Tag Archives: potential esports

An idea on how to mend World of Warcraft’s esport scene.

This post is a response to Blizzard, Warcraft, and the future of WoW eSports and originally appeared on Medium.

World of Warcraft revenues are still massively important to Activision Blizzard, so it’s kind of amazing that they aren’t giving the MMO the attention that, say, Diablo 3 has received since the implementation of the seasonal content and the nuking of the auction house.

A disclaimer

I don’t know anything about World of Warcraft, but every year or so I play the trial mode to level 10. After the week long free trial, I conclude that I could never put eough time into the game that justifies actually spending money on it—especially when I already pay to play an MMO—and uninstall the trial client. I’m not the ideal WoW player, I get that, but I imagine that if I had put a few years of time into the game, I’d feel very differently.

I recently saw a Guild Wars 2 competitive match and did a little looking into how that game treats its competitive mode. I learned about a serious differentiator that made a ton of sense and I wonder if it could affect some positive change in the World of Warcraft scene.

A segregated competitive mode for WoW?

As I understand it, the competitive matchmaking system exists outside of the proper MMO world. Everything exists in a balanced state, from skill trees to equipment options and it allows for many of the builds present in the MMO-side of the game to be utilized in the competitive arena matches. Now, to apply that sort of segregation to WoW might ultimately make its arena match-ups simpler by restricting outfitting to a subset of instantly-available, balanced items compared to WoW’s current grinding of end-game content

Think about what breaking the competitive game mode away from requiring the open world aspect of WoW means:

  • Competitive PVP balancing doesn’t have to impact the greater game world—that is, any PVE content and any MMO-based PVP content
  • Full access to competitive PVP equipment so that having competitive gear in matches doesn’t require end-game grinding, but requires intelligent decisions
  • Simplifying class skill trees and outfitting options equalizes the importance of team composition and player ability in lower tiers of competition

Would something like that ever work for World of Warcraft esports?

Or is the current state of WoW esports just a result of a lack of good players among a shrinking greater player base?

TheMittani.com is a news site that deserves your consideration.

The Mittani is a polarizing figure in the gaming industry and for good reason.

On one hand, he’s historically the most visible player in the EVE Online community who stood as a Council of Stellar Management chairman and helped to revolutionize the relationship that is possible between engaged customers and game development companies. On the other, he’s the stark visage of a griefing villain who leads the largest coalition of EVE Online players whose primary goals include raining on outsiders’ parades and perpetuating a vocabulary that could be described as slur-filled and early-2000s-era politically incorrect.

One moment he can suggest to a crowded room that they could encourage a down-on-his-luck player to commit suicide and the next he can spearhead a massive donation drive for a key alliance diplomat killed in the Benghazi embassy mob attack. Controversial and legendary at the same time.

Lending his persona to brand a niche game journalism blog doesn’t seem like a bright idea, but that’s exactly what he did just over a year ago. Regardless, TheMittani.com is the fastest growing and probably the most popular EVE Online information source available to the public.

In a scene where intelligence is a meta that is both controlled and valuable, private forums and messaging services continue to become simpler to implement, and subversion is a legitimate tactic, a public news site shouldn’t have as much gravitas as TMC controls.

Screen Shot 2013-09-06 at 8.50.41 AMIn the past year, the news organization has broken milestone after milestone that other news sites in the gaming genre could only wish to achieve. It attracts quality writing talent even though it only compensates its staff with a game-based currency. It’s one of the only organizations that filed for press credentials to E3 for its first time when it was less than a year old and received access. It was able to enter into a Twitch partnership program with one of the lowest average viewerships per game on the service. It doesn’t offer premium access and it hasn’t Kickstarted itself because the operation is self-sufficient. Even though it owes its namesake to an EVE Online personality, it covers five other online titles as well as the ever-more-relevant commercial space race and notable science fiction novels.

If you needed an example of how an esports news site could succeed, here it is. And it doesn’t claim to be anything more than a gaming news site. It doesn’t even touch the term esports.

I would love to contribute to a place like that. Sure the comment section can be toxic and spin to its own meta most of the time, but to be included in a group of folks like that would be a dream come true in a way. I’ve worked with dedicated news folks in a genuine setting and I’m still jealous of the participants in an experiment turned authority like TMC.

I’ve never applied to become a writer there, but I’m strongly considering it because I want to help grow something like TMC. But finding something to contribute is the challenge. I want to bring more general news to the site. Perhaps I can start there.

Translating devspeak regarding Shootmania’s railgun-in-name-only.

One of the potential FPS games hoping against hope that it will effectively replace the Quake 3 family in the esport scene is Nadeo’s Shootmania. The game is half-deathmatch shooter and half-first-attempt-to-make-something-other-than-a-racing-game as far as the studio is concerned. Perhaps its this combination of factors that is leading the developer to think that they can change the formula on the classic a bit.

In Quake, railguns shoot straight. The fact is about as etched in stone as it can be, similar to bunnyhopping is the only way to move around in an arena. In Shootmania, they apparently don’t. Players, some of whom may have paid to have access to the game, have been complaining on Nadeo’s Shootmania subforum about the game’s railguns are not behaving as interpreted to be. While the topic sorely needed a post from a game developer, this post was probably not what the users had in mind:

Essentially, the Nadeo official is saying is that outside of servers running their own scripts and having their own settings, the railgun-in-name-only will continue to be itself.

But really, Nadeo just doesn’t give a fuck.

Granted the game is still months from a proper release, if anything that I’ve seen about it is any indication, the only real thing going in its favor is that there seems to be some relatively highly watched tournaments being broadcast with some pretty strong amounts of prize pools for winning teams. There have been tweaks for game-modes, but nothing earth-shattering for the game and nothing that resembles Quake.

A game can’t live on hype alone, but it looks like this is going to be the first real offering of an arena shooter in a while. Perhaps going back to FPS roots will help it build enough of a base to become a practical esport.