Blizzard Wants to Make WoW PvP More "eSport Friendly"

[Steven Bogos]

Blizzard Wants to Make WoW PvP More "eSport Friendly"

Blizzard admits that currently, World of Warcraft's 3v3 Arena PVP is pretty "hard to watch."

If you were to rattle off a list of popular eSports, Blizzard's StarCraft, Warcraft, and more recently, Hearthstone would probably be pretty high up there. But why is it that World of Warcraft's competitive 3v3 Arena mode never took off? Turns out, it's just not really that interesting to watch, a problem that Blizzard knows about, and is working towards fixing.

"I can definitely say that WoW 3v3 Arena right now is kind of hard to watch, in the form that it is," Blizzard eSports head Kim Phan told PCGamesN [http://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/blizzard-on-world-of-warcraft-pvp-as-an-esport-its-kind-of-hard-to-watch]. "And so there are things that we want to evaluate." He explained that the biggest problem is that World of Warcraft is closing in on its tenth birthday, meaning that the game launched long before the current eSports craze, spearheaded by StarCraft II and League of Legends, really exploded.

"We knew there was a competitive element to World of Warcraft, and then it just kind of blew up from there," said Phan, "But it is taking a game that was out before all of this happened, and then figuring out how to enhance it and support it."

He said that the complexity of the title, with all the minute variants in gear and skills individual players can have, along with the game's third person perspective and lack of a proper spectator mode, make the game an absolute mess to keep track of.

In Warlords of Dreanor, there will be tools to make organizing tournaments easier for people, but Phan isn't even sure that the traditional PvP battles is where WoW's eSport future lies.

"People enjoy watching live raids at BlizzCon. What makes something an eSport really depends on what people want to see. We are taking a close look into how we can better support eSports."

He makes a point. Watching high-level guilds raid is a lot more entertaining than watching 3v3 arena matches.

Source: PCGamesN [http://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/blizzard-on-world-of-warcraft-pvp-as-an-esport-its-kind-of-hard-to-watch]

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[Max_imus]

It is indeed more fun to watch a raid. Guess what? That's what the game was built for. Organized PvP was added because of popular demand, and that's fine, but it has hindered proper balancing since its implementation. So how about it Blizzard, put some of your newly free Titan resources into developing a proper PvP system so pure PvE chars never get nerfed because of PvP balancing again?

Ah, one can hope, I guess...

 

[Jandau]

I'm not holding my breath. If Blizzard had any idea on how to make PvP fun and interesting, they would have done so long before now. They came close with the original 3 battlegrounds and early Arena, but since then they've been missing the point.

First of all, arena matches are boring as shit to watch. It's sterile, bland, uninteresting. The environment is too controlled, there are very limited points of actual decision making. Sure, it makes for a balanced fight, but that isn't helping you turn it into an e-sport.

If competitive battlegrounds were more of a thing, that might be a bit more interesting to watch, since that would essentially make it a 3rd person MOBA (i.e. Smite), but Arenas aren't going to be popular viewing as they lack the strategic element.

But hey, you do your best Blizz, watching you fail because you don't understand what you're trying to accomplish is even more fun than watching you succeed...

 

[Alfador_VII]

Blizzard are good at making eSports games, but less good at planning ahead and making good spectator tools, so this is fairly typical for them

Starcraft and Brood War had terrible spectator tools at launch, and even SC2 relies to a large extent on fan-made addons for most tournaments. And it still manages to be one of the most popular eSports games in the world.

And then there's Hearthstone, which still has no replay mode, (or even a combat log) and no Specator mode at all, but it also has some popularity

 

[Draconalis]

Secondly, the real thing about esports is that there is fundamentally a level playing field. Dota2/lol everyone startys at level 1 and the same starting gold, sc, everyone has to start from scratch. WoW...well the biggest difference between two players is the gear they take into th fight..., secondly most of the skills are kind of one way.

This is very true... what if, hypothetically speaking, there were battlegrounds were you started off with gear that had no stats, and as you fought on, you used points to upgrade it at the base.

Everyone goes in being level (Whatever the current cap is), so the only difference would be class and spec.

It's very moba like, but could that work to make it more fun to watch?

In order to make it work though, I think they would have to remove the current forms of pvp, otherwise people are going to play the one that gives them the advantage.

