;)
* So what does Nihilum mean anyway? "We who are nothing" ? Would be funny if it did since they have so many "firsts" (of course they may not have much of a life because of that
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Yes, because "pro gamers" add soooo much to the industry. This is just an instance of advertisers being told to fuck off by the game companies about ads in their games. It's mildly ironic since they'd be crucified by the same people for allowing it, who are accepting money, and other stuff like plane tickets & such to wear an "innocent" shirt to an event, advertise in the game for them, etc. The whole notion of professional gamers is a load of tripe. Theres only one type of professional in the videogame industry, and it's the people slaving away making the games. Everybody else just a consumer, or mercenary for hire looking to offer a pound of flesh.
Burn karma burn...
There aren't many ways for advertisers to get a foothold in the WoW player base, so why not? The only advertiser I've seen in game is nvidia. This allows them to get their name out to a huge market that has otherwise been inaccessible. I suppose they could go in game and spam all the chat channels until their characters get banned...
*Your ad here*
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
I wouldn't worry too much: Counterstrike, Starcraft and Quake teams have been raking in sponsorship money for years.
However, at the end of the day, there is still a lot of "twitch element" to the game, as well as the skill of knowing when to switch strategies.
I believe Arena PvP is similar to Starcraft. There are lots of strategies to SC that you can read up on (build orders, how pull off a Zerg rush, how to defend against such a rush, etc.). Same goes for WoW PvP (what specs to use, how to battle against a warlock, how to fully utilize your skills as a rogue, etc.). However with both, there's the "twitch" aspects that make up the skill. In Starcraft, you have to have fast enough reflexes to make your moves, know when to switch strategies, etc. In WoW, it's the same as there are lots of timed button presses, moving into the right position, knowing how to react, when to switch strategies, etc.
-- jchenx
If you guys thought gold farming was a problem before, you ain't seen nothing yet. There are going to be people making money (real money) manipulating the virtual AH and player markets in order to extract more cash more corporate sponsored flunkies. The implications for unsponsored players are pretty devastating in my opinion. I expect all (of what tiny amount ever existed anyway) of the fun to be extracted from WoW and pumped right into a chinese bank account.
I think you missed a few, I fixed them for you:
MOLTEN CORE "Fuck you, I'm eating" - Carls Jr.
WARSONG GULCH (pvp area) "With electrolytes!" - Brawndo
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Typical "extremely hardcore" WoW player plays for how long each day??? Say it's 6hrs (probably underestimated - and assume fulltime job, sleep, etc)
On weekends, rack up another 12hrs each day.
All told we are at 54hrs (understimated i'm sure) a week, playing a f*cking game religiously...
There are already two teams backed with corporate money, both pulled from prominent PvP guilds in the Bloodlust battlegroup.
WoWPlayer:"What, you want to pay me to play WoW? GG!"
Now that player can advertise for this company in front of thousands of people daily for oh... 70hrsM/F + 24hrsS/S =94 hrs a week? Not to mention paying them relatively little bc they are happier than a pig in sh*t to get paid to play.
gg
No words of wisedom here.
DUROTAR ZEPPLIN TOWER "The ultimate driving machine" - BMW®
Shouldnt that one be on Shimmering Flats in Thousand Needles? Altho that would be a poor choice location for an ad since it's usually empty.
No sig
They're games.
As is chess, checkers and poker.
To be a sport, it needs to be athletic, at the very least.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I am currently addicted to arena, and actually doing pretty well, our 5v5 team was in the top10 last week. Not so great this week. I'm really hoping to at least make it to the regionals. I've noticed a lot of detractors posting in this topic, and mainly I just wanted to give some comments from someone who is actually deeply involved in Arena play. First, it is ridiculously fun. I haven't had as much fun since I used to play muds back in High School. If you like pvp, and you already have a warcraft account I couldn't recommend Arena more. It takes a lot of skill, quick thinking, coordination, tactics and strategy. More importantly the games last 4 to 6 minutes on average and are very quick paced. It encompasses almost all the things that make pvp fun for me. Second, it is definitely not solely based on gear. If you had watched closely at the beginning of season, the top arena teams were not decked in epics, a lot of the top teams had fairly marginal gear. Of course now they have arena reward gear, but I still firmly believe that skill is much more important than gear, although, unfortunately, gear does help. As the article stated, gear will balance out as everyone basically gets the same Arena gear, which isn't extremely hard to get. An average team will get a piece every three or four weeks, meaning by next season the majority of teams will be wearing similiar arena gear. A lot of the critiques of Arena are accurate though. It is still influenced by gear, it does take a lot of time to level to 70, and even longer to build up enough gear to be somewhat viable, right now there is no way to spectate, there are still class imblances. But overall, I am very impressed with the Arena system. My profile: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet. xml?r=Mal'Ganis&n=Thax
Glide!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's just like any other professional sport. There's slo-pitch and there's hardball. PvP WoW is definitely on the hardball end of the spectrum. If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to play. Anyway, I really doubt that I'm going to be in any of these tournaments. Just watching these guys compete would be really exciting, let alone being part of the gig.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
I'm real glad I've stopped playing WoW.
However I am still bitter about Starcraft:Ghost
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
I'm a major company. I spend billions of dollars on advertising every year. I give five people $40K apiece so they can quit their day job and do nothing but play WoW and build up for their 5-man arena team, and I've just spent $200K to have my company's name seen by the people who play the most popular game in the world. Worth it?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
But the gold farmers are raising their exchange rates, you need sponsors so you can buy teh goldz!
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
1.4 million + 141,000 = 1.541000 units in two months. Nowhere near the 7~8 million subscribers they claim to have.
Jesus christ. What, was that the topic in your poli-sci/eco course this week? You are talking about the simplest socio-economic principles that every human being who has ever traded goods for services is INTIMATELY aware of.
This is not insightful. It is not interesting. It is stupid.
Its like saying...
Its just so interesting to see how the fundamental language principles allow us to use computer generated characterizations of the units of our speech. You see, humans have this ability to tokenize bits of thought and trade those bits of thought with other humans in a way they can understand. Without a medium to allow the trading of ideas in this way complex multi-human ideas would be impossible. Its just so fascinating how we need communication in order to talk to each other.
No, not really. For fucks sake.
as a friend once said to me "Warcraft if all about 4 buttons. Figuring out the right combo of pressing the right 4 buttons in the right orders = win."
That's it. There's no magic to this game. It's that simple.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/