StarCraft vs. Warcraft: What is the WoW community missing?
by Dawn Moore 
Jan 10th 2012 at 4:00PM
Still, being heavily invested in WoW and StarCraft has really felt like living two lives at times, especially when you consider how dramatically different they both are. And I'm not talking about the gameplay; obviously one would expect an MMORPG and an RTS to be incomparable. What I mean is that that the culture and community that surrounds these two games are distinctively different, despite the fact that the games share some of their playerbase with one another. You'd think that one game community would be pretty similar to the next, but they're not.
The whole thing has left me with a lot of questions to turn over in my mind. Is it possible that the WoW and StarCraft communities could learn from the other? Seven years in, is it even possible for the WoW community to change in any significant way at this point? And if so, is there something missing in the WoW community? To explore the idea further, I started making a list of all the things I thought the StarCraft community had that the WoW community was lacking.
A truly central community news and information hub
There are a lot of StarCraft websites out there, but TeamLiquid.net is without a doubt at the center of it all. The latest news is always available there, whether it's written up by the site's editorial staff or reposted in the forums by members. The forums are active with discussion on strategy, events, news, and juicy drama (if you're into that kind of thing). Members can also post their own blogs there, a feature that many reputable players are known to use from time to time. Finally, Liquipedia (the StarCraft community's wiki) is hosted there, as well as a comprehensive database of players who stream their gameplay.
Other groups like Zam and Curse have managed to connect content together by networking several sites together, but the goal of this networking isn't really clear to me. By allowing the sites they acquire to preserve their unique identities, the audiences of each site remain separated. In my mind, it would make much more sense if these network sites were linked together by a central forum so the community discussion was focused in one place. Granted, I'm not a web engineer, so maybe there is something I'm overlooking.
A well-populated subreddit
On any given day, I can load up the StarCraft subreddit and instantly know what the hot news in the community is. Team Liquid is great for getting information about everything, but Reddit aggregates the highlights of it all by letting users upvote posts. Reddit is also the best place to find the StarCraft community's funniest jokes and memes, giving the community a lighter side to fall back on when it needs a break from the competitive play.That said, WoW does have its own subreddit, it's just not nearly as active as it should be when you consider how huge our community is. The StarCraft subreddit runs circles around ours, and that's kind of a shame when you consider the previous point that I talked about. If the community is spread out, why not use Reddit to pull it together? I couldn't be the only person out there who wants to see more WoW memes and pictures of WoW-themed crafts that players' girlfriends made them.
Coaching
Without question, StarCraft is a competitive game, and most people who play it regularly look to get better. Players can talk about the game on forums or read guides on builds and strategy, but one popular way to get focused help in the game is through coaching. For a small fee, usually $20 to $50, you can book an hour with a coach who will analyze your play and instruct you on how to improve in the areas you're having problems with. Coaches are typically professional players who have won numerous online or LAN tournaments, though some are just high-level players with a knack for teaching.
The WoW community, in contrast, offers very little to a player seeking individualized assistance. You can find plenty of written class guides, but they're usually aimed at a general audience of readers. Players can read up and ask for help on class discussion on forums, but the quality of the responses you can get will vary from day to day. So what's a noob to do? Well, believe it or not, there actually is coaching in WoW. A player named Landsoul has been offering coaching for a couple of years now. The problem is, he only really offers coaching for DPS warriors. Every other class is pretty much out of luck.
The thing that boggles my mind most about all this is that there has been a market for this kind of thing for years. I know because having been in numerous server-first guilds, I frequently get whispered by other players looking for answers to the specific questions they have. Sometimes the answer is short and quick, but more often than not, it has to be long and involved to be correct. Not wanting to be rude, I usually try to accommodate these people, but once you add in the follow-up questions and the fact that I get a few of these whispers a week, there really is no way to manage all the extra time it takes to help people. And the thing is, these players really want to talk to someone about their problems, even if the answers they're looking for are already out there in guides an on forums. Why has no one given these players a place to go?
The ability to watch competitive play
Without question, the biggest difference between StarCraft and WoW is that StarCraft is also a spectator sport. For some reason, people love watching StarCraft, and because of this, almost every night you can sit down at your computer and watch some of the most talented StarCraft players duking it out for your entertainment. Casting and commentary from the community's experts accompany the games to keep spectators up to speed on the action. The result is an exciting, suspenseful e-sport that is so popular to watch, companies organize massive LAN tournaments where players can gather to compete in front of a live audience for cash prizes. In Korea, the game is so popular that there are a few television channels dedicated to it.