Also, How do you reword such a system? With gear? Gear you can't use in your matches?

People don't pvp in wow for fun, that's why world pvp is so dead. No reward to it.

 

[Qitz]

I don't know how you can make 3v3 pvp any easier to understand. There's just too much stuff to have to recognize that it's not something as easy as SC2 or DOTA / LoL. I could see raiding taking off though since people like to watch high-end guilds run raids, especially Worlds First and it's easier to how well someone is doing by seeing the bosses HP, how many adds are left alive as well as the current HP of the people.

Plus people will use it as a study guide to help their own raiding, even though they use Youtube videos already if they let you fly around the battle and check it out that would be pretty awesome.

 

[VanQ]

Maybe it's about time you finished the MOBA styled battleground in Azshara, Blizz. And make it a game you commit to. Where you have to level up individually per game by killing creeps, earning class-specific, MOBA BG exclusive skills including an ultimate. Make it like old AV, where you can turn in quests for tokens and use them to buy more powerful troops/creeps and summon Ivar the Forest Lord to make a push down mid.

To make it interesting, make it a team of 20-25 players and put a mini-raid-boss in the enemy base in stead of just a command center to blow up. Basically, marry the PvP and raid aspects of the game.

Give it the same ragers/quitters-pool system for when people leave early they have to suffer the next three matches with reduced point gain and forced to play with other ragers and quitters in order to make the players commit to the BG.

I think that would be some sweet PvP to watch as covert groups of players move around to forest/lane/kill the NPC dragons. It'll give people a reason to queue tanks for the pvp.

Imagine a warlock at level 1, he has his normal toolset. At level 4 he unlocks a special ability on a long cooldown to alter their playstyle, like a huge AoE DoT or something. Then an ultimate at level 8 that has an even longer cooldown but rains down multiple Infernals from the sky or something.

Give something like this to every class in the BG to make things interesting. Maybe even make it so that players can spend tokens on upgraded BG only items so they can have a "build" like a moba.

EDIT: And make some cool shit happen with the map, like weather effects from time to time. Make the river overflow to cut off players from the other side of the map. Or a forest fire to force all players into the lanes for a short time. How about nightfall that causes a "fog of war" like state that will make warding more valuable. Cool shit like that would get me addicted.

 

[Tanklover]

I highly doubt Blizzard can do anything to fix WoW much less PvP at this point. The problem with PvP in that game is that it's constrained by two things, 1) They want it to be as easy and approachable for beginners as possible while still being somewhat "complex" which is more or less impossible and 2) They need to worry about balance because of PvE and all that stuff, you could say well they should just make two different set of skills one for PvP and one for PvE that way there won't be any balance issues, but we go back to problem #1 which is to make it easy for beginners and oh noes having more than one choice confuses those poor people . It's a shame really, and all this affects SC2 as well, I mean SC2 may as well be dead as an esports, went from being one of the most popular to now being below Hearthstone and other newer games in popularity which is just laughable.

I used to watch MLG's WoW arena matches back during WotLK expansion but it soon became extremely boring with everyone playing the flavor of the month composition, which made matches become extremely boring and drawn out. At this point there's also too many skills, I mean I don't know how much more they stupify the game at this point but man in LK I had a ton of spells I could use in PvP with my mage and rogue. Blizzard is pretty bad with esports titles because they don't know an esport needs some level of depth to be entertaining to watch but they don't have depth in their games anymore so they can be as approachable and noob friendly as possible.

 

[tzimize]

It is indeed more fun to watch a raid. Guess what? That's what the game was built for. Organized PvP was added because of popular demand, and that's fine, but it has hindered proper balancing since its implementation. So how about it Blizzard, put some of your newly free Titan resources into developing a proper PvP system so pure PvE chars never get nerfed because of PvP balancing again?

Ah, one can hope, I guess...

Why the holiest of hells they havent done this yet is beyond me. Balancing the game for both pve and pvp has forever been ruining the game for BOTH those who do pvp and those who do pve.

Just branch it off. Separate the games. As easy as that.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I hate arena's in WoW and most other MMO's that have them with a passion. Instead of promoting tactical thinking and planning they reward burst and group setups more than anything.

