Limit's WF kill is almost the same ilevel as guilds downing it 2 resets after

[Toybox]

Why is it Blizzard's job to officiate the race? They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. The race has already proven to garner hundreds of thousands of viewers without Blizzard's intervention. It's unlikely this is going to get much higher even if they add official rules or attempt to legitimize the race. There won't be Olympic fucking stadiums full of people ready to watch 40+ WoW players no-life a raid instance for two weeks. Like I said, the silly nationalism is part of what fuels those hundreds and thousands of viewers currently. The only people who benefit from Blizzard intervening are the players participating in the RWF (kek) and smug forum posters who want to pretend there's more than simple nationalistic bias guiding their opinions about how the race is played out.

I never said it was. Given their track record, I'd trust Blizzard with esports just as much as I'd trust a toddler with a pistol.

That said, the first Dota TI was played at Gamescom to like dozens of people, & now TI boasts $30m+ prizepools & viewership second only to League outside of China. Of course I'm not saying I think WoW will get anywhere near that big (or that it'll grow much bigger than it currently is), but Blizzard could 100% step in & possibly make it better, or, more likely, make it worse. Not a salty Starcraft/WC3 fan, by the way...

Easiest & best thing Blizzard could do at little to no expense is global release. Side by side views of guilds progressing the same boss at the same time with similar farm time leading up to it would be pretty cool I've no idea about all that nationalistic stuff regarding WoW, but I can probably put a picture together from having watched other esports.

[otaXephon]

I never said it was. Given their track record, I'd trust Blizzard with esports just as much as I'd trust a toddler with a pistol.

That said, the first Dota TI was played at Gamescom to like dozens of people, & now TI boasts $30m+ prizepools & viewership second only to League outside of China. Of course I'm not saying I think WoW will get anywhere near that big (or that it'll grow much bigger than it currently is), but Blizzard could 100% step in & possibly make it better, or, more likely, make it worse. Not a salty Starcraft/WC3 fan, by the way...

Easiest & best thing Blizzard could do at little to no expense is global release. Side by side views of guilds progressing the same boss at the same time with similar farm time leading up to it would be pretty cool I've no idea about all that nationalistic stuff regarding WoW, but I can probably put a picture together from having watched other esports.

"Global release" is not as easy as people on forums make it seem. It would require changing the way lockouts work for an entire region just so less than two dozen players can have a "fair" race. It'd also be seen as an intervention on Blizzard's part so should anything negative happen afterward, people will look at the precedent set by changing the start of the race and say, "well, you already did global release... now you need to do {x}, {y} and {z}." (Yes, I understand this is a bit of a slippery slope fallacy but it's not unreasonable to think that this is exactly how it'd play out.) Not to mention the negative impacts a global release will have on sleep schedules and the like. Sure, the players can likely adapt to it without issue but since this "fair race" is supported by fans, those same fans will suddenly move the goal post from "unfair raid release" to "unfair sleep schedule" the second things don't go the way they want. That said, I agree with all of the positive benefits of a global release; I just can't realistically see Blizzard doing it any time soon.

[Cracked]

"Global release" is not as easy as people on forums make it seem. It would require changing the way lockouts work for an entire region just so less than two dozen players can have a "fair" race. It'd also be seen as an intervention on Blizzard's part so should anything negative happen afterward, people will look at the precedent set by changing the start of the race and say, "well, you already did global release... now you need to do {x}, {y} and {z}." (Yes, I understand this is a bit of a slippery slope fallacy but it's not unreasonable to think that this is exactly how it'd play out.) Not to mention the negative impacts a global release will have on sleep schedules and the like. Sure, the players can likely adapt to it without issue but since this "fair race" is supported by fans, those same fans will suddenly move the goal post from "unfair raid release" to "unfair sleep schedule" the second things don't go the way they want. That said, I agree with all of the positive benefits of a global release; I just can't realistically see Blizzard doing it any time soon.

It's not without problems, but all participants already said they can adjust their cycles to whatever the global release would be. And to be quite fair, I would argue it would be logistically easier for Blizzard in the long run too. The most likely time would be something like 2 am reset for US == 9 am for EU, if they insist on the "overnight" / morning reset times.

[ClassicPeon]

So it's okay for WoW to suddenly "evolve" into a real eSport, magically, 16 years after its inception because angry WoW players on forums don't understand the difference between a playful competitive rivalry and outright nationalism?

K.

