I may have forgotten to mention that we killed Maloriak in a 25 man raid last week. It was a close run thing. And one of my more talented raid colleagues captured the whole thing on video here. (If you are looking for a tactics guide, here’s a link to the tankspot one.)
(It’s worth listening to the end since he captured some of the comments on vent as the boss went down – a 0% wipe, as we in the trade like to say.)
I was thinking while watching this that the fight looks much cooler on film than I thought it felt in the flesh. I may just be burned out on raiding, though. This does also have the distinction of being the one boss where Arms outdamages Fury (due to being able to AE the adds), so there is that.
Anyhow, well done Cobra on a very amusing and well deserved kill. Onwards and upwards! Or downwards, since these raids all take place in caves.
Is this the end of WoW as an esport?
I have very little interest in the esoteric world of eSports, live gaming tournaments, sponsored teams and suchlike. But when World of Ming reports that one of the major eSports circuits is excluding WoW from tournaments this year in order to concentrate more on SC2, it’s a trend worth noting.
I also always felt that Blizzard’s fondness of the world of eSports was misplaced for WoW. Zilea suggests several reasons for WoW being dropped as a format including suspicions that fewer people are playing arenas in any case, few teams are interested in the competitive circuit anyway, and lack of interest in the game from spectators. Yup, that would do it.
I’m not sure how this will affect arena players, but suspecting that for the majority, this will be not at all.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
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.
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.
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…”
I had kind of imagined that they’d do slow replays and expert commentary as part of the whole eSports deal.
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.
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…
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.)
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).
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.