Merry-Go-Round Tournament Teams, The Evolution of WoW as an Esport..

As funny as it is, every one of my articles has included information on well known teams swapping players... which although somewhat funny, is a reality in the pro scene today, people move on, don't cut it, or simply lose interest and changes have to be made, sometimes far more often than you would like. 

This week will be no different, as there are a variety of updates to tell you about, so I will get right into it talking about Fnatic.  As many people assumed, Fnatic will not be continuing on with the same lineup as they have yet to qualify for anything (Global Finals, Regionals) or have any success since the WLD nerfs in BC, and it seemed that they were losing interest in the game as well.  As of now it appears that two teams are competing for a sponsorship by Fnatic: one being Yog's new RLS, the other would be a team which Glick is trying to put together (presumably DK, Warlock, Druid) - although I really have no idea who it would be with or how it's working out.  Most people would assume that Yog's RLS would be chosen, but obviously Glick has done a lot for Fnatic, and was the most successful team last year during WLD dominance, so that buys him a lot of support with the sponsor, and as with most things in life, getting a sponsor is largely about who you know.  Due to their loyalties and what they owe to Glick Fnatic could definitely pick up whatever team Glick puts together, especially since many people think Shadowcleave will be INSANE next patch with the resilience change.

On the topic of the other team competiting for a Fnatic sponsorship (Yog's RLS), many people were really happy to see Neilyo on a competitive team again, as he has a huge fan base and they would love to see him back in tournament play.  Although as it has finally gotten out, he will probably not be able to attend due to some family gathering he has to attend the same weekend.  Since Neilyo would not be attend, it looked like their whole team might not be able to go, so CoL had been looking to pick up Yog after Happyminti's retirement, but Yog / Douja had other plans and continued searching for Neilyo's replacement while Yog was practicing with CoL. The rogue that they seem to have ended up with is Serration / Woundman, who is well known for his online play and well respected by the pro community even though he has never attended a tournament.  He was also the rogue playing with Yog and Douja on live servers during their recent surge in ratings where they nearly reached 3k, which was mentioned by Affix in his blog talking about Euneek's team getting world first 3k with their Priest / Ret / Rogue cleave on the same battlegroup.  It's a pretty interesting change, and one which I was curious about since I didn't really know if it would hurt or help their team; because although Serration is obviously a great rogue, so is Neilyo, and the latter has tournament experience, which is invaluable as you really don't know how someone will perform on LAN until they've been there.

Another recent change is that CompLexity is now practicing with Reckful, since Yog went back to his RLS so while talking to Sodah today, I inquired as to how their practicing was going and was told this:

Isaac says:
 how're things w/ reckful?
sodah says:
 they're fine
 we beat veex's cleave a ton
 had trouble with yog's rls
 but so did sk
sodah says:
 woundman just outplays everyones rogue
 when they had neil
 they were a joke
Isaac says:
 is he really that good?
sodah says:
 yea hes really that good
 the problem is
 the way he plays is probably only good for rls
 he just vanishes everyone elses vanish
 kinda cooldown spammy but its what you need i think

That's pretty high praise for Serration from someone who I consider to be one of the best players in the game, and honestly that makes that team extremely scary if he really is that much better than all the other rogues out there at the moment.  Doing well against SK USA is another great sign for that team that big things may be coming from them as they're the team to beat at the moment in North America with two straight dominating tournament wins.



The evolution of WoW as an Esport... is obviously something which I have a vested interest in as the more it grows and evolves, the better it is for me as it's something which I'm already involved in, and would like to continue to be involved in if the rewards are there.  Even though WoW already has surpassed the popularity of the other Esports as far as numbers are concerned, other games are more established such as Counter Strike, Starcraft: BW and Warcraft 3 and have players receiving monthly salaries, which is something WoW has not yet come to.  With some work, WoW could definitely get there though as the audience sponsors can reach through WoW dwarfs that of any other game, and advertising is really what it's all about for the sponsors.

