Esports vs SC2

The Pando Media Booster is a tiny (2MB) UI-less client that enables you to cost effectively stream full-screen HD video by leveraging your viewer's collective spare bandwidth. Running as a secure transparent background service on your viewer's computer, the Media Booster optimizes video streams by intelligently streaming your videos from multiple sources; your CDN servers as well as the computer's of other viewers ("Peer Cloud").

On June 18 2011 19:12 Phenrei wrote:
This was explained somewhat in a post on the dreamhack thread. LoL has ONE tourney right now, and this one is it. SC2's tourney scene, as we all know, is so crowded I'm sure a ton of people are just going to be tuning in for the matches they want to see and VODding the rest.

On June 18 2011 19:18 GhostFall wrote:
I hate to burst your bubble, but lol is on the owned stream, which have bugged stream counters

On June 18 2011 19:22 Angra wrote:
I'm going to get a lot of hate from this probably, but LoL isn't a very competitive game. Or at least not something that you would call an "e-sport". The only reason it has so many viewers and such a large fanbase is because it's so extremely accessible to the casual person.

On June 18 2011 19:32 Enox wrote:
apparently, LoL advertises this stream in the game itself, which of course has a huge impact. imagine if you log into battle.net and there would be a huge dreamhack stream button

On June 18 2011 19:33 vyyye wrote:

Doesn't Blizzard do this as well? I know they've had "X tournament is coming up" and some recaps scattered within their own news.
No idea if they're linking it now though, too busy watching Nani to check for myself.

On June 18 2011 19:37 OmniscientSC2 wrote:


It's a huge overlay on the launcher with an embedded stream and a 'view in browser' link. I can never see blizzard doing this xD

On June 18 2011 20:00 soulist wrote:
those numbers arent broken. LoL broke the record for number of watchers for an online event with their dreamhack North America Qualifier. Can't exactly remember the number.

On June 18 2011 20:02 Wesso wrote:


69k

but apparently LoL imbeds streams in the menu of their game/

On June 18 2011 20:18 Tenz wrote:
Are any of these MOBAs / TTRPGs or whatever abbreviation people prefer popular in Korea?

On June 18 2011 19:38 Kickboxer wrote:
I'm positive that only Sc2 and fighting games are even remotely watchable to non-players.

Diablo might get in there if casuals can understand what's going on.

Shooters and WoW have zero spectator appeal, and LoL is in the same league but has a massive and very casual playerbase so a huge tourney here and there might get some viewers (those numbers are most probably broken, though).

On June 18 2011 20:21 Milkyst wrote:

Shooters? I'm sure that CS1.6 still racks in over 20,000 views.. and + they have hltv access which allows them to become 'spectators' in the game with a 90 second delay

On June 18 2011 20:09 soulist wrote:


they dont imbed the stream. they provide a link in the menu if you want to watch it then you can click on the link but you arent forced to watch it like the people are making it seem.

On June 18 2011 19:01 TheAwesomeAll wrote:
Dreamhack is competing with the gsl finals atm, lets not forget.
Also, im not sure about this, but some people say that everyone who logs onto LoL will get the stream.
edit: im pretty sure people logging in to LoL will automatically connect to the stream.Riot games uses
'Pando Media Booster'

messing with the viewer count.
End of the thread imo

On June 18 2011 20:26 Egyptian_Head wrote:
Why all the hate for LoL? Ive never played it by why hate on the game? If people want to watch it all the power to them.

On June 18 2011 19:18 GhostFall wrote:
Aside from SC2 I think fighters are getting bigger.

On June 18 2011 19:01 TheAwesomeAll wrote:
Dreamhack is competing with the gsl finals atm, lets not forget.
Also, im not sure about this, but some people say that everyone who logs onto LoL will get the stream.
edit: im pretty sure people logging in to LoL will automatically connect to the stream.Riot games uses
'Pando Media Booster'

messing with the viewer count.
End of the thread imo

On June 18 2011 21:04 Hakker wrote:

Lols view numbers aren't a joke as some would make it seem. They're a result of a few different factors.


1. The game has huge popularity, it's something like the 3rd most popular title in NA right behind WoW and cod.

2. This is the only tournament. SC2 has tournaments going 24/7. Lol has 2 major tournaments a year in dreamhack and WCG.

3. Lol has a link to the stream in their client.

1,2,3.. Lol has a link to the stream in their client -embedded stream.

