Time: 01:26:31 CET 16:26:31 PST 19:26:31 EST 08:26:31 Seoul 07:26:31 Beijing
BLOGS
Regarding E-Sports and Olympics
The recent news about the movement to include competitive video gaming into the Olympics has inspired me to write this piece to shed some light on what I think Electronic Sports (E-Sports) is and what it isn’t. I recommend to anyone that is reading this article to please first read http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/42321
A Brief History of E-Sports and Pro-Gaming
Most roots of this mainly online culture can be found in the deathmatch style games of Quake and its sequels. We could go even further back, to games like Doom and to arcade games that had a popular, high-score obsessive culture around them, like Pac-Man. As time went by, competitive gaming grew more popular. It was helped mainly by the handful of users getting better, cheaper, and faster access to the Internet, and by a few notable video games. Games like Counter Strike, Quake III, and StarCraft, were the three main games that helped propel the genre into further popularity.
It was during these times that characters like Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel emerged as “Champions” that managed to enjoy success in several video games, not just specialize in one.
Simply put, as time went by, the scene grew more and more popular, organized, and even glamorized.
Today, many in the E-Sports community feel that it is ready to blow into the real mainstream.
The Pro-Gamer Life Style Vs. The REAL Athlete Life Style
This is the main issue that I have with this culture. It’s not the fact that the majority of online gamers that I run into are immature kids. I don’t really care, since people can willingly ignore them or find a better crowd. Its the lifestyle.
I will use Fatal1ty as an example. He has explicitly stated several times in a variety of interviews that he rigorously trains before main events in order to preform at his maximum capacity. This usually means anywhere from eight to sixteen hours per day for as much as two months before a major event. Now this sounds swell and all, and you certainly can’t fault the man for having such degree of motivation and discipline to do this, but what about other aspects?
What impact does this have on his social and physical well being? He himself has said that his social life has suffered dramatically from this lifestyle. It does not take a genius to figure our what sort of physical shape one would be if he played video games religiously like that. The long term consequences of such a lifestyle can’t be good.
This is the major difference between someone who competes in computer games, and someone who competes in a grass field. A real athlete, someone who plays traditional games like soccer, football or tennis, also spends hours training per day. And it is true, that the same someone may also have to make sacrifices in his social life to pursue his dream. But at least the prospects are much better for him. I need not mention how lucratively (over)paid professional athletes are.
Also, they benefit from being in a very good physical shape at the same time. Well, for them it is a requirement actually.
And this leads to my next point:
Competition in Video Games Do NOT Have a Place in The Olympics!
To some of us, The Olympics is a very pure and beautiful establishment that, even though sometimes tainted by controversy, stands for something noble and great. That something differs from person to person, but it usually boils down to competing for the ultimate crown of a physical sport.
Sure people can argue that sports like Archery or Curling don’t have a place in The Olympics, but even those sports have more of a physical aspect than video games ever will. The advocates of E-Sports in Olympics always bring up some brain-damaged argument about how there is a physical aspect involved, always followed by a variant of the word “technically”.
“Well u move ur arm to aim amirite?”
Or they always try to twist the spirit of The Olympics so it fits the E-Sports world. They say things like “It’s not about physical prowess, its about competition”. But we all know deep down that the Olympics IS about physical prowess. Yes, it is also about mental discipline and self control, but it has always been mainly about physical prowess: strength, dexterity, and stamina. Non of which are even remotely required in E-Sports.
Don’t Get Me Wrong...
E-Sports can have its own Olympics. They should focus on improving their already established institutes like The CPL, ESWC, or WCG.
But it should never be inserted into a competition that is mainly “physical” and has a long history of being so.
Patch 1.19 for TFT
Blizzard Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne Patch 1.19
This patch will be the final patch issued by Blizzard.
Today Blizzard Entertainment announced the release of their new and final patch. There changes are quite surprising to say the least.
Here is what they had to say about the Undead race:
"We at Blizzard always had a special place for the Undead race, because Undead is essentially The Zerg, and we love Zergs. In fact, most of us have named our kids after Zerg units. So we gave the race some new buffs"
Undead:
- All units in the Undead race now come with level 3 Death Coil and level 3 Frost Nova by default.
