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Star power: when players write patches
Star power can be a mixed bag in any sport. In football it can inflate transfer fees, force transfers and increase ticket prices. But in esports, it has regularly been a great help to the community.
By Michael 'Zechs' Radford
Sep 29, 2009 15:06
Star power can be a mixed bag in any sport. In football it can inflate transfer fees, force transfers and increase ticket prices. But in esports, it has regularly been a great help to the community.As orc continues to dominate Warcraft III, many trolls have pointed the finger at Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen. You can never be too sure how serious these people are, but they accuse Grubby of whining to Blizzard to patch the game when orc wasn't on top and now that they are, he supposedly tells them to keep things as they are. One highly successful player having that much power over a company like Blizzard seems a little silly but there are precedents.
The Grubby situation is a little far-fetched but players can and do have an affect on the games the play. Even the mighty Blizzard have been involved in borrowing ideas from the community on numerous occasions. The most high profile of them involved former-SK player, Vance 'Serennia' Phuoc.
Serennia Writes 3.0.9 Patch Notes
A few weeks before patch 3.0.9, Serennia released this blog. Many of the ideas for changes had been floating around the community for a while – some were blatantly obvious. But Serennia is arguably the most well known player in the WoW community. The fact that about half of the deathknight changes in that patch seemed to be copy-pasted from his blog feels like too much of a coincidence, given his fame and stature.
Indeed, it is fairly common knowledge that Blizzard does talk to the top arena players and has talked to top PvE guilds for years. After the Blizzcon regional finals, Joe 'Enforcer' Morrone told me that they had been talking to Tom Chilton at the event. Was the Serennia incident a case of Blizzard lacking direction, pandering to the community, or simply taking on good advice? I’ll leave that up to you to decide but when pros talk, developers listen.
Shaguar changes CS Forever
Given the way Valve screwed up Counter-Strike with the recent sound changes, CS fans are probably glad that the game was left alone for so long. As the saying goes, no news is good news. But time was when Valve actually did change their flagship game for the better.
In this now legendary article over at GotForums, former zEx and 3D star, Shaguar talked about the counter-intuitive money system that punished Counter-Terrorists for winning rounds if the T’s camped out the timer. As he rightly stated, the old system was designed for cs_maps like Italy and Militia. Although he did sound a little bit whiny and bitter about NoA’s loss to SK in the CPL Winter 2003 final the fact remains that he had a point. CS was slow, painfully slow.
Again, Shaguar was one of the biggest names in CS at the time. His team had just finished second behind the most successful CS squad of all time and people listened to what he had to say – including Valve. It wasn’t long before Valve switched things up and the money system as we know it today was introduced to the game. Terrorist eco camping was destroyed forever and CS was exponentially speeded up thanks to Shaguar, the community and, surprisingly, Valve.
bds Introduces Configging to the World
Okay, config-tweaking in online games wasn’t entirely new back in 2001, but SK’s own Andreas Thorstensson introduced it to a whole new audience when he explained the netcode to thousands of wannabe net heroes back in 2001. But surely, I hear you say, introducing things like ex_interp abuse to a “win at all costs” community isn’t a good thing, is it?
Well, actually it is. If bds hadn’t written what he wrote, leagues and tournaments might never have known that such abuses existed. When you consider that about 75% of competitive CS was played online in 2001, simply looking over a player’s shoulder to make sure he wasn’t cheating was not an option. Bds’s article gave admins something to look out for other than the obvious wallhacks and aimbots.
But more than that, he gave players knowledge about reducing lag that they never knew before. Playing with cl_updaterate 20 seems laughable to most people today but in 2001 hardly anyone knew about it. It helped to make online play as close to LAN as possible and most of the commands listed in bds’s article are now commonplace.
Sometimes They Listen
Undoubtedly there are more examples of developers listening to top players but we could be here all day. The point is that sometimes, just sometimes, the likes of Valve and Blizzard do hear what their communities have to say. So far, star power has been a boon for esports, rather than burden it so often is elsewhere. Hopefully it stays that way.
The Grubby situation is a little far-fetched but players can and do have an affect on the games the play. Even the mighty Blizzard have been involved in borrowing ideas from the community on numerous occasions. The most high profile of them involved former-SK player, Vance 'Serennia' Phuoc.
