Greetings. Today I’d like to inform you about some great topics which have caught my attention in the last couple of days. Let me know in the comment section if this information was interesting for you or if you knew about those before because you browse these sites anyway. Let’s start out with a topic you probably haven’t read:

The Status of WoW

As some of you might know, I also write for different sites. Earlier this week I wrote an article about “The Status of WoW” for complexitygaming.com. To get an idea of what it’s about, check out this excerpt:


Is WoW a viable e-sport? How does it compare to the other big e-sports titles such as CS, SC or Wc3? The debate is still open. First of all, we have to seperate the discussion into game mechanics and whether or not the community is ready. It begs the question if an e-sport is made by the developers, or the community.

Game Mechanics

WoW is a complex game. You have different comps, with different classes, with different skill trees, with different skills each on their own. To understand what is going on in WoW using more than “this guy has low HP, now he’s dead,“ you most likely need to have played the game and for more than a couple of evenings. Players need to know every icon of every ability. They need to know what they do, what their duration and cool down is and then process that and weave it into their strategy on the fly. It’s not much different from what the game demands of a spectator if he wants to understand what’s going on in WoW 3vs3 arena. If you missed a player using an important defensive CD, you will probably be unable to anticipate what’s going to happen. This really kills the spectating experience and I’m the first one to admit that WoW is a worse e-sport from a spectator standpoint than CS for example. You want shout-casters who play at a high level themselves to narrate through the confusion and information overload that can be World of Warcraft. That is not much different from Starcraft though and if you ask Tasteless, I think he would agree.

What else makes an e-sport? A fair and competitive game. Is that given in WoW? Let me elaborate….

Basically the articles deals with the question if WoW is an e-sports, why it’s worth investing in it and what needs to improve. You can find the article here. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

SK-Gaming picks up Cohex and sends them to the IEM Asian Championship finals

Some might recall these final games of the latest season of the “The Named” tournament on GomTV. Button Bashers was 2-0 up before Cohex switched to Prot Warrior and proceeded to win the tournament.

This week, SK-gaming picked up the team as their new Asian squad. Moreover the organization announced that the team will participate in the IEM Asian Championship Finals. As far as I am informed, they have to place top 3 to earn themselves a spot in the Global Finals which will be held in early march where they would potentially meet teams like coL.Black, x6tence, the three SK teams or even our very own Team Dignitas. You can find the full news here.

Last year, the former SK Asia consisting of Hyuga, Kwana and Jaywalker (he got pretty hair bro) made it to the grand finals and where one kill away from winning it all when Orangemarmalade performed the unbelievable. They were never seen at another international event again. According to credible sources, the players stopped playing the game and are currently concentrating on their studies.

TSG is back

While some of you think of a (cheesy) cleave comp when I write TSG, initially this was the name of a team. The Champions of Blizzcon ’09 are back in business. The team around Veex, who both plays Warrior and Warlock at a very high level wants to get into the professional WoW scene again. Valrath & Veex stopped playing the game and tried their luck in Aion from which they recently returned. In his blog on Worldofming, he talks about why he decided to reunite with Zilea even though it was pretty clear that he has a hard time stomaching his behavior, about the game, gear and other interesting topics. You can check out his blog here. This really a very interesting read.

The negative impact of gold buying

Are you lazy? I am. Oh, I so am. That’s why I can understand people who buy gold because they can’t be bothered with farming endless hours for expensive items such as Battered Hilt, Wodin’s Lucky Necklace or the Dalaran Rings. Nevertheless, Blizzard recently released a site with some pretty good arguments against buying gold. Here is an excerpt:

What many people don’t realize when buying gold is the large impact it has on the game economy, and also how the companies selling gold obtain it. Our developers, in-game support, and anti-hack teams work diligently to stop the exploits these companies use and help players who have become victims of their services. We regularly track the source of the gold these companies sell, and find that an alarmingly high amount comes from hacked accounts. These are the friends, relatives, and guildmates you may know who have gone through the experience of having characters, gold, and items stripped from them after visiting a website or opening a file containing a trojan virus. Our teams work to educate players and assist them in avoiding account compromise, but the fact remains that the players themselves are often these companies’ largest target as a source for gold, which the companies then turn around and sell to other players.

This is only one of a couple of very convincing arguments. You can find the full page here. One thing they do miss out on is the terrible conditions these (often Chinese) employees have to do their job. They get paid terribly even for their local standards, the “offices” are terribly conditioned, they rarely have any free time. They are slaves.  I won’t be judgmental here as I can surely understand the appeal of buying gold. Do what you think is right.

Has the community become better at the game?

As for a last topic, I wanted to talk about a thread on the notorious Arena-junkies forums. The user “Drakklol” asks:

Has the general skill of WoW players Improved?
While the discussion is still up and running here I’d like to talk about it here.
Let’s think back of the glorious days of TBC. Many of us nostalgically raves about how good the game was back then and how the most skilled players won the tournaments. While this points is arguable, I think it’s still point out one thing: Everybody from Pandemic over Nihilum Cake to Nihilum Plasma have all been shit compared to today standards.

Now that might sound harsh as these teams were simply top notch back then and arguably way ahead of the competition at their best times. I’m just pointing out how much the game and the community has evolved.
Do yourself a favor and watch Hydra 4 for example. Remember how you drooled over this epitome of skill when you first watched it? How took those sheeps with sw:d? How he kited kids on his mount like he just doesn’t give a f*? Now watch it again. Do you still feel the same about it? You get my point. Same can be said about Neilyo movies as well. What was revolutionary back then is the bread and butter of every Rogue today.
I go as far and say:

Take a 2,4k RMP from today, put them in a time machine, send them 2 years back and let them have 2 weeks practice on the patch at that time and they will win Blizzcon.

Now the more interesting question is: Will we feel the same in a year or two about what is played at the moment?

I say yes, because and while I think that players are individually already very good, there is still things to improve on for everyone and especially in terms of team synergy. Again, I’d like to hear what you think in the comments. Yiska out.