One upon a time (well, about two years ago), in a land far, far away (well, Korea) duelling was the cool thing to do. Before 3v3 was the standard for competitive PvP and before WoW players had even heard the letters ESL, they had duels. Back then, we basically had two kinds of PvP movie: battlegrounds or duels. Sometimes we had both and, in the words of Monty Python, that were luxury.

Since the launch of The Burning Crusade, things have changed considerably. Duels were still featured in movies, but more and more the competitive scene started to view them as filler, much as they became filler in day-to-day WoW “life”. If someone beat a world famous player then fair enough, it was worth watching, otherwise it was rather frowned upon. The hardcore wanted arena action, preferably 3v3 and preferably against the best of the best.

To put it bluntly, duelling – at least outside of Korea – became a non-entity. Desperate movie makers tried all manner of varying backdrops and settings (Zangarmarsh mushroom duels, anyone?) to get over the fact. After all, duels are the easiest footage to fraps if you want to put together a movie. But by the time WoTLK came out, nobody really cared any more.

And yes, I’ll say it: it was Blizzard’s fault. As Serennia recently mentioned in his blog recently, “No one wants to watch people spam dps, cooldowns, and "WotLK" the other team.”

Granted, duelling was never balanced, and Blizzard never pretended that it was. I was a warrior in Vanilla and a warlock in TBC so I understand both sides of the scale. But the classes in between at least had a fighting chance and it could be entertaining to watch. Hell, Orangemarmalade made an entire movie of pure mage vs warlock duels and it was vastly more watchable than the duelling movies of today. Counterspell into Spellstealing a Fel Dom compared to ret paladins three-shotting a rogue? It doesn’t even bare comparison in terms of skill and entertainment value.

Butnow ESL is taking a leaf out of GOM TV’s book and trying to make duelling popular in the West again. After watching Flyn’s duels last night I’m still unconvinced. The series against Another was certainly exciting, but Flyn vs Inflame was mind numbingly boring, even before the e-thugs spoilt it. Maybe Inflame might have had a chance as affliction, but as destruction he was helpless in true WoTLK fashion.

Both Matt and Jay defended duelling as a good starting point for people who want to get into WoW due to its inherent simplicity (two health bars vs six). That may be, but in terms of entertainment, last night’s experiment proved that it can be very hit-and-miss. For starters, a third of pro players are already exempt from competition by virtue of playing a healing class. Nobody wants to watch a rogue kill himself via Thorns. But the alternative is basically WoTLK’s undisputed duelling champion, the Mage against whoever feels like getting beat.

What do you guys think? Am I just being cynical? Will duelling become more than just something to do outside Orgrimmar while you queue for arenas? For me, it’s still too early to say but I worry that too few classes can compete to make it more than a sideshow.