Serennia Writes 3.0.9 Patch Notes
A few weeks before patch 3.0.9, Serennia released this blog. Many of the ideas for changes had been floating around the community for a while – some were blatantly obvious. But Serennia is arguably the most well known player in the WoW community. The fact that about half of the deathknight changes in that patch seemed to be copy-pasted from his blog feels like too much of a coincidence, given his fame and stature.
"The fact that half the deathknight changes in that patch seemed to be copy-pasted from his blog feels like too much of a coincidence."
Indeed, it is fairly common knowledge that Blizzard does talk to the top arena players and has talked to top PvE guilds for years. After the Blizzcon regional finals, Joe 'Enforcer' Morrone told me that they had been talking to Tom Chilton at the event. Was the Serennia incident a case of Blizzard lacking direction, pandering to the community, or simply taking on good advice? I’ll leave that up to you to decide but when pros talk, developers listen.
Shaguar changes CS Forever
Given the way Valve screwed up Counter-Strike with the recent sound changes, CS fans are probably glad that the game was left alone for so long. As the saying goes, no news is good news. But time was when Valve actually did change their flagship game for the better.
In this now legendary article over at GotForums, former zEx and 3D star, Shaguar talked about the counter-intuitive money system that punished Counter-Terrorists for winning rounds if the T’s camped out the timer. As he rightly stated, the old system was designed for cs_maps like Italy and Militia. Although he did sound a little bit whiny and bitter about NoA’s loss to SK in the CPL Winter 2003 final the fact remains that he had a point. CS was slow, painfully slow.
"Given the way Valve screwed up Counter-Strike with the recent sound changes, CS fans are probably glad that the game was left alone for so long."
Again, Shaguar was one of the biggest names in CS at the time. His team had just finished second behind the most successful CS squad of all time and people listened to what he had to say – including Valve. It wasn’t long before Valve switched things up and the money system as we know it today was introduced to the game. Terrorist eco camping was destroyed forever and CS was exponentially speeded up thanks to Shaguar, the community and, surprisingly, Valve.
bds Introduces Configging to the World
Okay, config-tweaking in online games wasn’t entirely new back in 2001, but SK’s own Andreas Thorstensson introduced it to a whole new audience when he explained the netcode to thousands of wannabe net heroes back in 2001. But surely, I hear you say, introducing things like ex_interp abuse to a “win at all costs” community isn’t a good thing, is it?
Well, actually it is. If bds hadn’t written what he wrote, leagues and tournaments might never have known that such abuses existed. When you consider that about 75% of competitive CS was played online in 2001, simply looking over a player’s shoulder to make sure he wasn’t cheating was not an option. Bds’s article gave admins something to look out for other than the obvious wallhacks and aimbots.
"But surely, I hear you say, introducing things like ex_interp abuse to a “win at all costs” community isn’t a good thing, is it?"
But more than that, he gave players knowledge about reducing lag that they never knew before. Playing with cl_updaterate 20 seems laughable to most people today but in 2001 hardly anyone knew about it. It helped to make online play as close to LAN as possible and most of the commands listed in bds’s article are now commonplace.
Sometimes They Listen
Undoubtedly there are more examples of developers listening to top players but we could be here all day. The point is that sometimes, just sometimes, the likes of Valve and Blizzard do hear what their communities have to say. So far, star power has been a boon for esports, rather than burden it so often is elsewhere. Hopefully it stays that way.
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that is just untrue man. in 2001 there were years of quake and fine-tuned configs, including netcode behind us. even back then when i knew very little about e-sports or CS i knew about the difference that LAN rates settings make, and so did almost everyone who was at least a bit serious about the game.
ofcourse i read bds' article in one breath and found out about many new things but this is how i remember it.
I think that one of the biggest retarted writer ever seen shouldn't critize one of the legends of warcraft 3.
And sorry for the flaming, but realy, you don't know what you are writing about, HOW THE FUCK do you even know that grubby might have contacted blizzard.
Big big big big big bullshit.
...rather than a burden. is probably what you were going for :)
What you have noticed in this article, is that these profilic persons are also gatekeepers to outsiders from the community, and herein lies the real flaw. Why are Blizzard and Valve not a part of the communities that have risen around their titles? (Blizzard is very interactive with their community, and granted they ARE listening - in a wide extent - to the community's wishes. It was merely to not exlude the Grubby-case from my argument).
Starplayers can never influence game-developement unless they are broadcasting (atleast in part) the wishes of the entire community. So I would be far less worried if I knew that the likes of Blizzard and Valve were ALWAYS listening to the Starplayers, in comparison to that they would totally neglect them.