You might be asking yourself why the top pros from other games are able to get these salaries, and it's really just due to how long the games have been around, and how established the players themselves have become within the communities.  The players who have been around for so long and who have been having success for all this time have proven themselves a worthy investment with their consistency and dedication.  The sponsors know what they're getting when they sign one of them to a contract and give them a salary, and they know that their investment will most likely continue to pay off throughout its entire duration.  With WoW however consistency has been a big problem, and there are very few players who have been able to achieve consistent success throughout all of WoW's very short tournament scene, so the game still has a while to go before the people sticking around could start to reap the benefits of their work.  Obviously WoW isn't at the point that these other games are, and has a ton of room to grow so the inevitable question is - What does WoW have to do to continue to evolve and grow as an Esport?  The answer is not an easy one, and because of this asking five different people the question will probably net you five very different answers, but I think that there are a lot of things which everyone could agree need improvement, and that's what I'm going to talk about over the next few weeks or months.

One of the most important parts of any Esport is the methods through which the fans can view the matches going on at any given tournament.  With WoW it's with the Blizzard Tournament UI, which made it's debut quite a while ago as nothing more than a few Health bars, and maybe a team name if you were lucky, however when you look at the interface today it features player targets, cool down usage, and vastly improved health & mana / energy / rage bars, which has vastly improved the viewing experience and says something about the amount of work they have put into it.  Unfortunately the streams broadcasting the matches are almost unanimously hard to find and are usually either too low quality leaving you straining to see the numbers and icons, or they're high quality but plagued by delay and freezes for anyone without a stellar connection.  It's really a shame, as frustrating the viewer is one thing you really do not want to do when you're trying to increase the popularity of the thing you're broadcasting and it leaves the streams with really only the more hardcore fans who're willing to deal with the problems and continue to refresh the page or try again later to catch as many matches as they can.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of the WoW fan base is casual and by frustrating them when they're trying to find and watch the tournament matches, you're likely to lose a large majority of your viewers.

Naturally when trying to find a solution to WoW's viewing woes I look to other more established games and their methods of broadcasting and replaying matches.  The first thing you'll notice which is pretty much a given in other games are Demo's / Replays, that you can simply download and play, allowing you to watch from any players PoV in the match which lets you focus on whatever you find interesting, be it a certain team or individual player.  Counter-Strike also has an amazing method for watching live games called HLTV, which in effect allows you to be inside the game watching it live as it's happening from any of the players points of view, which can really make the game exciting to watch.  As far as WoW goes, the only real method of recording out there is FRAPS - which causes delay, lowers FPS hugely, and creates insanely large files that need to be edited, rendered etc before you can even think about uploading them, which makes it extremely undesirable for players to record their matches.  MLG tried getting players to FRAPS all their matches at a tournament last year and nearly everyone flat out refused due to the lag / **** FPS they had when using it which really eliminates it as an option when there's something on the line for the matches being played.  As far as an equivalent to HLTV, all we have is the one stream which is controlled by one person, and you're stuck watching whatever they're watching from whatever angle they're choosing which at times can be painfully bad (does anyone enjoy watching an entire match of the face of a character because they're so zoomed in or a pillar because they zoomed out to far?).

As far as a solution to these problems, it's really left up to Blizzard as any solid program to record ingame and view matches in progress through the WoW client would have to be designed, or at the very least sanctioned by them, which really makes it a lot more complicated.  Blizzard however has been a great supporter of Esports, and I love that they hold tournaments paid for completely by them, with great catering, organization and awesome prizes, but they're extremely busy as a company and these things are probably not high on their priority list.  However if they did decide to spend some more time improving WoW as an Esport then fixing these problems would be far more important to increasing it's fanbase and popularity than achieving perfect balance in the game. If people can easily tune in, and watch from whatever point of view they would enjoy most, then even if perfect balance isn't achieved it will draw massive amounts of viewers, and lets be honest: the casual viewer will not likely care what team is winning as long as it's fun to watch.  Imagine how many viewers these tournaments could draw if the 10+ million people playing the game were able to easily observe tournament games in progress while in the game (as you can with the CS client using HLTV), and were warned that the matches would be happening through in-game messages or the game's launcher - it would be insane to say the least.  Popularity would skyrocket and nothing could touch WoW as an Esport as far as popularity is concerned, because if there's one thing that WoW has which no other game can ever hope to achieve, it's the MASSIVE fanbase it already has, one which is largely unaware of Esports.

Until next week...