Delayed Speculation Part 2

A bit later than promised but here is the second half of my random speculations on WoW and what blizzard have been up to.


In the first half i mentioned the arrival of a browser in patch 5.3, while there many possibilities that i discussed i had clearly overlooked one quite obvious one. This came to my attention after a particulary stress fall LFR on Sunday night we spent neither a hour on dark Animus, though most of this was spent waiting in the Queue for those ever elusive tanks. Now if i had a browser maybe i could have loaded it up and played a few games of hearthstone while i waited for some tanks to join the group. Incidentally i just alt-tabbed out and watched the latest video on Hearthstone, well worth checking out for anyone entirely new to the genre such as myself.

The second part of my speculation came after the announcement that Blizzard had purchased the entire IPL off of IGN. (not the cricket league, the epsorts section) While they were quick to point that they were not just going to run the tournament as it had been, in fact most of the the people that were hired are going to be working on other projects. This last bit got me thinking, what would be the purpose of buying out this epsorts section only to then disband it.

Its become fairly obvious recently that blizzard are beginning to take the E-sports scene very seriously, you only have to view the astronomical sum that they are investing into the SC world championships. E-sports offer a means of prolonging the lifespan of a game indefinitely as well as creating new revenue streams. While i don't think that we will ever see a proper E-sports added to WoW, simply because the game is so old now that adding in a massive feature like that along with a spectator mode would probably not be cost effective. Though admittedly i can see a future pet battle E-sport, though this would require continued overhaul of the system to create the level of competitiveness needed for a truly engrossing E-sport.

However it is the other games in the franchise mainly the two newbies that i can see having E-sports built into them from a ground up level rather than added in at a later date. Firstly i would be willing to bet a large amount of money that Titan will have various in game features that will lend itself very nicely to the E-sports genre. As well as this i can see there being E-sports market for Hearthstone if it takes off as well as it has the potential to, though in this case i rescind my previous statement about having it from the start i think this would probably be a feature added to hearthstone after launch.

Ok so here is the curve ball the Blizzard game i can see having a E-sport component is................ (cue a drum roll please) D3, no seriously i mean this. A few months ago it was announced that the anticipated arena style pvp system would not be coming to D3 yet. Instead we got the brawling system which though it is fun it just is not real PvP. Now D3 has some serious lifespan issues largely caused by the AH, and the impact that it has had on the necessity to repeat the game over and over to get that god like item. While we will be seeing a expansion for D3, i don't think releasing more and more content for D3 will ever solve the issue. Also this would be a very costly and I'm not sure that D3 generates enough money for this to be a viable option.

Now if you could add a viable E-sport to the game say in the form of a team based arena style pvp, complete with ladders and a ranking system. Would this be a hit with players i think so,in my opinion the combat system of D3 with the limited number of spells available to players. (you only have 6 buttons to press) Along with the awesome animations for a lot of the moves, points very heavily towards a fast paced hardcore team based pvp system.

Ok so this post has been mostly written for several weeks now, just had to find the time to finish it off and upload it. Next up will be either my long awaited patch 5.2 post or possibly one of my thoughts on the alliance my ideas on the next war chief or possibly blizzconn speculation or something like that.

Peace out y'all