Sure, Warhammer may have grand battles to decide the future of realms, war everywhere, skies dark with the fires of pillaged cities… but do you win money when you gank a newb?
World of Warcraft announced a new Tournament server where, for $20, you can create a new level 70 character from scratch and participate in 3v3 Arena matches and if you’re good enough, advance through regionals to become the best PvPers in the world.
It’s amazing. At a cost of virtually nothing to a mega-rich company like Blizzard, they have totally trumped Warhammer before it is even released. PvP on Warhammer might be fun, sure. But PvP in WoW can make you famous and rich.
What can EA/Mythic possibly do but match this? Blizzard may just have changed forever how we think of PvP MMOs.
20 thoughts on “WoW: I bet you can’t win 200K in Warhammer…”
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I’ll bet you don’t know anyone who could win 200k in WoW, either.
I don’t think they have really trumped Warhammer here. Everyone who PVPs knows that there are an elite few pro players who will win an event like this, and for people like me, there is no reason to waste my $20. It’s a stunt, mostly to keep interest up in their aging and stagnating game. I think they are afraid that once WotLK comes out and we see it’s just more of the same gear reset/raid reset/level cap raise/raid grind, we may try something else.
This will do well and generate some publicity, but it’s another example of how PVP in WOW is irrelevant to the remainder of the game. It’s just a side or mini game to what everyone else is doing there.
It may be on a bigger scale than WAR PvP, at least commercially, but everyone knows that Mythic knows PvP better than Blizzard. 🙂
Last night, there was this guy on 70s channel in EQ2 that was complaining that he was tired of running instances and blah blah blah bored blah blah blah stupid SOE blah blah blah guess I’ll wait for Warhammer. Now, 70s chat (and being on Befallen, maybe you were watching this too), helpfully suggested he go on a pickup raid, or work on his epic, or any of the thousand other things you might choose to do other than run RoK instances.
I, for an example, was deep in Chardok working on my epic and those of a few guildies and having an amazingly fun time.
But a couple of things struck me about the whole thing. First was that instead of just finding something to do that wasn’t EQ2, he took the time to log in, and then complain to people playing the game how bored he was. As if, he felt kind of entitled to be entertained when he logged in, and considered it the fault of the game if it didn’t match his mood at the moment.
And the second was the assumption that Warhammer would be the panacea for boredom in his life.
I don’t think any MMO can, by itself, really save a boring life. MMOs are great at putting people together and giving them something to do while they socialize, like team-building retreats in the real world. Because meeting new people is hard, but meeting new people in the context of doing something together is surprisingly easy — and the best way, in or out of gaming.
In the end, the worth of an MMO HAS to be how successful it is at bringing people together and giving them something to do, even if that thing they do is ultimately pointless, as is every activity in an MMO. Warhammer as much as anything else — you can tell your grandchildren how your guild totally took over that castle and held it for three days, but they won’t care.
Tell them you won $10,000 in PvP in a game, THAT will make them sit up. THAT will make an impression. Suddenly, your sedentary lifestyle has bore fruit. Suddenly, MMOs move from being just a way to meet people, to something that could significantly affect your life. And all you have to do to earn this is just be really good at playing World of Warcraft, a game that is just DRIPPING with experts.
There will be mods that will help you earn more money. Mods that tell you where to hit, what spell to cast… and the authors of these mods will make money from them. If I write a mod that can give you a 10% edge and then sell it for $100, would you buy it? I think you would.
Hint books on how to do well in the Arena. Web sites devoted to full time coverage of the fastest rising stars in WoW arena, making money from ad impressions given to gold farming sites.
A game is just a game. Add money to it, and it becomes real. The rest of WoW may become nothing, but this will survive and keep people playing.
And unless EA/Mythic responds by also offering cash prizes for gaming achievements, why would people play their game for nothing when they could be making money in WoW?
@Bildo — they may know RvR better than anyone else, but anything they can do, Blizzard can copy, and probably improve.
Their 1v1 PvP in DAoC was entirely unbalanced. I don’t think it is even possible to balance it in any game. But I certainly would never claim Mythic had some secret understanding of PvP shared by nobody else. The vast majority of MMO players started with WoW and compare every game to WoW. They don’t care about what DAoC did. What they want to know about any new game is how similar it is to WoW (it should be close), and in what areas it improves on WoW, and whether the same thing might be implemented in WoW in the next expansion or two, in which case it makes better sense to wait and continue to play WoW.
We who have played many MMOs are a small minority and our comparisons with previous games moot, since WoW people won’t play them and don’t care.
WC3 already did this with the ladder system, although it was free. And basically outside of a 100 people or so, no one cared. The same 50 accounts always made the top of the ladder each season, the same pro teams always played in the tourney. Fun to watch, sure, but never realistic for anyone outside of the elite to achieve.
Even the most foolish of people would not go into this actually expecting to win anything, and the fact that blizzard is going to charge 20 bucks is laughable. My prediction is some elite few will discover a way to dominate using a broken system of skills, and in turn bliz nerfs said skills, pissing everyone else off. Mixing a PvE based game with PvP ambition is never a good combo, and when you throw money in, you only motivate people to find loopholes.
Anyone remember how well that whole RYL 1 million thing worked out?
Durn it, Syncaine, why does Akismet keep binning your comments? As many times as I have to tell it “NOT SPAM, DAMMIT!” it still does it.
I think Blizzard has enough money and enough trufans to pull this off. People do battlegrounds to grind epics. The real PvPers do Arena games, and I bet a lot of them think they’re pretty darn good. Plus, these will be new characters with the same gear everyone gets so those people who win just on gear alone, will now be forced to win with strategy.