On June 18 2011 21:36 mdma-_- wrote:
I never got how LoL ever got popular.
It made a rather casual game like Dota even more casual.
But oh well to each their own i guess

On June 18 2011 21:36 mdma-_- wrote:
I never got how LoL ever got popular.
It made a rather casual game like Dota even more casual.
But oh well to each their own i guess

On June 18 2011 21:36 mdma-_- wrote:
I never got how LoL ever got popular.
It made a rather casual game like Dota even more casual.
But oh well to each their own i guess

On June 18 2011 21:36 mdma-_- wrote:
I never got how LoL ever got popular.
It made a rather casual game like Dota even more casual.
But oh well to each their own i guess

On June 18 2011 21:46 Novalisk wrote:
I love LoL, but something's definitely fishy about that viewer count.

On June 18 2011 21:55 Woony wrote:


It's not fishy... Riot's videos get like 1,5 million hits in two days. LoL had 70k+ viewers before...

On June 18 2011 22:00 Tomken wrote:


..... Of course it's fishy when their new youtube vids get instant 300k in one hour.

On June 18 2011 21:58 PrimeTimey wrote:
They have the stream embed on their website, their website traffic hits are ridiculous: Alexa Traffic Rank Reputation Global 1,640 -- with that said, just because they have tons of people watching from an embed on their website doesn't make the game a legitimate eSport. I can't watch this stream for more than two minutes.

On June 18 2011 22:01 hifriend wrote:
um LoL, cs 1.6, css, quake always get a lot more viewers than sc2

On June 18 2011 22:01 floor exercise wrote:

The approval of teamliquid.net poster PrimeTimey is what qualifies games as legitimate ESPORTS

On June 18 2011 21:58 PrimeTimey wrote:
They have the stream embed on their website, their website traffic hits are ridiculous: Alexa Traffic Rank Reputation Global 1,640 -- with that said, just because they have tons of people watching from an embed on their website doesn't make the game a legitimate eSport. I can't watch this stream for more than two minutes.

On June 18 2011 22:02 PrimeTimey wrote:


CS - No
CSS - No
Quake - No

On June 18 2011 22:06 hifriend wrote:

They have for every IEM anyway.. And in the US, console games are getting the bigger audiences.

On June 18 2011 22:11 BlindGamer wrote:
Once we get the next Quake-esque game, I think that will be the next explosion in e-sports.

Starcraft will grow and grow, as well as all the other titles, but if there were some kind of casually-playable game, like CoD, that could also somehow be played to the standard/competitiveness of Quake (whether it be 1v1 or 5v5 etc), there would be a built in audience of hundreds of thousands of people with the proper support/advertising of the creators

On June 18 2011 22:04 PrimeTimey wrote:


The game is casual, its free to play, very few professional organizations sponsor League of Legends teams, the game has no online events and very few LAN events. Just because you can get tons of people turning into a stream doesn't legitimize anything.

*Edit: Never mind the fact the game doesn't even have a spectator mode so you can't watch games be played -- how can that be considered an eSports title?

On June 18 2011 22:09 PrimeTimey wrote:



CSS wasn't at IEM, and secondly you said "always get a lot more viewers" not one event.

On June 18 2011 22:16 MoonBear wrote:
I don't understand the hate you guys are putting on other games such as LoL. It's not like SC2 should be "The Only E-Sport". Isn't it a good thing that games in generally are becoming more accessible and mainstream instead of considered some dorky nerd thing? We should be celebrating that more and more people are willing to consider watching e-sports in general. It doesn't matter what game it is.

On June 18 2011 22:11 BlindGamer wrote:
Once we get the next Quake-esque game, I think that will be the next explosion in e-sports.

Starcraft will grow and grow, as well as all the other titles, but if there were some kind of casually-playable game, like CoD, that could also somehow be played to the standard/competitiveness of Quake (whether it be 1v1 or 5v5 etc), there would be a built in audience of hundreds of thousands of people with the proper support/advertising of the creators

On June 18 2011 22:19 WArped wrote:
LoL, HoN, DotA are all competitive, what if Blizzard DotA becomes very competitive will people be upset then?

