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EM was great but where next for WoW?
Competitive WoW reached its zenith in Hanover last week. Now we get to see whether it flies or plummets.
By Michael 'Zechs' Radford
Mar 17, 2009 15:43
Competitive WoW reached its zenith in Hanover last week. Now we get to see whether it flies or plummets.“The Extreme Masters Global Finals will be an event of paramount importance. Whether it is ruined by too much burst or takes WoW on to the next stage in its evolution, it will be worth watching. This will be a keystone tournament for the future of arena play, whichever way it goes. With so many doubting the future of competitive WoW, this is the fork in the road.
Whether or not WoW is ever going to be taken seriously as an esport is hinging on a few days in Hannover.”
This is what I wrote in my column a few weeks ago. Well, after the most exciting WoW tournament in the game’s history I think we can safely say the game took the right turn at that fork. The Extreme Masters finals in Hannover were, to quote everyone’s favourite Kazakhstani, great success!
But it was success on a level few could have predicted. Even the most hardcore, dedicated fans of WoW have to admit that the game is hard to watch. But the raw emotion and sheer excitement when Orangemarmalade won a 2v1 was tangible. This wasn’t from the player, mind you, but the crowd. It was emotion from SK (excitement/complacency) that cost them the game and emotion from the crowd (surprise/excitement) that greeted the event.
And let’s not beat around the bush here; Orangemarmalade’s moment of glory was a defining moment in WoW’s short history. It was Heaton’s smoke trick against Element or Moon’s peasant charm against Tod. It was the moment that WoW truly, undeniably arrived on the esports scene. Granted, it was a little bit harder to figure out exactly what was happening (thanks, Zom) but you just knew something special was going on.
When you sit down and realise that it wasn’t just a lucky arcane missiles crit (okay, that helped), the Korean mage’s move just gets more impressive. For those who don’t know, he actually spell-stole power word: shield from the priest when he proc-ed missile barrage, predicting the incoming dispel. That meant the priest just dispelled PW:S and left Orangemarmalade with a crit-stringing arcane missiles.
Sure, there was a little bit of luck involved; how often do all five missiles crit? Not very. But, as the saying goes, you make your own luck sometimes. How many other players in Orange’s situation would have simply given up, even with $50,000 on the line? The game was over. SK knew it, the crowd knew it – only Orange saw the tiniest of opportunities and he was rewarded for taking a chance.
After all the excitement of Germany there is one slight downside. Where does WoW go from here? The next event will almost certainly been an anti-climax in comparison. That’s not to say it will be boring, but it would take something incredible to top Orangemarmalade’s history-making endeavour.
But then again, it isn’t necessary for every event to be better than the last. What WoW really needs now is consolidation. As long as the next event (MLG) doesn’t flop miserably, then WoW is still in a good place.
The world's first weekly esports column returns next Tuesday.
Whether or not WoW is ever going to be taken seriously as an esport is hinging on a few days in Hannover.”
"The Extreme Masters finals in Hannover were, to quote everyone’s favourite Kazakhstani, great success!"
This is what I wrote in my column a few weeks ago. Well, after the most exciting WoW tournament in the game’s history I think we can safely say the game took the right turn at that fork. The Extreme Masters finals in Hannover were, to quote everyone’s favourite Kazakhstani, great success!
But it was success on a level few could have predicted. Even the most hardcore, dedicated fans of WoW have to admit that the game is hard to watch. But the raw emotion and sheer excitement when Orangemarmalade won a 2v1 was tangible. This wasn’t from the player, mind you, but the crowd. It was emotion from SK (excitement/complacency) that cost them the game and emotion from the crowd (surprise/excitement) that greeted the event.
And let’s not beat around the bush here; Orangemarmalade’s moment of glory was a defining moment in WoW’s short history. It was Heaton’s smoke trick against Element or Moon’s peasant charm against Tod. It was the moment that WoW truly, undeniably arrived on the esports scene. Granted, it was a little bit harder to figure out exactly what was happening (thanks, Zom) but you just knew something special was going on.
When you sit down and realise that it wasn’t just a lucky arcane missiles crit (okay, that helped), the Korean mage’s move just gets more impressive. For those who don’t know, he actually spell-stole power word: shield from the priest when he proc-ed missile barrage, predicting the incoming dispel. That meant the priest just dispelled PW:S and left Orangemarmalade with a crit-stringing arcane missiles.
"The game was over. Only Orange saw the tiniest of opportunities and he was rewarded for taking a chance."
Sure, there was a little bit of luck involved; how often do all five missiles crit? Not very. But, as the saying goes, you make your own luck sometimes. How many other players in Orange’s situation would have simply given up, even with $50,000 on the line? The game was over. SK knew it, the crowd knew it – only Orange saw the tiniest of opportunities and he was rewarded for taking a chance.
After all the excitement of Germany there is one slight downside. Where does WoW go from here? The next event will almost certainly been an anti-climax in comparison. That’s not to say it will be boring, but it would take something incredible to top Orangemarmalade’s history-making endeavour.
But then again, it isn’t necessary for every event to be better than the last. What WoW really needs now is consolidation. As long as the next event (MLG) doesn’t flop miserably, then WoW is still in a good place.
The world's first weekly esports column returns next Tuesday.
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Epic fail attempt.
the following 1on1 redefined the word "boring"...just 10 minutes of pillarhugging without a chance for anyone to win. a stupid defwin after a limited time made this so epic game so laughable.
just my opinion. i know im getting downrated now
it was SK's mage making a HUGE mistake and OM having luck with that missile procc and not really skilled of him. sure it was great not to give up and maybe it was his intention to pull SK's mage (goddamn, i dont know his name) into that, but it still needed a huge mistake and some kind of luck to make it happen.
exciting is when some team got 15 rounds and the other team need to win this and someone wins a 1on2/3/4 and turns the game round.
exciting is when you see moon doing some crazy shit and staffing his heroes out with
THIS are the epic esports moments, not someone making use someone else's luck.
