So my call on the death of Wings of Liberty was a huge whiff – it’s obviously still alive and kicking – regardless, the first couple weeks of the beta saw a concerted effort on the part of some major community players to provide as much content as possible (Husky’s requests for replays on twitter, the pHD tournament, NASL’s beta coverage, varieties of smaller showmatches/events). The buzz was there, but that alone was not enough to keep the momentum afloat.
It seems that game-play is and continues to be the driving force behind how pros choose what tournaments or events to participate in. The pro scene’s general consensus on the Heart of the Swarm Beta is that it simply isn’t enjoyable to play for fun, let alone for competition.
In fact, if you take a look at the Team Liquid stream list, the number of HoTS games being shown is significantly lower than the time of my last post. Looking over the calendar, most events have actually switched BACK FROM HoTS into WoL.
So what gives? Is the game really that bad or is the short-term investment potential for pros the problem?
For one, it’s hard to get fans into a game that they themselves cannot play – during initial launch week, everyone wanted to see the veil lifted from the HoTS cloaking field, causing an influx of viewership and likely some nice ad paydays for players who received early invites. Now that initial allure is gone, and those viewers turned on by the novelty of the game have likely moved on. Additionally, if you haven’t received a beta key yet, your ability to follow what is happening in game is severely limited and tough to comprehend without additional research – it simply isn’t an enjoyable process (and considering the rate of change: borderline frustrating!). I still haven’t even gotten a beta key…
Secondly, if pros want to compete in HoTS they have to accept the fact that the game is in flux, unbalanced, and unfair – certainly not something to rest your career’s success on. Let’s just get to the point here and say it’s risky as hell to commit practice time to HoTS when equal if not greater financial support exists with WoL.
Which brings us back to the main theme of these posts – is the risk/reward of playing games/hosting events around the HoTS beta worth it for pros and organizations? When will the breaking point be reached?
Would love to hear from fans, pros, organizations, or anyone who has an opinion on this at Twitter: @DOOMSC2 – let’s keep the conversation going there!