- Zergling..err..Ghould HP's have been buffed by 400.
- Frost Wyrms are now a tier one unit.
- Undead can now buy Book of The Dead from their shop.
- All enemy units on Blight will be dealt 30 damage per second.
- Death Knight can now coil himself.
- Unholy Aura ability for Death Knight now increases speed of friendly units by 200/400/800% and reduces enemy movement ability by the same factors.
They also announced changes for one of the classic races of Warcraft 3, The Orcs.
"We pretty much hate the Orc's. They're so green. So much more....muscular than our average employee's. To be honest, we feel intimidated. However, our hate for the Orcish race does not match our hate for one PiCori, a most retarded member of the Warcraft 3 community. Most of the buff's given to orc have been designed with...him in mind lets say."
Orc:
- Raider is a tier one unit.
- Ensnare cool down reduced to 0 seconds.
- Ensnare is auto cast.
- Raiders take 0.5 food and cost 3 gold.
- Blade Master can now create towers anywhere on the map in two seconds. This ability has a five second cool down.
- Blood lust is now un-discastable. Shamans are now a tier one unit.
It seems Blizzard has finally chosen to say something about the severe weakness of Humans.
"We at Blizzard are honestly quite shocked that after years, people still have not realized that the Human race was only included as a joke. We just don't get why you retards are playing as Human. So we're going to fix this problem for you."
Human:
- When playing a Human on ladder, you are thrown in a special game mode. Think "Where's Waldo" meets "Bounty Hunters". Essentially, you must kill 30 peons in order to win the game.
- Human units cannot attack
- As no one really uses any of the Human hero's other than the Archmage to start out with, we've removed the rest of them.
- Archmage hit points reduced to 1.
- Brilliance Aura now restores 500 mana per second on ENEMY units.
- Peon movement speed reduced to very slow.
But the most shocking is Blizzard's "Patch" for Night Elves
"The Night Elf race was a hot topic at the Blizzard Patch Meeting. In such meetings, we do large amounts of CRACK and HASHISH and some Extacy, accompanied by fat chicks with SIDEBURNS. We're just letting you know our frame of mind when we added these NE buffs.
We felt that the Night Elf race was still too weak and needed further buffing."
Night Elves:
- Wisps no longer die when they detonate.
- Detonate also does 500 damage to all enemy units within its area.
- Detonate has a 2 second cool down.
- All Night Elf units are invisible by default.
- Bears are now a tier 1 unit.
- Demon Hunter Mana Burn buffed to 30000/40000/100000000000 mana/health per strike.
- Added new ability for Demon Hunter called "Shit me an expansion". The ability instantly destroys all creeps in a given radius, places a Tree of Life, and enhances its build speed by a factor of 400 hit points per second. This ability is auto cast, without cool down, and has infinite range.
-You can't kill the Demon Hunter.
- Gold Mine's can now attack enemy units. They deal 100 damage per strike and have fast attacking speed.
- No we're not doing shit about mass Talons. But PiCoRi still can't win.
Blizzard's parting words...
"Even though this is the final patch, we might release one or two mini patches in the future, in case the Night Elf race is still too weak. Also, prize winning tournament held for this game MUST have a Night Elf player as its winner, or risk being sued for very large amounts of money. Check the EULA."
Of Imbalances and Warcraft
What This IS
This article was written to give an accurate view of the state of the Warcraft community in regards to IMBA (short for imbalance). It hopes to point out the state of mind of the average player of Warcraft and the unique gaming issues that arise only in the RTS genre.
What This ISN'T
This is not a rant written by a community member about his owns views of balance.
This article tries to be as unbiased and objective as possible.
Setting The Perspective
First of all, what is RTS? Real Time Strategy. Typically, this refers to the genre of video games in which you raise armies using various types of buildings and resources. The name however, does not represent how some of the members of the Warcraft community see the game as. Indeed, Warcraft is officially a RTS game. But to some members, it would be more appropriate if we called Warcraft a RTMW. That's Real Time Micro-management Warcraft.