 

[Max_imus]

It is indeed more fun to watch a raid. Guess what? That's what the game was built for. Organized PvP was added because of popular demand, and that's fine, but it has hindered proper balancing since its implementation. So how about it Blizzard, put some of your newly free Titan resources into developing a proper PvP system so pure PvE chars never get nerfed because of PvP balancing again?

Ah, one can hope, I guess...

Why the holiest of hells they havent done this yet is beyond me. Balancing the game for both pve and pvp has forever been ruining the game for BOTH those who do pvp and those who do pve.

Just branch it off. Separate the games. As easy as that.

Pretty much, it's not like there haven't been a bunch of games out since Vanilla WoW that managed to separate PvP and PvE...

 

[briankoontz]

The biggest key to transitioning a game to being esport-friendly in my opinion is the Overlay. This is the difference in what the viewer sees between the "regular game" (the regular game UI) and what the esports producers put on the screen.

This Overlay can be hugely helpful, adding useful information that the viewer can't deduce from the game. And it makes the commentators' jobs far easier, since a lot of good information can simply be viewed by the spectator instead of having to be said to them by an already overworked commentator.

Learning how to make a great overlay is a process of understanding the game itself, understanding the game from the spectator's perspective, and understanding what the game's weaknesses are in providing information to the spectator. Feedback should be taken from spectators over time to help improve the overlay.

Many other important parts are having a good observer (camera controller), good commentators, a good league system with support from websites to give spectators a live-updated schedule and league statistics, and good players who understand their role and respect the league and the spectators.

The esport role itself is to ENHANCE the viewing experience. Anyone can watch an individual streamer producing "esports" on his stream - the point of an official esports organization is to have a great overlay, great observing and commentating, and organizing and running a league and providing a great website for spectators to follow the game "away from the game".

There's a big role in esports for WoW raiding and PvP, that has gone unfilled to this point.

 

[MHR]

I can't help but listen to this and chuckle. WoW PvP just... doesn't work that way and ever since they added arenas it's only gotten worse. It DOESN'T stay balanced. I quit WoW after arena season 1 for these very reasons because I knew exactly where it was heading. They removed old Alterac Valley, a place that wasn't balanced, but was at least interesting, and added an exceptionally lame raid race in its place and then focused on boring arenas as if putting cookie-cutter class compositions in a big box with pillars was going to stay fresh for 9 years.

I was lucky enough to be riding the crest of what was OP at the time, affliction warlock and shadow nuke support, and made gladiator rank, but at no time did I think this was exceptionally fun.

 

[ace_of_something]

Kind of silly considering they're working on Heroes of the Storm anyway. WoW doesn't have to do it all Blizzard. C'mon.
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

...huh? Blizzard already have Starcraft, Hearstone and upcoming Heroes Of The Storm as their e-sport offerings, those games are much better suited to e-sport by DESIGN.
But not WoW....3v3 Arena has never been fun to watch and never will be. PvP solo and raiding videos is where the fun is at (in terms of watching).

With the sheer number of abilities in WoW it's painful enough to watch a 1v1 duel and try to tell what both players are doing at each given moment. But to watch as a spectator 3v3 is an absolute nightmare. Pretty much the only thing you can discern are the players' positions and the occasional ability that is immediately recognizable.

Not to mention that wasn't even the biggest reason why MLG (and other hosts) stopped supporting WoW arena. It's because balance was a joke and you'd literally keep seeing the same setups over and over again. So many cheesy setups that either revolved around ending the match in the first 20 seconds with completely broken burst damage, or stretching the match out for half an hour with broken healing/tank setups.

 

[Strazdas]

Secondly, the real thing about esports is that there is fundamentally a level playing field. Dota2/lol everyone startys at level 1 and the same starting gold, sc, everyone has to start from scratch. WoW...well the biggest difference between two players is the gear they take into th fight..., secondly most of the skills are kind of one way.

wouldnt be a problem if WOW pvp was good. In Eve everyone brings their skills and wealth to the tournament. but even the richest corps get thier asses handed to them by small groups and cheap fits. why? because in eve PVP tactics and group work matter far more than your skills or items you can afford. you CAN take 1 month old chars and beat 8 year old ones with them if you are better than they are at tactics and teamwork. the fighting field is not level in Eve. smarter people win.