And it doesn't stop there. The fandom behind the game is so huge that it has led to things like BarCraft, organized meet-ups at local sports bars where fans can gather once a month or even once a week to have a beer and watch StarCraft on big-screen TVs as though it were just another sport. The best of the best professional players are treated like stars and paid to give endorsements to keyboards, headsets, or Dr. Pepper. You can even buy replica jerseys for your favorite player, just like you could Ichiro or Michael Jordan.
WoW doesn't even come close. The only truly competitive aspect of WoW takes place in the Arena, but lately it's been dying as a spectator sport. Blizzard is the only organization that hosts arena tournaments anymore since Major League Gaming (an organization that runs LAN tournaments for StarCraft, Call of Duty, and Halo) took WoW out of their feature line-up during the 2010 season. Even though the reason MLG canceled WoW is unrelated to viewer ratings, I happened to attend the very last tournament that showcased WoW Arena and I can't say it looked particularly promising. All the seats in the audience were empty, with the exception of me and maybe six other people who turned out to be friends or managers of the players. The day before, StarCraft fans had filled those same seats, as well as the floors and aisles.
I suspect Arena has become so unpopular to watch for two reasons. One is that Blizzard doesn't really endorse the game as a spectator sport. In StarCraft, the game's interface allows you to observe games played by other players live or as a replays. To do that in WoW, you need a special client that allows you to watch the games, and to get it you need the endorsement and support of Blizzard. That sort of stifles development of new tournaments by small organizations or fans of the game.
The second reason, and I must stress that this one is entirely my own opinion, is that Arena games don't make for a very watchable sport unless you're already into it yourself. Why? Because there is too much going on. Competitive StarCraft puts just one player against another, where as WoW Arena is balanced to be played three against three -- that's just too many players to keep up with for a casual spectator. You can't appreciate the subtlety of each maneuver when you're staring at a cluster of bodies that can run through each other.
The second reason, and I must stress that this one is entirely my own opinion, is that Arena games don't make for a very watchable sport unless you're already into it yourself. Why? Because there is too much going on. Competitive StarCraft puts just one player against another, where as WoW Arena is balanced to be played three against three -- that's just too many players to keep up with for a casual spectator. You can't appreciate the subtlety of each maneuver when you're staring at a cluster of bodies that can run through each other.
Do we even want a change?
I think I could list a few more differences, but at this point, the most pressing question on my mind is whether the WoW community even wants a change. There are probably plenty of advantages we have over the StarCraft community. Off the top of my head, having the community spread is beneficial in allowing each sub-community to control its culture and voice without any biases from outsiders. Just consider what I said earlier ... I think Arena is boring to watch, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't agree and wouldn't want me having any sort of editorial influence over a website they wanted to get information on.
What do you think? Do you want to see more from the WoW community? Is there something missing?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
djsuursoo Jan 10th 2012 4:11PM
mecha. we're missing giant mecha with cannons and missiles.
on a serious note, i'd love it if engineers could craft epic armor for themselves. a steampunk iron-man so to speak. actually if each profession got an epic weapon/armor that was only usable by the crafter...
but steampunk iron man first.
also: more engineer mounts! like at 20 the engineer can make a vespa. at 40 they make a cafe racer. also jetskis(for water travel) or a transforming go-anywhere mount that requires making all the other mounts and then combining them.
Hob Jan 10th 2012 5:21PM
Yes. Yes we are missing these things.
Harvesters for the Alliance, Goblin Shredders for the Horde.
(Fel Reaver for me...)
mibu.work1 Jan 10th 2012 5:36PM
I've been wanting a rocket boot tinkering that counts as a mount forever. Give me that and a lazer-blast glove and we'd essentially be iron-man, it's something I've wanted since I became an engineer. Honestly, I consider Goblins more Diesel-punk and gnomes more steam-punk, but it works pretty well both ways.
On that note, I'd love to see a few easter-eggs that hint at a shared universe between starcraft and warcraft. Things like Xel'naga motifed titan structures, or perhaps the ruins of a protoss cannon being salvaged by scavengers. Perhaps we could have more slithid content and have to deal with a warcraft-verse zerg rush. Aside from that, I'd say that warcraft and starcraft are actually pretty similar, and are already influencing each other pretty strongly.
Zanathos Jan 11th 2012 2:11AM
The predecessor to the current system was crafter only weapons and armor. It has some fun stuff, but a lot of problems too. Some perks (weapons) were a lot stronger than others, and some professions like engineering were really crippled. And if you were a mage who did blacksmithing for some reason...oops. Enjoy your epic 2h mace. The current system is a lot easier to balance and doesn't penalize players for odd profession choices, so I imagine it's going to stay.
