Guild Wars 2: An eSports Revolution to Be Ignited

Guild Wars 2: An eSports Revolution to Be Ignited By Tony Stark Tony Stark is a virtual world surfer, and enjoy this kinda life. He was a columnist of PC Gamer Taiwan ver. for 2 years before. He always tries to share his MMOGs experience and mind with everyone, sometimes it's very serious, but usually with the sense of humor. If you want to understand MMOGs more and deep, let him leading you to surf in this world!

I still remember that I watched the first live World of Warcraft arena match last month. I have to say that it was a disaster in some degrees. The opponents knew very well about each other's tactics, and healers were also very skilled, which made the first round of the match unable to end within half an hour. You may say that that's a symbol of competitiveness. But if you were in the shoes of a gamer not very familiar with World of Warcraft, you might be absorbed by the match only in the first 5-10 minutes, since there's nothing special in the competing manners after that. Only when someone lost focus first or made a mistake due to nervousness first could the match end, not to mention the fact that the televised match was time limited. The best-of-three match, formerly expected to be broadcast for 1 hour, just didn't end within half an hour in the first round (the advertising time not counted).

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You all must be very clear that Blizzard is so enthusiastic in entering the eSports field. It has not only gained reputation and benefits by means of the RTS series of StarCraft and WarCraft, but also attempted to integrate "Arena" to World of Warcraft. But its attempt has turned out to be a failure so far. Apart from the international matches at BlizzCon held for its own fans, Blizzard has failed to enter many large-scale eSports events including WCG. What's the problem on earth?

World of Warcraft is undoubtedly a classic game from the perspective of its PvE content, or we can say it displays the EverQuest style perfectly. But it encounters difficulty in the field of PvP, which's actually a common problem for Blizzard's games. Blizzard wishes players to show amazing response, hand control and concentration, which are all related to gamers' innate physical and psychological abilities (such abilities can also be slightly improved through acquired trainings). But that's not eSports' greatest appeal or greatest difference from traditional sports. Instead, its selling point lies in the appreciation of gamers' competition in tactics and strategies. It's not hard to realize this point in RTS, but hard in MMORPGs. Anyway, it's still possible to make a breakthrough. First, let me introduce you several difficult points from the perspective of World of Warcraft's current situation!

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In the arena of World of Warcraft, each class's job is fixed once its talents are determined, and the whole strategies are almost confirmed after the team is formed. If the two teams are not much different in power, what matters should be the team members' concentration, but if the two are, it's best that either of them tries its best not to be defeated. In the BlizzCon last year, one of the rules even allowed gamers to change classes before the match began, which was really amusing. Blizzard seemed to realize that it had run its full course in this aspect, and radical changes were absolutely necessary.