The real (or in some cases sad, depending on who you are), fact is that Warcraft was designed in such way that strategy matters.
Not all strategy.
Not all micro.
Not all macro.
But a mix. However, according to the community, the problem is that the mix is far from perfect.
Complainers: The Player vs The Spectator
I should point out that there are two kinds of people that complain about the balance of Warcraft.
First we have the Player. The Player is someone who plays Warcraft and at least takes the game mildly serious. He complains about balance because it mainly affects him as a player, not because his favorite professional player is affected by them.
Second, we have the Spectator. The Spectator is someone who may not be good, or even decent at the game itself, but has sufficient understanding to point out an IMBA when he sees one. He likes watching replays of his favorite players. They complain because their particular favorite player is affected by these balance issues (regardless of the validity of the said issues).
The Spectator does not like to watch his favorite player get beaten by the same strategy every game, given that he probably wouldn't have the skill to pull of the same abusive strategy himself.
This does not make his complaints void. He has a right, as a spectator and member of the community to voice his frustration that no apparent counter exists. A suitable example for this would be the WEG Season I Finals between Moon[One] and SK.Zacard. Many of Zacard's fans were frustrated that no matter what Zacard tried to do, he could not effectively take care of mass DoTT's due to the severe vulnerability of the Spirit Walker as a counter unit.
The Spectator does not like to be disappointed. When a particular match up is hyped up, he naturally expects a true battle of the gods. So it is understandable that when the game is plagued by balance abuse, the Spectator would be frustrated.
The Player on the other hand does not like to lose to those balance issues. He's in it for himself.
Both sides have valid claims. So why does Blizzard not listen?
This I cannot answer in this article. Why? Because it would first of all loosen the focus of this piece, and secondly, it would have to be my own opinion of the situation. I would not be able to resist making a few sarcastic jokes about the community and Blizzard.
So until next time, I hope you have enjoyed this article. I hope that you see why telling someone "If you always whine about IMBA, why don't you switch to X race?" doesn't always make sense.
By Sina 'SwordSaint'
Jun 2, 2006 03:19
The recent news about the movement to include competitive video gaming into the Olympics has inspired me to write this piece to shed some light on what I think Electronic Sports (E-Sports) is and what it isn’t. I recommend to anyone that is reading this article to please first read http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/42321
A Brief History of E-Sports and Pro-Gaming
Most roots of this mainly online culture can be found in the deathmatch style games of Quake and its sequels. We could go even further back, to games like Doom and to arcade games that had a popular, high-score obsessive culture around them, like Pac-Man. As time went by, competitive gaming grew more popular. It was helped mainly by the handful of users getting better, cheaper, and faster access to the Internet, and by a few notable video games. Games like Counter Strike, Quake III, and StarCraft, were the three main games that helped propel the genre into further popularity.
It was during these times that characters like Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel emerged as “Champions” that managed to enjoy success in several video games, not just specialize in one.
Simply put, as time went by, the scene grew more and more popular, organized, and even glamorized.
Today, many in the E-Sports community feel that it is ready to blow into the real mainstream.
The Pro-Gamer Life Style Vs. The REAL Athlete Life Style
This is the main issue that I have with this culture. It’s not the fact that the majority of online gamers that I run into are immature kids. I don’t really care, since people can willingly ignore them or find a better crowd. Its the lifestyle.
I will use Fatal1ty as an example. He has explicitly stated several times in a variety of interviews that he rigorously trains before main events in order to preform at his maximum capacity. This usually means anywhere from eight to sixteen hours per day for as much as two months before a major event. Now this sounds swell and all, and you certainly can’t fault the man for having such degree of motivation and discipline to do this, but what about other aspects?
What impact does this have on his social and physical well being? He himself has said that his social life has suffered dramatically from this lifestyle. It does not take a genius to figure our what sort of physical shape one would be if he played video games religiously like that. The long term consequences of such a lifestyle can’t be good.
