The Fun Solution To Current Arena? MLG Aftermath, Who Will Be The New SK US? NS2

Forgive me in advance if this article is very diary-esque.

Season 5 vs season 7 gear vs... season 1?

As everybody is fully aware, every tournament that I can remember has always utilized gear from old seasons instead of updating the items to the current season. While a lot of people think it is because Blizzard has the "foresight" to know that damage would be too absurd to allow tournaments (along with their own) to go with the most current gear sets, the real reason is probably that they just don't have the energy to keep updating the gear sets on the tournament realms.

Of course the explanation that Blizzard had foresight does also make sense as it doesn't take a brain surgeon to look back at arena history and notice that damage always scales faster than survivability, no matter the expansion or the season. If you look at the MLG Anaheim tournament, even the beastcleave damage of Check6 was completely out of control, and that is with gear that is two seasons behind. For the readers who do not experience the highest competition of arena or have never had a chance to play against beastcleave of enhancement shaman/BM hunter/paladin: the damage is even more unreal on live servers.

So, I have a fun suggestion that Blizzard should try out on the PTR: open up season 1 arena gear and allow people to only play against each other in that gear for a few days. It sounds crazy, but let's think about it. Sure, HP would be drastically lower but so would damage. Games would be longer, funner and more importantly more skill-based. The only real question is if base damage from abilities would be too high of a percentage of a player's health bar. I'm no mathematician theorycrafter here or anything so I could be completely off. Still, I'd like to test it out and I will touch on this a little bit more later.

MLG aftermath and story time

With MLG Anaheim put away and done with, I will say that I did enjoy the tournament for a lot of reasons. Mostly, however, it had to do with the diversity of team lineups that we saw. It was probably the most diverse tournament I've ever seen. Two shadowcleaves (druid/DK/warlock), 3 RMP, 2 RLS and a beastcleave.

On another note, the predictions I made for first, second and third place were off. I had Check6 at first, SK US at second and SK EU or Fnatic at third. I'll be honest when I say that Button Bashers completely threw me off. I was absolutely amazed at their performance as I did not think an RMP had a chance in the world at putting a stop to a lineup like beastcleave. I underestimated the Korean powerhouses, something I will certainly not do again. With this tournament performance alone I will concede that they are the best RMP in the world.

Something that I found hilarious though during the tournament was during the defeat of Check6 when they played SK EU and Button Bashers. There were a swell of comments insulting the US for being bad and how we can't compete at tournaments and blah blah blah. This was golden considering the fact that 95% of the US WoW community was cheering when Check6 lost and was eliminated. I, for one, got up off my chair and hollered a classic "WOOOOO". Nothing against the individual players of Check6 but really, their lineup is bologna and everybody, including them, knows it.

For disappointments, SK USA doing so poorly was something I did not expect. I was predicting them to take down everybody except Check6 (even Button Bashers in a mirror).

I do have an interesting story about MLG Anaheim which has a lot to do with my bad reputation. When I was considering going the first thing I wanted to find out was if I would be able to get a free player pass so I could be with all the players. After doing a little research and talking to some MLG people, I found out that a lot of people hated me there and did not want me to get in with a player pass. That part wasn't really a shocker and I initially put a lot of blame on the higher-ups in the MLG organization for not allowing me to be the filler to compete with the team "For The Alliance" (consisting of Huggerz and Beastlol). I was at the same time trying to get access to internet so that I could do live blogging for the event, but again the MLG refs and lower-level admins were giving me push back about the possibility of doing that (despite Bodi being granted that access). The reason? According to Bodi:

Everybody here hates you man, I don't even know why - Bodi

I decided to just take my chances but I fully planned on paying the $20 spectator entrance fee. When I got to MLG Anaheim, the first thing me and Hoodrych were trying to do was get a player pass to get into the event. Hoodrych started making phone calls to players in the event and although I wasn't sure exactly what was being said, my best guess was nobody was willing to give me a player pass. When Hoodrych signaled to me that I should just buy a spectator pass, I went ahead and did. Probably about 3 minutes later Yog came out and handed both of us a player pass.

Did I get bamboozled? In any case, I walked back over to the admission stand and told them I got a player pass and said I was competing so I wanted a refund for the spectator pass I had just purchased. The guy said he couldn't do that because he didn't have the authority. He didn't have the authority? I had just bought the pass and took something like 20 footsteps before I was back at his table. "Who does have the authority to give me a refund then?" I asked. "Uh, the guy who hired me". After a back-and-forth it was pretty obvious I was getting no where fast so I gave up my quest to recover my precious $20 bill.

Fast forward a few hours and I had finally determined who two of the big culprits were over at MLG who were trying to keep me from getting a free player pass. I'm not going to say who those people were because it might not make the organization look good and I want to show some restraint. But, I will say that the head admin Ryan Moore was not one of them as it was obvious that he was not aware of any petty grudge. I met him briefly over dinner and he seemed like a pretty nice guy to me and he even offered me an MLG account to play with people. I think it is safe to say the top management of MLG was not involved in these shinanigans.

The gist here is that how you act online has an impact, and I will be the first to admit I have a bad temper online, and that gets me into a lot of trouble. Will that suddenly change after MLG Anaheim? Probably not, especially for what I'm about to write.