What in the world are you talking about lol. How the fuck does someone come to a conclusion like that. Thats literally the funniest thing i've seen this week

I'm talking about the "angry nationalistic wow players" btw

But yes. Ofc its ok for wow to evolve into an esport. Why wouldnt it be

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I think Blizzard already gets what they want from the WF race without having to do anything. So why do something? End of the day it's just a few dozen people that participate in the event and most the fandom seems more obsessed with what side of the atlantic the players are on more than anything else. It also was never a problem before. Just seems like once Europe started taking L's suddenly the rules neex to change, whole regions need reset days changed, people working jobs at Blizzard have to shift work schedules? Seems a little much for what is in essence a 6 week a year thing. The better solution is to just have compitition realms these guilds can access. Copy characters over to. Have one for each region. Stage a sync release between these 2 special realms. No more fan feeding BoEs. No more time difference. Just pure guild on guild. Also no one else really has to do anything or change. This is what they already do for PvP and M+ competitions. Just makes sense.

[Selvari7]

So it's okay for WoW to suddenly "evolve" into a real eSport, magically, 16 years after its inception because angry WoW players on forums don't understand the difference between a playful competitive rivalry and outright nationalism?

K.

Do you not want the game to be successful?

[otaXephon]

What in the world are you talking about lol. How the fuck does someone come to a conclusion like that. Thats literally the funniest thing i've seen this week

I'm talking about the "angry nationalistic wow players" btw

But yes. Ofc its ok for wow to evolve into an esport. Why wouldnt it be

Do you not want the game to be successful?

I'm going to address both of these as they're extremely loaded questions and I already talked about it in my replies on the last page.

To start off, I have to admit that my controversial opinion about the RWF has not won me a lot of fans on this forum. And that's fine -- I don't expect nor do I demand everybody to agree with me but it should be known that I'm firmly in the camp of "Why fix what's not broken?" That said, this idea that WoW would be more successful with a Blizzard-officiated RWF is a bit of a questionable position. If all you do is post on forums and see the extremely passionate things that people on forums say, you'd be convinced that the RWF is on par with something like the World Cup. But for most people (and most WoW players), I think it represents a window every some-odd 6-8 months where they know they can tune in and root for their favorite team. This is where my opinion will become even more controversial but I personally don't think a lot of these casual viewers of the RWF even care all that much about the guilds they're watching so much as they do the region each guild represents. (See: How Echo -- a brand new organization built in the last 6 months -- had the same viewership as Method did in prior races.) And as I said in my previous posts, there's also the very real fact that these inherent biases from fans of the RWF are part of the reason there's so much hype surrounding it. It's a double-edged sword in that the guilds in the RWF want to present an outward appearance of supporting a "global release" for the sake of competition while in the same breath needing to acknowledge such a move would eliminate some of hype surrounding the event.

This idea that Blizzard can move the RWF into an eSports arena isn't exactly new but because of the exposure on twitch for the last few races has gained a lot of traction lately. But frankly, unlike most actual eSports, the RWF simply isn't entertaining enough to justify the expenditure the eSportsification of the RWF would require. (The MDI, on the other hand, which is officiated by Blizzard, is far better suited for such a thing which is why I think we'll see this becoming the de facto PvE "eSports" event in the coming years.) There are some high highs in the RWF (when two guilds are at similar percentage points on a boss) but there are also some low lows (when the guild decides to do splits for their 3rd alts). Moving the race to the tournament realm would require a qualification which simply doesn't exist right now (unless we simply agree that the RWF is a two-horse race) and changing the way maintenance works (and has worked for 16+ years) just doesn't seem to be a likely move on Blizzard's part.

Add onto this the fact that the game is already more successful today than it has been at several points in the past and I just don't see how an official RWF is going to have a huge long term impact on the game's popularity. The race is plenty successful without Blizzard intervention and provides a metric fuckton of zero-investment exposure for the game. The game's current popularity has very little to do with the RWF (imo) and a lot more to do with curiosity and the game representing a pillar of the industry with its consistent ability to reinvent itself every two to three years in each new expansion.

To me, all this noise about "fairness" in the RWF just seems like much adieu about nothing. The only way I could see Blizzard changing anything about the RWF would be if a guild were to kill a boss in the fabled "16-hour window" and the community exploded in controversy about the legitimacy of a "WF" kill, leading to another guild boycotting the next race until Blizzard intervened. But even then, I think the more likely outcome would be for the RWF to return to its previous unstreamed state than it would be for any action on Blizzard's part. /shrug

[ClassicPeon]

I'm going to address both of these as they're extremely loaded questions and I already talked about it in my replies on the last page.

