Comments on: It’s a draw! And the demise of WoW as an esport.

By: Void

Void — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:23:54 +0000

SC2 is one of the only games that I’ve seen that lends itself well to esports. Most games are just way too confusing to watch if you aren’t intimately familiar with that game. At least in Starcraft any person can see that both opponents build up and army which results in epic clashes.

Maybe I’m being completely biased because I love SC2, but I’ve tried to watch competitive shooters and WoW arenas and I get extremely bored or disoriented.

If you want to see some good SC2 commentary just check out Day9. He’s amazing.

By: Theladas

Theladas — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:34:21 +0000

Aye, thanks. It was a lot of fun, especially because I don’t think we’ve ever gotten that close to the wire before. I’ve been a part of many 1% wipes (including a 56k health on Cho’gall before our first win a few pulls later), but never on this side of the coin where one person actually survived until the last second needed.

Sadness, though, as we sharded both of his non-tier drops (no rogue or Enh shaman for the axe was unfortunate).

By: jalindrine

jalindrine — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:23:43 +0000

I think the problem is that they use 1st person (ie, player) points of view.

If they had a camera from the “stands”, it’d be a fun game to watch. You don’t realize how nauseating your gameplay is until you watch on of these fights. Cutting back and forth between guys spinning on dimes doesn’t make for the best casual watching. It’s disorienting for those who know what they’re doing. Imagine if you usually played another game and didn’t know what was going on…

But taking a good distant, sports camera perspective would work.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 06:04:31 +0000

Congrats on the kill!

It is really exciting when a boss fight is that close, even though you know that if you were executing it better that wouldn’t happen. At least that’s what I find. The really close fights are the ones I remember. (In that video, you may have heard someone mention Gruul. That was a really really close kill for us where one person was standing at the end — it was years ago and as you can hear, they still talk about it.)

By: Theladas

Theladas — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 04:12:51 +0000

So, I found it funny that my guild actually managed a 0% wipe on Nefarian10 this week for our first kill. Our shaman technically came up as the hunter died, and her flame shock caused Nef to topple over, but the rapidity with which everyone died so close to the end reminded me of your video.

Kiting bone constructs sucks, by the way; I’m not looking forward to that job again…

By: spinks

spinks — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:58:00 +0000

I had kind of imagined that they’d do slow replays and expert commentary as part of the whole eSports deal.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:56:20 +0000

Maybe it needs better color commentary?

“Oh! He missed that fake. Malfuryon is having an off day, but look at that little raiding party coming up on the left side, Frank…”

By: Stabs

Stabs — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:43:16 +0000

E-sports only work if they’re interesting to watch. In arena play much of what happens is not going to be understood by spectators. For instance a match may turn on whether someone wastes their interrupt on a fake cast. Many WoW players don’t even know what faking is, much less how to spot it.

The key moments are simply not visible enough.

By: canazza

canazza — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:05:15 +0000

I think they’re excluding WoW as Cataclysm is just out and it’s Cata that’s yet to prove itself as an E-sport. Remember, they’ve just dicked about with every class, and the 4.0.6 patch did it even more.
It’s up to Blizzard to prove Cata’s still the same calibre (or better) e-sport than WOTLK was.