The game's fundamental problem right now

It doesn't matter that I got first place on the 2009 online qualifiers, second place at the US regionals in Germany and first place at the 2009 Blizzcon global finals, as apparently the word at MLG Anaheim (while I wasn't there) was that I'm a bad paladin because I don't sit there and cast enough. At first I was really shocked that I received any criticism as most of the people who trash talked me have achieved infinitely less than I have at the very game they practice all day for to compete at tournaments.

I don't understand how you get high rated with Zilea, he is one of the worst paladins I've ever seen - Pookz

You know, I'm sure he can really relate to the whole criticism thing of being the worst after MLG Anaheim. Let the bloodletting begin!
(On a side note, I've been aware he was saying those things about me ever since Blizzcon. So, while this isn't a complete shocker to me, I felt I should share it with the community)

Among other things was the criticism of my poor positioning in a lot of matches, which leads to me getting killed.

The real point to be discussed here though is the state of the game from a healer's perspective. When I heal as a paladin, I don't sit there and do what 2000 rated paladins do: channel holy light from start to finish. My role is a lot more diverse than many people probably expect from paladins in the 2000 rating range. I'm cleansing as much as I can, trying to fake counterspells/silences as much as I can and being as aggressive as I can. It may get me killed in a few matches, but let's be honest, with the current state of the game a swap can lead to a kill in less than 2 globals. I'm sure EG/Fnatic were thrilled to see their warlock go down in what seemed like seconds after the match started most of the time. Damage is simply too high, which leads to playstyle changing drastically to what it was in TBC or just generally what it should be right now.

A slower paced game allows for more proper use of cooldowns and well-coordinated crowd control usage as opposed to what we saw during MLG Anaheim with beastcleave: gates open, spirit wolves, BM and divine sacrifice instantly popped as all 3 players charge in.

Who will be the new SK USA?

After an extremely disappointing show for the team that used to be the most feared in the US, SK Gaming USA has been doing worse at every successive tournament since Blizzcon. And, with the SK Gaming USA contract coming to an end, will the organization decide to give Dr Realz another chance, or go with fresh blood?

According to many people close to them, the team of SK USA had been practicing less and less after every recent tournament due to poor performances and has been increasingly demoralized because of it. It had gotten so bad that Realz was spending more time on a rogue than on a priest, and the results of the MLG Anaheim event really showed their lack of motivation to stay in shape. I can certainly relate, however, as when my team lost to EG during the US regionals, I felt like quitting the game entirely. Losing really gets to you when you spend months preparing for one of these big events.

So, who will be the new team of SK USA if Realz and co get dropped? My guess is we could see the team of Complexity BHMS be picked up as they had an impressive 4th place showing for their very first LAN appearance. On top of that there aren't really any other US teams on the scene that many people would recognize as a top contender (let's face it, performing at a LAN is more important than performing on live ladder where people are playing on season 7 gear and using a ton of mods).

Complexity BHMS does have potential, but right now SK EU's Inflame/Enigmaz/Another runs the stronger variant of druid/dk/warlock.

Natural Selection 2


Actual in-game screenshot (according to them)

I'm not sure how many people are aware of the Natural Selection 2 project, but it is a game developed by a company called Unknown Worlds Entertainment, headed by a guy named Charlie Cleveland. He was the lead designer of the original Natural Selection. The first Natural Selection was a half-life 1 modification that was a mix between FPS and RTS.

The game has two sides, Frontiersmen and Kharaa, with the Frontiersmen consisting of marines and the Kharaa consisting of the zerg. The marine side has something called a commander which basically get an aerial view of the entire map if the marines have vision of it (like in Starcraft). The commander's role is much like in Starcraft. He makes the commands (over the microphone), pings where the team should go, drops weapons for them, places buildings, etc. The marines actually build the buildings, take the weapons (they get dropped on the ground by the commander), and go out and try to kill stuff.

The Kharaa, on the other hand, is much like the zerg in Starcraft. You start off as a "Skulk", which is equivalent to a zergling. It has the ability to climb walls, leap, etc with some cool additions like being able to spit a target and parasite them, giving the entire Kharaa a sort of tracing dot that updates every second and every Kharaa player can see their location. Then there are other cool forms like the "Onos", which is the equivalent of an ultralisk in Starcraft with its own unique set of abilities. I don't want to drag on and on, but needless to say Natural Selection 1 was a really well-made game with a ton of replay value. I might also add it is a great tournament game

Anyway, Natural Selection 2 is the second project and this time it isn't a free modification. These guys have investors and it is now an official game being developed by an official company that plans on releasing their game via steam as a standalone product. Using their own unique engine too!

If you want to be a part of their community (which has been around for a very long time) head over to their website (or just click here). Their alpha is supposedly going to be coming out soon, so if you want to experience it go ahead and preorder their game. Or just go check out their website as their first game was amazing and I'm sure their second one will be too.

The period that I played Natural Selection 1 was one of the most fun periods of online gaming that I've ever had before WoW.




On a final note: Zilea part 7 has been pushed back a week because I was too busy over the weekend to really get any games frapsed.