To start off, I have to admit that my controversial opinion about the RWF has not won me a lot of fans on this forum. And that's fine -- I don't expect nor do I demand everybody to agree with me but it should be known that I'm firmly in the camp of "Why fix what's not broken?" That said, this idea that WoW would be more successful with a Blizzard-officiated RWF is a bit of a questionable position. If all you do is post on forums and see the extremely passionate things that people on forums say, you'd be convinced that the RWF is on par with something like the World Cup. But for most people (and most WoW players), I think it represents a window every some-odd 6-8 months where they know they can tune in and root for their favorite team. This is where my opinion will become even more controversial but I personally don't think a lot of these casual viewers of the RWF even care all that much about the guilds they're watching so much as they do the region each guild represents. (See: How Echo -- a brand new organization built in the last 6 months -- had the same viewership as Method did in prior races.) And as I said in my previous posts, there's also the very real fact that these inherent biases from fans of the RWF are part of the reason there's so much hype surrounding it. It's a double-edged sword in that the guilds in the RWF want to present an outward appearance of supporting a "global release" for the sake of competition while in the same breath needing to acknowledge such a move would eliminate some of hype surrounding the event.

This idea that Blizzard can move the RWF into an eSports arena isn't exactly new but because of the exposure on twitch for the last few races has gained a lot of traction lately. But frankly, unlike most actual eSports, the RWF simply isn't entertaining enough to justify the expenditure the eSportsification of the RWF would require. (The MDI, on the other hand, which is officiated by Blizzard, is far better suited for such a thing which is why I think we'll see this becoming the de facto PvE "eSports" event in the coming years.) There are some high highs in the RWF (when two guilds are at similar percentage points on a boss) but there are also some low lows (when the guild decides to do splits for their 3rd alts). Moving the race to the tournament realm would require a qualification which simply doesn't exist right now (unless we simply agree that the RWF is a two-horse race) and changing the way maintenance works (and has worked for 16+ years) just doesn't seem to be a likely move on Blizzard's part.

Add onto this the fact that the game is already more successful today than it has been at several points in the past and I just don't see how an official RWF is going to have a huge long term impact on the game's popularity. The race is plenty successful without Blizzard intervention and provides a metric fuckton of zero-investment exposure for the game. The game's current popularity has very little to do with the RWF (imo) and a lot more to do with curiosity and the game representing a pillar of the industry with its consistent ability to reinvent itself every two to three years in each new expansion.

To me, all this noise about "fairness" in the RWF just seems like much adieu about nothing. The only way I could see Blizzard changing anything about the RWF would be if a guild were to kill a boss in the fabled "16-hour window" and the community exploded in controversy about the legitimacy of a "WF" kill, leading to another guild boycotting the next race until Blizzard intervened. But even then, I think the more likely outcome would be for the RWF to return to its previous unstreamed state than it would be for any action on Blizzard's part. /shrug

Echo isnt abrand new guild. Its basicly method. Sco wasnt even raiding when method fell a part. Is pretty much just the entire method raid rooster without all the corporate bs.

I dont mind if it goes more esporty, i dont mind if it stays as it is. But its for the community to decide basicly. Things tend to evolve on themselves regardles if they company that made the game want it to(towards an esport or away from it).

What i am questioning here is the "difference between a playful competitive rivalry and outright nationalism?"

The people who want to be ultra nationalistic are already there. In the chats. Nothing will change that. What Blizzard intervening could change is more accessability, better wfr coverage and so on. Perhaps even a little prize, could be a sponsered one, to increase the competitions exciteness.

One thing is for sure. There is a lot more reason for blizzard to helpt with wfr then the pvp shit they are doing atm that noone cares about.

[dipzz]

Echo isnt abrand new guild. Its basicly method. Sco wasnt even raiding when method fell a part. Is pretty much just the entire method raid rooster without all the corporate bs.

I dont mind if it goes more esporty, i dont mind if it stays as it is. But its for the community to decide basicly. Things tend to evolve on themselves regardles if they company that made the game want it to(towards an esport or away from it).

What i am questioning here is the "difference between a playful competitive rivalry and outright nationalism?"

The people who want to be ultra nationalistic are already there. In the chats. Nothing will change that. What Blizzard intervening could change is more accessability, better wfr coverage and so on. Perhaps even a little prize, could be a sponsered one, to increase the competitions exciteness.

One thing is for sure. There is a lot more reason for blizzard to helpt with wfr then the pvp shit they are doing atm that noone cares about.

