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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBornakk speaks on the whole esports thing
by Daniel Whitcomb 
May 6th 2008 at 4:00PM
So a while back, Tom Chilton talked about turning WoW into a "viable Esports platform" in an interview with Gamespy, and lots of players did not take it well. Some time later, the fire has still not died down. Darqchild of the Perenolde server posted another complaint about this the other day, expressing a belief that the creation of a 2nd rule set and the domination of the esports concept had already gone with the implementation of a Tournament server.
Bornakk replied with his own defense of Blizzard and Tom Chilton over a series of posts in the thread. First, he said that the implementation of the Isle of Queldanas in 2.4 with all its PvE quests and dungeons was proof that Blizzard still considers the PvE game. On the focus on the 3v3 Arena tournament, he said that just because they're running it doesn't mean they're neglecting other things, and said that information would be put out on new PvE content when it was available.
Finally, and here's the two comments where one really wishes he would have elaborated, he said both that they do take PvE and PvP into consideration when making class changes, and that Chilton's Esports comments have been widely misinterpreted.
On the first comment, I have to say that 2.4's testing both supports and conflicts with this idea. In their original forms, the Life Tap nerf and the water drinking change, while obvious arena-oriented, also created incredible problems for certain classes in PvE. Likewise, the Lifebloom nerf devastated PvE-oriented Tree of Life Druids while doing little to affect Restoration druid play in the arenas at all. So from a certain point of view, it's hard to believe Bornakk's comment.
From another point of view, we should remember that 2.4 was all about the progressive testing, and all of these changes were eventually either removed completely, or adjusted so that only affected Arenas. Whether they did this because of testing results on the PTR or because of community outcry is a whole other can of worms, however, so I suppose people will believe what they want to believe on Bornakk's comments.
Still, I think the biggest thing to take away from this is that once again, a blue poster is promising information on WoTLK in the near future, or at least teasing us with the prospect. Here's hoping that the rain really is coming!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, PvP, Classes, Buffs, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Markymark May 6th 2008 5:56PM
What they need to do is make world objectives impact contested areas.... that would strive for an ongoing conflict between the two faction resulting in some sort of world conflict being revived.
Druid dude May 6th 2008 6:04PM
The Global Cooldown takes WoW right out of the eSport thing entirely. What they are talking about is in some ways redefining "eSport" I guess.
LAWL May 6th 2008 6:48PM
WOW as Esport,ts what got me away of WOW and into,whatever new game of these style thats aviable and proves to bee good enough.
AOC,WAR,GW2,idk,time will tell,but wow already degraded itself enough .
Rich May 6th 2008 6:57PM
Until the arena is about skill only, its a joke to consider it for any type of E-sport. Right now, its a combination of skill, gear and group makeup which is unbalanced by class mechanics. The tourney realm is a step in the right direction by limiting the impact of gear. Some of the changes to the arena coming in 2.4.2 will help with the munchkins who like to win trade so they can show off their shiny S3 stuff.
The Arena thing is a joke really. If I want to play a death match type game, I'll go play Halo, CoD, TF2 or CS.
Fix the BG's and make world pvp more entertaining so isn't dead and suck so much. Make contested areas more contested. Give real advantages and disadvantages to controlling a zone or a local.
Harlequinné May 6th 2008 7:56PM
To be very honest, I honestly think Blizzard is doing their best to balance things out.
Think of it this way: PvP is PvE condensed in its most raw, the most extreme form. If something rears it's head in PvP first, PvE will follow, and vice versa. Holy Paladins with the old Illumination were the best single target healers in PvE and PvP. In comes the nerf bat, giving other healing classes a place in both PvP and PvE.
Warlocks were almost unstoppable in PvP and were slowly getting the prefered spots in raids. In comes the nerf bat, etc.
If a class in PvP outperforms other classes in PvP, you can count on it for it to be (ab)used in PvE and vice versa.
I'm still waiting for a Subtlety nerf, so at least "my" rogue forum can stopped getting spammed by "OMG ROUGES ARE OP, NERF!!!111ELEVEN!"
Ravenswing May 6th 2008 9:07PM
From a non-PvPers perspective: surely if you want to create an e-sport, a third generation MMO is not the place to do it unless you simply want to suck money out of people (which Blizzard do, obviously).
If you want an actual sport, surely something which relies more on players' physical skill than the balance of game mechanics is required. Age of Conan is a push in that direction, but not much. Spellbourne is more so, it would seem, requiring a degree of actual aim when fighting.
