Just for the record - I do not like World of Walking. I find "Lauke's Prophecy" the best video ever shot:
But at the same time, the fact that I don't like something does not make it bad for all humanity. The fact that I think baseball or gridiron or cycling are dumb and / or boring does not change the fact that a ton of people play those sports and a ton of people watch them.
I keep my personal feelings out of it and try to use logic. ESL has done the same by replacing Warcraft 3 with World of Walking in Extreme Masters III. If you disagree with this decision, then I suggest you apply logic as well.
Whether or not Warcraft 3 is adequate is not the question. You can argue forever about the qualities of the game and how good it is for competition and the spectators. You can discuss countries where it is thriving or dead, if it's producing new stars in Europe or not.
Warcraft 3 is good enough on its own. It is a great game, it has stars with interesting stories and personalities playing it and it has been a part of the Extreme Masters program for two years. But that is not the issue.
The issue is: is it better for Extreme Masters III than World of Walking?
Set aside your likes or dislikes and look at cold facts. ESL's Extreme Masters III will have three events in America that need to attract an audience. That is one third of the entire season. Hell will freeze over before you can justify holding a Warcraft 3 event in the U.S. with live spectator numbers.
World of Walking, on the other hand, with more slaves than the population of Sweden, will deliver live and online audiences bigger than WC3 can ever dream of delivering any time, anywhere. Does it matter that it is difficult to spectate for the outsiders if the number of "native" spectators surpasses what any other game could gather?
WoW is a community as good as any other and a game as competitive as any other. You need to practice a lot to win and the best team usually comes out on top in the end, just like in Warcraft 3. Why would WC3 or any other game, for that matter, get special treatment that defies logic?
Warcraft 3 was never a bad choice for ESL. But face it, World of Walking is simply a better one on all fronts.
News
World of Walking beats WC3, I'm sorry
And so, poor Wulf Franke became public enemy #1 after Warcraft 3 got ditched and World of Walking is in Extreme Masters in its stead. While reading the comments about "ESL killing WC3" I couldn't help but notice that people's hearts were talking instead of their brains.
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The fact that you think carmac's article are dumb and / or boring does not change the fact that a ton of people read them and ton of people like them.
if i could choose... wc3 would be still in!
if the facts choose and i would be in the head of esl... i would decide the way the esl did i guess :/
That aside I agree with you. WoW is an obvious choice alongside CS, as they are the most played games worldwide.
who wants my S2 warlock (pvp realm, trans open) for cheap? pm
NOOOOOOOT
And I think you should watch your behaviour in comments.
However it is still not ready to be brought into eSports. It hasn't had enough patching, the community is too childish and is not ready for a mainstream release.
I being an older Source player, love the game. But even I can admit that it is nowhere near the calibur that 1.6 or Q3/4 are.
Even if it did need to change over to Source (which it did) you still need to patch it extensively so it can be brought up, however it isn't being patched enough so...Source is making a mockery of itself.
Sry for the offtopic but I dont really care about wow or w3, world of walking is a retarded game even by mmo standards, and we all know SC > w3.
Well, actually i think it might. For one thing there is a large part of the WoW community (far from a majority, but still a considerable number) which thinks arenas have ruined the game - you know, the keyboard turning, spell-clicking PvE'ers. But still, even if 51% of WoW players refused to watch arena games live, the remaining 49% is still more than a WC3 game could ever attract, unforunately. Mob rules.
I personally would much rather watch WC3 any day of the week, but let's not forget that one tournament doesn't spell the end of a game. I don't see ESL going the way of the CPL or anything like that, but WC3 is still alive and well, it just isn't in EM any more.
No one can activate even 10% of the WoW-players to watch a stream, but if we mess around with the thought that none of those MLG-viewers uses ESL (highly hypothetical, but anyways follow me here), it would be a 30-40% increase of the user-base for the ESL.... WC3 can't give them that. Not even if they kept the game for 3 years in a row.
This was one of the most subjective articles i've read on SK so far.
Having wow in esports is much to me as having monopoly in the olympics, there's tons of people playing it, and I'm sure they all agree that both of the games are a lot of fun, but neither of the games has what it takes to be played competitively. This is my opinion, in a comment, where people should be allowed to be subjective as opposed to in articles unless there are really good arguments on why you think so, which i fail to see any in this article.
Did you actually read this article, or just the title...?
Shall we re-post the article on gameriot.com or worldofwarcraft.com and compare the comments?
not that i like it, just being logical in a business view.
but afterall, even nowadays just playing wow, i'd preffer watching wc3 matches instead of wow arena.
still remember some wc3 epic matches. that was kickass.