This is the major difference between someone who competes in computer games, and someone who competes in a grass field. A real athlete, someone who plays traditional games like soccer, football or tennis, also spends hours training per day. And it is true, that the same someone may also have to make sacrifices in his social life to pursue his dream. But at least the prospects are much better for him. I need not mention how lucratively (over)paid professional athletes are.
Also, they benefit from being in a very good physical shape at the same time. Well, for them it is a requirement actually.
And this leads to my next point:
Competition in Video Games Do NOT Have a Place in The Olympics!
To some of us, The Olympics is a very pure and beautiful establishment that, even though sometimes tainted by controversy, stands for something noble and great. That something differs from person to person, but it usually boils down to competing for the ultimate crown of a physical sport.
Sure people can argue that sports like Archery or Curling don’t have a place in The Olympics, but even those sports have more of a physical aspect than video games ever will. The advocates of E-Sports in Olympics always bring up some brain-damaged argument about how there is a physical aspect involved, always followed by a variant of the word “technically”.
“Well u move ur arm to aim amirite?”
Or they always try to twist the spirit of The Olympics so it fits the E-Sports world. They say things like “It’s not about physical prowess, its about competition”. But we all know deep down that the Olympics IS about physical prowess. Yes, it is also about mental discipline and self control, but it has always been mainly about physical prowess: strength, dexterity, and stamina. Non of which are even remotely required in E-Sports.
Don’t Get Me Wrong...
E-Sports can have its own Olympics. They should focus on improving their already established institutes like The CPL, ESWC, or WCG.
But it should never be inserted into a competition that is mainly “physical” and has a long history of being so.
Patch 1.19 for TFT
By Sina 'SwordSaint'
Sep 10, 2005 08:31
Blizzard Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne Patch 1.19
This patch will be the final patch issued by Blizzard.
Today Blizzard Entertainment announced the release of their new and final patch. There changes are quite surprising to say the least.
Here is what they had to say about the Undead race:
"We at Blizzard always had a special place for the Undead race, because Undead is essentially The Zerg, and we love Zergs. In fact, most of us have named our kids after Zerg units. So we gave the race some new buffs"
Undead:
- All units in the Undead race now come with level 3 Death Coil and level 3 Frost Nova by default.
- Zergling..err..Ghould HP's have been buffed by 400.
- Frost Wyrms are now a tier one unit.
- Undead can now buy Book of The Dead from their shop.
- All enemy units on Blight will be dealt 30 damage per second.
- Death Knight can now coil himself.
- Unholy Aura ability for Death Knight now increases speed of friendly units by 200/400/800% and reduces enemy movement ability by the same factors.
They also announced changes for one of the classic races of Warcraft 3, The Orcs.
"We pretty much hate the Orc's. They're so green. So much more....muscular than our average employee's. To be honest, we feel intimidated. However, our hate for the Orcish race does not match our hate for one PiCori, a most retarded member of the Warcraft 3 community. Most of the buff's given to orc have been designed with...him in mind lets say."
Orc:
- Raider is a tier one unit.
- Ensnare cool down reduced to 0 seconds.
- Ensnare is auto cast.
- Raiders take 0.5 food and cost 3 gold.
- Blade Master can now create towers anywhere on the map in two seconds. This ability has a five second cool down.
- Blood lust is now un-discastable. Shamans are now a tier one unit.
It seems Blizzard has finally chosen to say something about the severe weakness of Humans.
"We at Blizzard are honestly quite shocked that after years, people still have not realized that the Human race was only included as a joke. We just don't get why you retards are playing as Human. So we're going to fix this problem for you."
Human:
- When playing a Human on ladder, you are thrown in a special game mode. Think "Where's Waldo" meets "Bounty Hunters". Essentially, you must kill 30 peons in order to win the game.
- Human units cannot attack
- As no one really uses any of the Human hero's other than the Archmage to start out with, we've removed the rest of them.
- Archmage hit points reduced to 1.
- Brilliance Aura now restores 500 mana per second on ENEMY units.
- Peon movement speed reduced to very slow.
But the most shocking is Blizzard's "Patch" for Night Elves
"The Night Elf race was a hot topic at the Blizzard Patch Meeting. In such meetings, we do large amounts of CRACK and HASHISH and some Extacy, accompanied by fat chicks with SIDEBURNS. We're just letting you know our frame of mind when we added these NE buffs.