Blizzard will not get involved in the WF race, they acknowledge it, they support it, but they won't get involved. RWF isn't like PVP, PVP teams prac when they want on their own time. RWF requires people to literally lose their lives for months and months, doing splits and then the actual race. Without sponsorship Limit wouldn't be able to raid the way they do which is why no US guild was able to compete for all these years. US guilds don't have the same lifestyle as EU players that have less work hours, more vacation time or cheaper expenses. It's facts.

So by blizzard getting involved and offering prizes or hosting the event it encourages more guilds to participate in something that can kill someone. People will take it too far, or get involved in something they have no experience doing. Blizzard doesn't want to encourage players to not sleep and sit at the computer for 20 hours a day and that's exactly what every guild who isn't Limit/Echo will have to do. FSY is the rarest thing ever they don't count. Every other guild who gets top 10 world raids half the amount of hours limit/echo does in short term.

I remember when the RWF in Cata was hosted on some youtube channel about the RWF and there were guild members from some of the EU guilds in the video openly discussing how they haven't slept in 22 hours cause they wanted to kill the boss before another guild. Blizzard will never encourage that

[rogoth]

Blizzard will not get involved in the WF race, they acknowledge it, they support it, but they won't get involved. RWF isn't like PVP, PVP teams prac when they want on their own time. RWF requires people to literally lose their lives for months and months, doing splits and then the actual race. Without sponsorship Limit wouldn't be able to raid the way they do which is why no US guild was able to compete for all these years. US guilds don't have the same lifestyle as EU players that have less work hours, more vacation time or cheaper expenses. It's facts.

So by blizzard getting involved and offering prizes or hosting the event it encourages more guilds to participate in something that can kill someone. People will take it too far, or get involved in something they have no experience doing. Blizzard doesn't want to encourage players to not sleep and sit at the computer for 20 hours a day and that's exactly what every guild who isn't Limit/Echo will have to do. FSY is the rarest thing ever they don't count. Every other guild who gets top 10 world raids half the amount of hours limit/echo does in short term.

I remember when the RWF in Cata was hosted on some youtube channel about the RWF and there were guild members from some of the EU guilds in the video openly discussing how they haven't slept in 22 hours cause they wanted to kill the boss before another guild. Blizzard will never encourage that

yeah gonna have to stop you there chief, i dare you to say that with a straight face to someone from switzerland for example, one of, if not THE most expensive nations on the planet for living costs, also most EU nations have a different lifestyle/working environment because the governments of many of the nations that make up the EU enforce legislation that protects workers, unlike the USA which exploits workers and has little to no legal protections in place for general workforce individuals, furthermore not every nation that makes up the EU region has the same employment laws, some are more strict than others and the whole 'well they get more vacation time' is for the most part bogus in many of the EU nations, it's only relevant to the UK and some of the more western EU nations.

[ClassicPeon]

Blizzard will not get involved in the WF race, they acknowledge it, they support it, but they won't get involved. RWF isn't like PVP, PVP teams prac when they want on their own time. RWF requires people to literally lose their lives for months and months, doing splits and then the actual race. Without sponsorship Limit wouldn't be able to raid the way they do which is why no US guild was able to compete for all these years. US guilds don't have the same lifestyle as EU players that have less work hours, more vacation time or cheaper expenses. It's facts.

So by blizzard getting involved and offering prizes or hosting the event it encourages more guilds to participate in something that can kill someone. People will take it too far, or get involved in something they have no experience doing. Blizzard doesn't want to encourage players to not sleep and sit at the computer for 20 hours a day and that's exactly what every guild who isn't Limit/Echo will have to do. FSY is the rarest thing ever they don't count. Every other guild who gets top 10 world raids half the amount of hours limit/echo does in short term.

I remember when the RWF in Cata was hosted on some youtube channel about the RWF and there were guild members from some of the EU guilds in the video openly discussing how they haven't slept in 22 hours cause they wanted to kill the boss before another guild. Blizzard will never encourage that

Dear god there is so much wrong in this post i just dont even know where to start.

[luhilo]

It seems kinda expected. The game is a lot about numbers. There are dps threshholds and timings that need to be met. No matter how good you are, if the tank gets onehit - it is a whipe. The game is tuned around gear.

[facefist]

i liked it better when WF kills happened with ~heroic ilvl. made me think those players were actually a lot better than my guild by the time we got there. nowadays it feels like the biggest difference between them and us is resources/time/preparation and not so much skill.

Unless you are in top 50 or so, it's very likely that those bosses are nerfed before you actually kill them. Sometimes less than 20 guilds clear the whole raid pre-nerfs. That's the biggest difference.

Especially now that they need to have such high ilvl to clear the raid, most guilds cant kill them before nerfs because getting more gear doesn't help enough.