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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.'"
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.
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
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
(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...
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.
Video games are a "sport" in the same way billiards, darts, horseshoes or fishing (river/lake) are sports. It's kind of on the boundary. These "sports" almost entirely consist of minimal physical exertion and rely mainly on hand-eye coordination. However, like video games that can require the player to think ahead and consider strategy or adjusting to local conditions (esp. fishing). Very few people ever get exhausted doing these activities. On the other hand, simply classifying them as "games" puts them in the same category as chess, checkers and poker, which is also a poor fit.
I propose we create a new category: gorts.
Or possibly "spomes."
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6167808.html
Clearly, being a top 10 game two years after launch is indication that "it's population is dropping like flies".
*Your ad here*
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.