I think it’s pretty exciting, and I don’t even play WoW at the moment. Could be just the thing to make WoW less boring.
Personally, there isn’t too much that Blizzard could do that I would personally like, but that is just simply that they don’t make games that I enjoy. They DO, however, make games that a freaking butt-ton of people DO enjoy.
One of the biggest contributions that Blizzard has made to the gaming industry isn’t gaining 9 million + subscribers. Nor is it changing the way that developers approach new projects.
What Blizzard has done is to move gaming more into the mainstream and to get people to talking about games who previously thought they were the sole province of children.
Something like this PvP idea… it probably won’t revolutionize the PvP system and it might not scratch the sacred PvP cow that Mythic apparently built in DAoC (I don’t PvP in any game, so I can’t speak intelligently about PvP at all), but it will get people talking.
Blizzard has an impressively large player base to pull from, so if even 10% of the players find this idea interesting, it will still be huge.
More importantly, it will get people to talking. It is a new take on the MMO PvP tournament and it is bound to generate buzz. We can only hope that more talk about the MMO industry can only be a good thing in the end.
Bringing more people into MMOs always has the chance that people will learn about MMOs other than WoW, in the same way that learning Checkers can bring people to play Chess, Othello and Go, although I believe few people are aware that MMOs other than WoW exist in any viable sense. Compared to WoW, all other games put together are an easily overlooked niche. If they were any good, they’d be popular like WoW, right?
Playing WoW poorly or well doesn’t matter. It’s a worthless skill. Now, though, it could earn you money. Suddenly, skill at WoW has meaning. Skill at Warhammer, alas, from what we know, is still pointless. But they may add money and suddenly, skill at Warhammer will have meaning. Maybe more meaning than in WoW.
“@Bildo — they may know RvR better than anyone else, but anything they can do, Blizzard can copy, and probably improve.”
Very true, Tip. You win. *bows down*
Is that what happens? Damnit stupid work network. I swear it has blocked like hundreds of comments I make here and other places, so lame.
I still think it’s a gimmick that could backfire, either through some imba combos, seeing the same 3 classes/items for all teams, or something else.
Even when EVE does this, and they balance for PvP at all times, the tourneys have minor issues. Should be interesting to watch however.
While i know a lot of people are say this is to complete with Warhammer. SoE has there 100,000 buck LoN tournament. And now blizzard a 2 month latter announces a similar type of tournament but in the game and pvp
@ Tipa about your 70-79 channel comment person- VG regionsay is filled with the same day after day (for now). A select few people, who bother to log into VG at all specifically to bitch about the game and praise / say how they’re waiting for (insert AoC here and WAR here). I don’t understand why you’d bother logging in at all just to complain about that mmo and ramble about other ones- in regionsay none the less. They obviously need a beta key, or something. 😉
As for pvp. Meh.
One thing I do wish SoE would adapt is WoW’s $25 transfer fees. It’s all automated and not like SoE has to do too much when a character transfers, I’d love to see the price drop. (Completely unrelated, I know, sorry =x)
@Ogre — maybe this is just a sign of the times. A way to get people interested in gaming who normally would not consider an afternoon wiled away killing a virtual dragon an engaging way to spend a Saturday.
@Star — I’d like cheaper transfers, too. I almost left the server and that would have cost me so much money. Back in EQ1, it’s 75 friggin dollars. Unbelievable.
Its my opinion that mmorpgs are funnest at the beginning before everyone is max level. Once the majority of the player population has hit the level cap, the designers need to give motivation for advancement, and thats where most companies flub up.
@Syncaine (1st comment)
Bingo! This is hardly a novel idea. Blizzard has been doing player vs. player tournaments for years with their other games. Also, considering you’d stand absolutely no chance in this arena contest without the very top tiers of gear in the game, they’ve limited their audience to the top 0.01%-5% of their subscribers from the get go.
You get to create a level 70 character with a selection of PvP and PvE epics. Everyone starts out equal. If you see someone kicking butt with a certain build, you can choose that build next time.
The only difference will be the skill of your team vs the skill of the other team.
Some of us have these things called jobs where we get our money- we play these games to relax. The idea that Blizzard has suddenly magically rendered WAR irrelevant is laughably in its idiocy.
I second Jadawin’s sentiments. The idea is a good one and it will likely make Blizzard bajillions of dollars. However, I play mmos to relax and have fun. If this has announcement has done anything it’s certainly not rendered WAR irrelevant. It’s actually made it very clear that Blizzard is losing sight of their own market and once again moving in a counterproductive direction.
Well, they haven’t abandoned anything. The super easy gameplay is still there, you can still solo – even better than before, you don’t need to rely on anyone, but if you want to group, that’s still there. Still have raiding, still have the auction house game, still have the battlegrounds for those who don’t like PvP, still have the (free) Arenas for those who do, and now they have this.
The real world works on money. What makes a sport a pro sport? When there’s money involved. Though the money isn’t quite there yet, Blizzard has offered the concept of a professional WoW player. Considering the 10 millions of people who currently play the game, how many of them wish they could play professionally? Half? Three quarters? How many of them wish they never had to do anything BUT play WoW? 25%? More?
And it’s *fair*, that’s the best thing. If you go with a paladin/shaman/mage group and lose to three druids, well, next time, YOU go in with three druids and do it better.
Now, nothing Blizzard does directly impacts Warhammer as a game. But the game is aimed squarely at WoW players who enjoy getting the snot beat out of them by strangers. Who is the WAR potential player base, but those who are currently doing Arena battles in WoW? So you see what I’m talking about here?
Ganking a group of newbs is priceless, Tipa.