I can understand some ppl want to play it more competitive, but daring to say that it's as much esport as wc/cs are is just blasphemy.
hillarious balance, shitty observer mode, luck based as hell, needs to much preknowledge
i didn't see it yet
On a side note a VOD of the action would be appreciated.
let's hope for 2010
the thing is, you will never see a CS player type kill in console even if he's alone against 5 players and certainly not if it's the last round. He always has a chance and it all depends on how good he will be on that last action. In that action with Orangemarmelade, how many players have tried, the same way, to kill the mage in 2v1 like this? How many succeed? I guess not much as it needed a HUGE luck to be able to kill him. If he had had no luck on that action, we would never have talked about those finals. The thing is, this impressive turn only depends on luck and not so much on skills. So if we need guys to be lucky to see some entertaining matches I guess we won't have many impressive matches a year. I've heard like 100 times "OM brings WoW to a new level" ... what new level? Does that lucky circumstances will inspire other players? Do they have learned something from that? The only thing they could have learned is that you may be very lucky and if you ever make a 5 crits shot you may win, so don't give up too fast. But does that make OM a hero? does that make WoW an entertaining game? no. I only watched the health and mana bars (when I was able to see them) dropping wondered who would drop first... oh look this one's health is low... wait.. ah he got healed i guess it's high again.
ppl that don`t play wc3 don`t like to see it either.
ppl that don`t play wow .....
cs/wc3/sc/quake all have spectator goodness with lots of come backs, amazing plays that even the untrained eye can see even if that means flick shots, a great base defense, or mid air kills. At the same time I can hop on said game afterwards and go right to the action. I can't do this in WoW but that's a whole different subject.
I put WoW in the category of competitive Guitar Hero and Halo.
you know how i came to wc3? i watched a video stream with khaldor (german shoutcaster/NGL admin) and tak3r towered some SK guy. i thought it was great and so i went to buy wc3 and tryed a few times to win vs a normal PC and then went to bnet and started towering every enemy...at least i tried :)
i came to wow by a girl friend and played it a lot and for ~2,5 years, but arena as an esport just sucks. playing and watching!
But i think that wow needs only a HLTV or something like that, where u could see the cooldowns of the players, the casting spell
first of all, yes its hard to watch and understand, since wow has so many abiliy´s that it is difficult to understand whats going on, and impossible for people that dont play the game, in the stream, the only way you can improve is this, is by offering for one match 6 possible streams, one for each player with their own kind of ui, then you will have a lot of fun watching the game, trust me there;).
now i will come to what orange did in that 2v1, first of all, he didnt intend to kill them at the start, there is an ability called incanters absorption (15% the damage you absorb you get as spelldmg, which can lead to 3k spelldmg if you spam mana shield, or get a powerword shield) he used mana shield, fireward(for incoming fireblast) to stack those spelldmg, until he was at 20% hp and 0% mana, then he used his managem gives him alot of mana to do damage again, and another 225 spelldmg which makes him a killing machine, then he saw a powerword shield he had to check if the enemy has buffs, if he would have had buffs he couldnt get it, then he spellstole it, to gain even more incanters absorption, slowed the priest to not be able to channel or cast fast heals (penance flash heal and greater heal would have been slower, and one prayer of mending wouldnt save the mage) and also make him slower to move to maybe not reach his mage partner or to let him dispell himself so he has a global cooldown where he cant heal ( Yes all those little things run through your mind in that kind of situation) after he got the shield, he counterspelled the mage in his arcane tree which makes him impossible to control the incoming damage(not usable mana shield or blink or counterspell or polymorph). then he used arcane power =20% more dmg , icy veins 20% faster cast , and casted arcane blast which result in 15% more dmg for the next arcane attack -> then he used arcane barrage which is instant and did alot of dmg -> and that arcane blast arcane barrage combo gave him a 20% chance to get a missile barrage proc -> where the luck starts, and he also got a clearcast proc 6-10% chance for his spec to get it, which gives you 30% increased chance to crit his base chance of 18% is 48% to crit with those missile barrage, thats luck too! so he had 3.2k spelldmg around that, 20% more dmg through AP, 20% faster cast through enough mana and 50% crit on the missiles to kill a mage while his priest was behind that small pillar and only would have been able to PoM or penance him, but he didnt inspect that loads of damage.
so now everybody here says that ppl in cs dont leave at 1vs5, you wanna know why? in counterstrike you always have a chance, and you can be lucky too, if you see them before they see you and you can win, but in wow its more difficult especially in this case, with equally skilled players, and the game isnt based on oh i got faster reactions this time and killed him, wow is based on overview, tactics, coordination, teamplay, reaction time and luck, these factors together show you what wow is.
now lets come to this whole analysis that wow will not be an esport, lets compare the games, in starcraft warcraft you have to practice alot to be good, the best players play the most talent rite?
in counterstrike you dont hear people playing 18hours a day like in sc wc3 to be good or?
now lets talk about wow, those guys invest nearly as much time as the best of the best from wc3 / sc , if they would play this game instead they would be good there too, we are talking about 4 years with 8hours a day or more where you play the game, if you just start playing wow you will need atleast 1-2 years to be on a decent level to play the game probably.
enough text.
Its like me watching Dota (im a wow player) i just cant understand anyting about it :(
i have no clue about wow and how it works but this description makes me understand that something really nice must have happend so really nice read!!!
Get over it already, also, it will never be balanced.