My 2 copper.
Tommii May 6th 2008 9:17PM
instead of arena they shouldve implemented random bgs maps like wsg but with different terrain. Or important citys capturable in world pvp i.e. the undead bugger off to a new city in northrend so allys and horde compete to claim lordaeron and its lands, once captured the city would have auction houses etc and even a general which dropds i dunno badges or medals. Make world pvp matter more, give it a purpose, a silly buff like hallaa has less appeal to those who like pvp.
Rather than 4 stagnant bgs they could mix things up, bring in ashara crater, put new bgs in old world again. Maybe even make npc drp medals like thrall could drop an epic or a badge tha would let ya buy something like thralls shoulders lol.
i dunno i just think arena has ruined wow by mostly killing tanks.
anyway sorry for bad english.
Bloodthorn May 7th 2008 2:42AM
as I see it, problem is they never really designed with pvp in mind, but solely pve. later they patched pvp into it because there was demand. I think blizz is also interested in the pvp/esports part because (and here I guess) that once they get it reasonably balanced, it will take a lot more care of itself than pve raiding does.
I strongly believe that a lot of the later changes to the classes are due to pvp, which as a person that almost solely enjoys pve, annoys me immensely.
I believe that blizz should simply make different rules for the turnament servers, I wouldn't care if my character played a bit different in pvp.
The implementation of resilience to separate pvp from pve was not really enough to fix the issues in this, and the current arena exploits makes them a joke. I kinda enjoyed arenas back when they were out in season 1, but when I tried again a little bit back, I quickly got tired of getting steamrolled by teams vastly outgearing and outskilling us, in the 14-1500 bracket :/
My general distrust of the whole Esports thing, as well as the way pvp seems to affect my pve, is a major reason I cancelled my account when I preordered AoC :p
bendak May 7th 2008 7:09AM
E-sport should stick to FPS and RTS games. He can say chilton's words were misinterpreted as much as he wants, but what chilton said was pretty clear. He intends to turn WoW into an e-sport... e-sport was his word, people are only using it because he said it.
I know it's often joked, but seriously... how long before something unrelated to PVP starts requiring personal rating? Blizzard started going down the wrong path when they decided to force BGers to play arena to get their gear. Some people prefer large scale PVP and shouldn't be forced into glorified duels against their own faction. Arena benefits a few classes and a few cookie cutter group make ups and the only way they'd ever make it work is to completely destroy PVE balance.... how far away are we from that?
Dean May 8th 2008 12:32PM
"PvP is a tacked-on mini-game and shouldn't be interfering with PvE."
Funny, isn't it then, that there are far more people that haved played an arena match than have ever set foot in Black Temple, or even Karazahn.
It never ceases to amaze me how people so engrosed in this game, the self-proclaimed experts, utterly fail to step back and take in the wider picture. Sure, at the top end there are probably more involved in high level raiding than high level arenas. But the numbers for either are miniscule compared to the playerbase as a whole.
For the casual player, which make up the majority of Blizzard's playerbase, arenas are very popular. And if they don't want, or don't have the time, to raid, they're one of the few things that players at 70 do. Because the barrier to entry is so much lower.
Forestkeeper May 8th 2008 2:21PM
It's Blizzard poor introduction of the Arena system that has truly tainted PvP as a whole. Before the Arena system, TBC and the change of Honor Points, PvP achievement was a measure pure dedication (just like it was in PvE). Sure "EVERY" didn't have to be the extremely elite to get the best title/gear but with enough time put in you could achieve those titles or tier sets. If you ask me I think the achievements in both PvE and PvP were pretty equal back then. And if haven't played this game at the very least of Jan 05 then your opinion holds little weight.
Basically in a nutshell the Arena system had many loop wholes that let a lot of people exploit ways of getting their gear. Blizzard tried to make changed along the way but nothing ever set in place to truly make the Arena system honorable. I'm not saying when raiding guilds farmed BT they didn't let a few slip in to just gear up easy. But how many times have you seen one of those guilds posting in trade: "WTS full 5/5 T6 5000g, pst for info". Simple answer if you don't. But on the other side of the fence every few minutes you see: "WTS 1000 arena points 750g, pst for info". Or even worse the win traders!
Blizzard screwed up a potentially good system. With all this ruckus about PvP vs PvE gear/nerfs, Blizzard is it's own kiss of death, and is only making AoC/Wars launch that much sweeter. I'm not saying those 2 mmo's will knock Blizzard off the top but Blizzard only has itself to blame for lose revenue.