Gordal Jan 11th 2012 5:50AM
Tauren Marine armour for Hunters. Still waiting for my Zergslayer tier set.
Matheus314 Jan 11th 2012 8:31AM
You mean, Zergstalker. Right?
:P
Krsnik Jan 10th 2012 4:19PM
Unfortunately, /r/wow has been broken up into even smaller sub-categories or "sub-reddits". These include /r/transmogrification, /r/wowguilds and /r/wowgoldmaking. I think that it's been split up too many times, just like how you mentioned the WoW-fansites are spread all over the place. Not sure if it's the same for /r/starcraft.
Vince Jan 10th 2012 6:34PM
There are sub reddits but they all only contain like 1% of the population of /r/starcraft .
taharistheforsaken Jan 10th 2012 4:20PM
This is a very intresting and thoughtful entry. I would like to see more like this. Blizzard is always looked around them to find ways to improve their games, but in the end they can not catch anything. so maybe as a community we could support them in this and vocalize well thought out arguements on how certain things from other games could improve this one.
laudickj Jan 10th 2012 4:25PM
I would like to add another reason as to why arena is(has) dying(died), balance. Arena hasn't been balanced in a long time, partly because of certain classes being OP, and because of PvE items being OP, AND because Blizzard refuses to do anything about it because it will hurt its precious PvE. Just look at Rogues this season with the weapons and Vial, or Lock Shaman for almost all of Cata (every season has had something wrong with it and almost every class has been OP at some point).
If Blizzard wants Arena to come back (which I think would really help WoW maintain its playerbase) it needs to do something about the balance. Thankfully the players took the initiative and started the NAO, which doesn't allow PvE items over a certain ilvl so the game is somewhat balanced, but they can't do anything about certain classes being OP.
/endrant
WorldWarMe Jan 10th 2012 4:38PM
Many high-end arena players have flocked to illegally-run private servers for just this reason. The problem is, these sites are doing everything Blizzard isn't.
PvP-specific balancing
Cash Tournaments
Diligent Policing
Focusing Balance on Competitive Play rather than Casual Play
etc.
For those reason, as much as I don't like the idea, I can't fault them as they obviously felt their concerns were falling on deaf ears enough to do this. All you need to do is go to Arenajunkies, and you'll find Ghostcrawler and balance are mere punchlines.
Bijan Jan 12th 2012 12:48AM
I don't see how a game like WoW could ever be truly balanced around competitive play when there is always content being added. New items to use, new abilities to learn, new classes to play as. And it only gets worse as there is more content. In order to have consistency and expertise at high levels, there needs to be a sort of stability to the "rules".
Holtzmann Jan 10th 2012 4:43PM
Starcraft has three "factions": Terran, Protoss and Zerg. As far as I understand it, top Starcraft players learn how to play all three. There aren't big blogs like "BigTerranButt" or "Zerg Cerebrates Union", because they aren't needed. Starcraft at its core is fairly simple: you have a number of units you can work with, and so does your opponent. Get to it. From that simple core spring a lot of different tactics and playstyles, but they are still basically variations on three different yet accessible gameplay options. There's no grind for gear and no rotations to be optimized, everything is done on the fly and games are very often 1v1, so it's easy to display "skill".
World of Warcraft players, on the other hand, aren't expected to know how to play all 10 (soon to be 11) classes and every one of their 3 specs to the top of their ability. Given the amount of commitment required to level and gear up a new character, then learn how to play it at endgame, players will obviously specialize in a class or another. That alone breaks up the community along class lines. Furthermore, healing, DPSing and tanking are very different in terms of gameplay, so there's another overlapping layer of specialization. And then there are people who do PvE only, or those who are all into PvP. More fractures. There are people who play the auction house, people who are in for the lore, people who hunt for pets and mounts, people who run old content for outfits, people who like making movies, people who go after achievements...
And then there are people who like fishing. Go figure.
A moderately skilled Starcraft player will know the build orders and basic strategies for all three races, even if just because he has to defeat them on a regular basis. A hardcore raider doesn't need to know how to defeat a Frost Mage as an Arms Warrior, because he doesn't face that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, a pet collector has no need to know what's Best In Slot for his class, and a auction house mogul can amass a fortune without having a clue who this "Deathwing" dude is. Those splits happen even within subdivisions of the game already: a DK tank can be perfectly successful without knowing the first thing about Bear Tanking, much less Shadow Priest DPS.
That's one of the reasons WoW doesn't have the same community as Starcraft. It's a game with a much, -much- broader scope. You can't have One Website To Rule Them All, because the game is made of a ton of elements that can and often are taken in separately. Starcraft, by comparison, is vastly more cohesive (even accounting for fun maps and minigames people like to create).
