The second day of competition at the
Major League Gaming 2009 Pro Circuit has just wrapped up, with SK Gaming leading all teams with a 5-1 record followed closely by eMazing Gaming and Europe's Ensidia with identical 4-1 slates. The entire event was streamed live through
MLG's site, as well as
GotFrag and
MMO Champion, and if you missed them there are short recaps of the matches over at GotFrag, as well as a
brief match overview. The
Arena Tournament uses a best-of-five format where no maps are played twice, which is a great concession to the fact that some team comps play better in particular maps.
Over $15,000 are at stake in the tournament, with the first place winner taking home $9,000. It's been an exciting two days so far, and even though the Rogue/Mage/Priest comp continues to exert its dominance in the format, the current environment has also opened up to relatively newer comps such as Rogue/Warlock/Shaman and Death Knight/Hunter/Paladin. Day three will see which team comes out on top and takes home the prize, with the rest of the matches in this roundrobin tournament streamed live tomorrow at 9am EST.
Tags: 2009-Pro-Circuit, eSports, GotFrag, HP, Major-League-Gaming, MLG, MMO-Champion, Pro-Gaming
Filed under: Events, PvP, Arena
Jun 6th 2009 at 10:30PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TJ Jun 6th 2009 10:42PM
I watched a few arena matches for thhe first time today, and I'd have to say that its one of the most complicated things I've seen in a while. Half the time I had no idea what was going on. Major props to the guys who can perform so well in that insane setting.
Sean Jun 6th 2009 11:36PM
Yeah this really is a game all unto itself. The mechanics of trinket/CD usage, positioning, and target switching are at this point beyond me even with the help of the excellent commentary. I think the principle thing that is keeping eSports like the WoW Arena from growing in popularity is that they are not amenable to a large audience. If a fairly competent PvE player has a hard time following these matches, how would a more casual player experience them, let alone someone who had never played the game?
Domilol Jun 7th 2009 12:06AM
And such is the failings of eSport, with sports, it's very simple at it's core, people can come in without knowing the game and pick up whats going on without two much effort, i.e two different teams, one team has to get the ball in the other teams hoop/goal.
Things like WoW, DotA etc are too hard to follow, I class my self as a fairly good PvPer and sometimes I find my self loosing track of whats going on, where as in DotA if you've never played it then you will have absolutely no idea whats going on, especially at high level play.
Fortunately, Wow and DotA seem to have a fairly large following (at least WoW players can relate, and then complain in the forums when their class doesn't do well in a tournament even they though they have no idea why) and thus sustained by their own fanbase, many games Dota and WoW don't really have the fanbase for people to do competitions with actual 5 figure payouts.
JBcani Jun 7th 2009 2:03AM
"And such is the failings of eSport, with sports, it's very simple at it's core, people can come in without knowing the game and pick up whats going on without two much effort, i.e two different teams, one team has to get the ball in the other teams hoop/goal."
-Domilol
I have to disagree with. Although the semantics of eSports are harder to follow than that of regular sports, eSports, in the case of DOTA or WoW are also relatively simple in its core, its basically "kill the other team".
Ryan Jun 7th 2009 4:50AM
"I have to disagree with."
Same. Sports and e-Sports are both easy to pick up on as far as objectives go. It's the various details and rules that take some time to pick up on, whether you're talking about NFL football or WoW arenas.
There are 22 football players on the field at any given time, and it takes some time to learn all those positions (similar to the classes of WoW). It also takes a little time to figure out what they all do (similar to a class' role).
Then you have different play calls, on offense and defense (similar to trinkets/positioning/cooldowns). And then there's the various rules/boundaries/penalties/etc (similar to having to wait to use a cooldown again, LoS mechanics, and so on).
So I would say both are pretty similar. The reason one is more popular than the other is because WoW appeals to a far smaller audience than the average joe watching the Cowboys at 1 pm on a Sunday afternoon. If it was all about the game being easy to understand, then soccer, tennis, and golf would be the three biggest sports in the US.
AMS Jun 7th 2009 12:56AM
I thought a lot or all MLG type things had folded?
Tridus Jun 7th 2009 7:56AM
A lot of them have. Not all of them.
These things live pretty much entirely by computer hardware companies sponsoring them in order to try and sell "gamer" hardware. In this economy, companies would rather spend advertising dollars on things with a wider reach.
Italyguy Jun 7th 2009 2:00AM
Why wont the stream show up for me? It keeps saying it's loading but it never does.
Btw i'm on a MAC so idk if that matters or anything.
(O)fer Jun 7th 2009 12:34PM
that stream sucks :/ its not much working in EU :( for a short time its ok than nuthin :/ maybye some lower quality woud be better but i think speed is ok but server are baaad