We felt that the Night Elf race was still too weak and needed further buffing."
Night Elves:
- Wisps no longer die when they detonate.
- Detonate also does 500 damage to all enemy units within its area.
- Detonate has a 2 second cool down.
- All Night Elf units are invisible by default.
- Bears are now a tier 1 unit.
- Demon Hunter Mana Burn buffed to 30000/40000/100000000000 mana/health per strike.
- Added new ability for Demon Hunter called "Shit me an expansion". The ability instantly destroys all creeps in a given radius, places a Tree of Life, and enhances its build speed by a factor of 400 hit points per second. This ability is auto cast, without cool down, and has infinite range.
-You can't kill the Demon Hunter.
- Gold Mine's can now attack enemy units. They deal 100 damage per strike and have fast attacking speed.
- No we're not doing shit about mass Talons. But PiCoRi still can't win.
Blizzard's parting words...
"Even though this is the final patch, we might release one or two mini patches in the future, in case the Night Elf race is still too weak. Also, prize winning tournament held for this game MUST have a Night Elf player as its winner, or risk being sued for very large amounts of money. Check the EULA."
Of Imbalances and Warcraft
By Sina 'SwordSaint'
Aug 28, 2005 03:16
What This IS
This article was written to give an accurate view of the state of the Warcraft community in regards to IMBA (short for imbalance). It hopes to point out the state of mind of the average player of Warcraft and the unique gaming issues that arise only in the RTS genre.
What This ISN'T
This is not a rant written by a community member about his owns views of balance.
This article tries to be as unbiased and objective as possible.
Setting The Perspective
First of all, what is RTS? Real Time Strategy. Typically, this refers to the genre of video games in which you raise armies using various types of buildings and resources. The name however, does not represent how some of the members of the Warcraft community see the game as. Indeed, Warcraft is officially a RTS game. But to some members, it would be more appropriate if we called Warcraft a RTMW. That's Real Time Micro-management Warcraft.
The real (or in some cases sad, depending on who you are), fact is that Warcraft was designed in such way that strategy matters.
Not all strategy.
Not all micro.
Not all macro.
But a mix. However, according to the community, the problem is that the mix is far from perfect.
Complainers: The Player vs The Spectator
I should point out that there are two kinds of people that complain about the balance of Warcraft.
First we have the Player. The Player is someone who plays Warcraft and at least takes the game mildly serious. He complains about balance because it mainly affects him as a player, not because his favorite professional player is affected by them.
Second, we have the Spectator. The Spectator is someone who may not be good, or even decent at the game itself, but has sufficient understanding to point out an IMBA when he sees one. He likes watching replays of his favorite players. They complain because their particular favorite player is affected by these balance issues (regardless of the validity of the said issues).
The Spectator does not like to watch his favorite player get beaten by the same strategy every game, given that he probably wouldn't have the skill to pull of the same abusive strategy himself.
This does not make his complaints void. He has a right, as a spectator and member of the community to voice his frustration that no apparent counter exists. A suitable example for this would be the WEG Season I Finals between Moon[One] and SK.Zacard. Many of Zacard's fans were frustrated that no matter what Zacard tried to do, he could not effectively take care of mass DoTT's due to the severe vulnerability of the Spirit Walker as a counter unit.
The Spectator does not like to be disappointed. When a particular match up is hyped up, he naturally expects a true battle of the gods. So it is understandable that when the game is plagued by balance abuse, the Spectator would be frustrated.
The Player on the other hand does not like to lose to those balance issues. He's in it for himself.
Both sides have valid claims. So why does Blizzard not listen?
This I cannot answer in this article. Why? Because it would first of all loosen the focus of this piece, and secondly, it would have to be my own opinion of the situation. I would not be able to resist making a few sarcastic jokes about the community and Blizzard.
So until next time, I hope you have enjoyed this article. I hope that you see why telling someone "If you always whine about IMBA, why don't you switch to X race?" doesn't always make sense.
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