In the world's first and only weekly esports column, fellow SK writer Michael "Zechs" Radford brought up the topic of team leagues, stating that "Warcraft III is becoming less and less team-based with every passing week".
"If you can not compete for a play-off spot in WC3L or NGL, that media attention grinds to an inevitable halt"
His article was spurred on by the recent announcement by Serious Gaming that they would cease participation in team leagues and that they came "to the conclusion the gains no longer outweigh the costs".The last NGL Finals had a cash purse of $16,000 with $10,000 for first place. Meanwhile the WC3L Season XIII finals had 10,000 euros cash purse for top 4 finishers (only 5,000 euros for 1st place), with an additional 2,500 euros for travel expenses per team, so 20,000 euros total.
The WC3L and NGL prize money is poor considering each team has maybe four to five players and their clans can, but not always do, take a cut of their winnings. For the big teams though this is a chance to showcase their team, their sponsors and their faces.
For those organisations who are outside of the top four the only thing to be gained from team leagues is exposure, but if you can not compete for a play-off spot in WC3L or NGL, that media attention grinds to an inevitable halt.
For Serious Gaming salaries would have been the most taxing expense of supporting a Warcraft3 team. The serious gaming squad competed at international level but only really at ESWC and WCG where travel costs are paid by the relevant host of the qualifiers.
"From Serious Gaming's perspective they simply put their eggs in one too many baskets."
The World Cyber Games 2008 must have been the determining factor as Serious Gaming had four players present; RotterdaM, kowi, KiWiKaKi, and NightWolf, level with Gravitas, and none of them managed to progress to the play-offs.Given the competition in WCG this is understandable for the players but from the Serious Gaming's perspective they simply put their eggs in one too many baskets. The decision to drop all but RotterdaM and DowaQ seems logical considering RotterdaM is the most successful of the former roster and both he and DowaQ have good exposure at national qualifiers.
The same could be said for Kowi but the New Zealand scene is perhaps so isolated that with both WCG and ESWC over he would be highly unlikely to participate in any individual tournaments in the near future.
The only hope for team leagues is for spice to be added to an otherwise stale recipe, more Road of the King type tournaments which sees teams selected and travel to an offline event. However this kind of large scale one-off event is costly and given the current economic climate it is unlikely we will see events like this in the near future, even in China.
"We should fear that they could one day in the near future become a frivolity. The solution? Three M's; money, media and maps."
The WC3L have already taken a step to spice things up with the removal of antique maps Gnoll Wood, Lost Temple and Terenas Stand. In their place they have added new the map, Death Trap, and Ancient Isle into the mix for their upcoming season XV qualifiers.However the reoccurring problem of clan wars becoming longer and longer to complete due to lag, host or player issues, as well as postpones is contributing to team leagues losing their excitement. How excited can a fan be if he has to wait 3-4 hours for a match to end? This is another issue WC3L and NGL need to address to keep people interested.
Team competition is not dead, it is simply in limbo. The WC3L was instrumental in the growth of Warcraft3 as much as the NGL was instrumental in its evolution.
We should not fear the death of team leagues, instead we should fear that they could one day in the near future become a frivolity. The solution? Three M's; money, media and maps. Well, two out of three is not too bad.
Even though that is the 3rd article within a few days to the same topic that was a very good read!!
Good column though, I enjoyed it.
p.s.: gosu picture!!!
Anyways nice article :)
LOL - -
http://www.sk-gaming.com/forum/12/1104101-WC3L__WPL_now__no_
The things you say are true, however, the ones to blame are the leagues organisers and, especially, the team managers. Basically, there are several reasons why the cashprize is so poor in teamleagues, and several reasons explaining the lack of interest.
I believe, the Warcraft 3 scene could have been a lot different with better PR. The WC3L, compared to the other ESL events, just displayed a huge lack of excitement. When you have teams facing such as MTW and MYM, the clanwar deserves some hype. Be it video trailers, pre-events shows, interviews, LAN games etc. As a fan, the WC3L thrills me more than the NBA or NFL, however, the past 12 months, I totally stopped watching the WC3L clanwars, as I feel they are meaningless.
The WC3L organizers are not the only one to blame, team managers especially. Ok MYM is trying to do some stuff with their players but basically, nothing is done to communicate around the players in e-sports. Grubby, MaDFroG, Moon, Lucifer, all are very very bankable players who would have deserved PR events, showmatches in Asia and Europe to keep the star aura around them and to make their nickname a brand. Do you think fatal1ty has more fans than madfrog had ? I’m not sure… And look at frog now, what a failure of the esports business and a bad decision-making process.
2 years ago, when those top-notch players faced each other, the hype was insane, try to remember one of the first Grubby / Moon LAN Showmatch at the GGL Digital life Los Angeles, it was such a buzz! Dozens of forums threads, people trying to watch on every possible stream the clash of titans.
Now, you just connect to waaaghtv, “oh it’s Lucifer against ToD” alright I’m gonna watch, why not. Basically, the excess of the high-tier encounters in WC3 completely ruined the scene. The over-abused invite tournaments, the poorly organized online tournaments and the overall lack of professionalism in this scene. If it was to happen again in 10 years from now, god, some players would earn 10x what they get now. Hopefully, with SC2, maybe, maybe, we will see that business really begin.
I assume most of the people doing wc3 league stuff at esl are volunteers. Sure,
having a epl style match of the day for the wc3l with previews of upcoming games and reviews of played games with player interviews and whatnot would be nice, but it isn't very realistic.
I do agree that there are WAY too much invite tournaments, I made a post about that a long time ago on the forums..
Not only does It totally block new talent from coming trough, new talent which obviously exists if you look at some of the group games at this years WCG. It also gives a false sense of skill, are grubby, moon, sky & lyn really the best, or are they only the best because they participate in every tournament. There have been periods where all four have been in slumps but they still get invited anyway, which I think is very unfair to others .
The problem of course is if your going to do a wcg style tournament with qualifiers, because of the global nature of wc3 you'd have to create qualifiers in a lot of different countries. Again a lot of time & money to organize. Probably easier/cheaper to just invite grubby, moon, sky & co again (zzzZZ). I think a couple of tournaments have done several different online qualifiers, which at the moment is probably the fairest/cheapest way to create a interesting offline event.
But sadly too few tournaments use this system
It all comes down to their being not enough money in wc3 to make things more professional imho
In those days, it would be extremely hard to get replays of Korean players and Moon was like a invisible legend, whose name was only spoken in hushed whispers and even 1 replay would be impossible to find. Today a simple search would yield, hundreds of replays - and this is not necessarily a good thing.
Add to that, the fact that the euro scene is not exactly a very active one. You have the usual suspects - Grubby, ToD and the gravitas guys. But apart from them , no one is really doing anything notable on the international scene.
Flash back to 2004/2005 and you would see a surfeit of Euro players playing at the highest level - Grubby, Zeus, ToD, Creo, Madfrog, Insomnia, Elakeduck, WinNer, HeMaN, FatC, Survivor, APM70, Fire_de and a host of lesser player like Paladyn, Bjarke etc. Even USA had a thriving wc3 scene with players like Aether, Shock, Shortround, RushWizard,Ghostridah, Hazeem etc. Where has the crowd gone? This lack in diversity has made Warcraft a poor game. Sure the skill level is much much higher with the advent of Koreans into the WC3L and other team leagues, but the much needed variety is no longer there.
:P
maybe in the future we will have sc2l!
and his little wife, Miao was the one who took that pic
xD