And that's not even opening the can of worms that is -balance-...
N-train Jan 10th 2012 5:55PM
I think another thing worth pointing out is that an RTS game like Starcraft is like football (American or restoftheworld), it's very easy to see and follow the action, even if you don't quite understand it. You can see that a single grounded siege tank blows up everything from far away, you can see forcefields and shields go up to protect units, you can see mutalisks fly in, kill a bunch of stuff, and run away all very easily just like you can see a big football player tackle or drive off a smaller one, and watch the ball move from person to person. On top of this, Mutalisks look nothing like colossi which look nothing like Thors, its easy to tell things apart and watch how they move and play.
WoW PvP, on the other hand, is an array of 6 different slightly different sized human silhouettes decked in shiny armor bouncing around eachother while other shiny things jump back and forth between them. To the unfamiliar, a priest, a warlock, and a mage look fundamentally the same, despite the fact they're radically different. I've been playing WoW for 4 years, I've got a handful of 85s and I pvp fairly regularly, and half the time I don't understand what the hell is going on in a professional PvP match, and if I didn't have people telling me that a cooldown was popped or a huge attack went down, I'd probably have no idea.
At the end of the day, my girlfriend, who has played roughly 4 Starcraft games in her life, can sit next to me and follow a professional game with some explanation from me, whereas I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to begin even explaining to her how to follow a WoW PvP battle. The fact that it is that easy brings people together, and it means even the generally uninformed can follow the game and be a part of the community.
Vince Jan 10th 2012 6:36PM
@N-train Agreed, it is kind of the same problem for games like WC3 and MOBA's (DotA, LoL, HoN). A spectator jumping in without a decent level of knowledge won't be able to really follow the game. They are simply not viewer friendly to anyone not already within the scene.
Scion Jan 11th 2012 6:56PM
I would like to correct you on a few points regarding Starcraft, as a fairly experienced player of both games. Most starcraft players only know their main race with experience. Almost every mental cue and thought is learned from experience. I hit master league as Zerg (top 2%) without knowing any build orders for the other races. I could play the other leagues at a middle-ish level (platinum) just with the Mechanics that I had acquired from playing Zerg. Most players barring Random players (Those who play all 3) and very high level professional players, don't know all that much about the other races. You are for the most part very correct about the cohesiveness of the game relative to Starcraft. I consider myself a Starcraft player, and read Team Liquid, and SCreddit, as opposed to trying to find a ZergReddit (no Idea if there is one). There is a significantly higher amount of interaction between the races, as there are only 3 and no Specs and things that make something like the difference between an arms warrior or a Fury warrior. The community is generally broken up beween the race line because you are working so hard on just improving how to play your race, similar to leveling up and hitting endgame in wow. There are also the people who stay out of the system as casuals who play customs and team games. There is also a league separation, people stop interacting with players in a lower league as much because of not being able to meet them in game.
Reapercometh Jan 12th 2012 9:53AM
If you are the holtzman i think you are i
GhostWhoWalks Jan 10th 2012 4:46PM
The guys on the show Legendary have been talking about getting pro-gaming into WoW for months now, and it always comes down to spectator modes. If Blizzard could implement a spectator mode for Rated Battlegrounds, complete with better stat tracking and camera control, and leagues for organized teams, competitive play could really explode onto the pro-gaming scene.
Chad Jan 10th 2012 9:09PM
Agreed. I can't follow PvP (see above post) but I can follow battlegrounds if there were good camera work involved or at least a 2nd screen showing progress on a map.
Shingui Jan 10th 2012 4:49PM
Hmm, am i one of the minority who absolutely hates SC2 leagues and competitive melee maps ect, and just wants to play user generated custom maps, like in wc3?
Anyway. the problem i have with WoW, is the complete lack of community coming from the game recently. There is almost no motivation to actually interact with people any more, you can get all the gear you want and see all the content you want, while completely withdrawing yourself from the people you are playing with, and being a complete arsehole to everyone you come in contact with, or who wipes you in a dungeon by accident or other kinds of reasons like that.(just like to say i try to be as nice to people as i can in game, i don't ninja or speak down to people ect) We all must have come in contact with the random LFD pricks rights? the people who screams 'gogogo', get indignant and angry when something doesn't go right, and is as unpleasant to everyone he can be. And what can be done about this guy? not much. Does he get everything he wants from the dungeon eventually? probably.
It's a sad day for an MMOrpg when you can be like that and still, for all intents and purposes, finish the game progression.