On June 18 2011 22:06 hifriend wrote:

They have for every IEM anyway.. And in the US, console games are getting the bigger audiences.

On June 18 2011 22:13 Woony wrote:


I doubt that. People just don't wanna watch 1v1 shooters I think. QL barely get's any viewers and Quake has been going downhill for years (in terms of popularity). I think it's said, but that's the way it is.

On June 18 2011 22:15 Shikyo wrote:

The company is new, game is new, etc. How big of an esport was SCBW in 1998?

EDIT: And there's so much sponsorship potential in 50-100k+ viewers that it shouldn't take a long time.

On June 18 2011 22:17 Sae wrote:I don't get where people got the idea that sc2 is extremely popular, its a rather small (one of the smallest) game just with a very strong high-tier competitive environment adopted from the original game.

On June 18 2011 22:06 hifriend wrote:
They have for every IEM anyway.. And in the US, console games are getting the bigger audiences.

On June 18 2011 22:23 Angra wrote:
On the topic of dota/lol/hon, here's the HoN stream from Dreamhack http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/breakycpk

I believe they are in between matches right now though.

Though only 3k viewers. Le sigh. HoN had a really unlucky run in the fact that they decided to make their game have an initial price, when their main competitor is free to play. I think it's one of the main reasons why LoL is so much more popular than HoN is now.

On June 18 2011 22:23 Domination wrote:

This is so wrong I don't even know where to begin to right it.

On June 18 2011 22:25 Domination wrote:

Well that and the HoN community is somehow even more angry than the LoL community. I personally perfer HoN but man do those guys get mad. The HoN community is downright toxic.

On June 18 2011 22:25 Sae wrote:


What's wrong about it?

On June 18 2011 22:27 Redmark wrote:

For one it's definitely not one of the smallest games? Unless you're comparing it to WoW or something.

On June 18 2011 20:25 Papulatus wrote:
What you must understand about LoL is that there is not a public replay/observer mode. Therefore, you can not hold tournaments. Looking at SC2, there is too much content to even keep track of. NASL, GSL, TSL, streams, IPl etc... Because of this glut of SC2, one tournament means little. LoL on the other hand almost NEVER has tournaments.

On eSports, LoL is not a worthy eSport. The only thing it has going for it is its popularity. Its poorly designed and imbalanced. Its a casual, free to play game, and thus it is extremely popular. Watching LoL is the most boring experience ever.

On June 18 2011 22:01 hifriend wrote:
um LoL, cs 1.6, css, quake always get a lot more viewers than sc2

On June 18 2011 22:32 Sae wrote:


LoL isn't all that far behind WoW in player numbers, but besides those two giants several games have a stronger casual player base than SC2 (yes, I was talking about casual player base as I know sc2 has a very strong tournament scene with all the money being injected to it right now.)

On June 18 2011 22:45 Flakes wrote:
Another thing is that they are debuting LoL's fancy new observer mode, previously non-existent. Previous tournaments had really awful workarounds just to go around fog of war, and champion selection could take longer than the games at times. Dreamhack is being handled much more professionally, and living up to the hype that has been going on for months.

Riot is a pretty naive, bumbling company, but they stay really close to the community, compensating and apologizing for server problems, releasing preview videos, and hotfixing issues before they get abused. I feel like this (and the fact that LoL is free) leads to high player retention.

Probably the biggest factor is that their servers did a faceplant 2 hours before the tournament started, and so all the LoL players have nothing to do (there's still issues with the chat server ROFL). I stick to playing both sc2 and LoL, as I need something to do when Riot's servers are down

On June 18 2011 22:51 Batch wrote:

Define "not all that far behind"...

WoW had 11.4 million subscribers as of March 2011 according to Wikipedia.
Total Players Ranked in LoL are 160,955 according to their homepage.
SC2 had sold nearly 4.5 million units in December 2010. Probably over 5 million units by now.

I can assure everyone that LoL do not have over 100k real viewers.

ranked players are those that have played over 100 games in order to get to level 30 and enable ranked games.
It's not a census of the entire population of LoL.
I only started playing LoL 2 weeks ago in between HoN and SC2 and am only level 7

On June 18 2011 22:51 Batch wrote:

Define "not all that far behind"...

WoW had 11.4 million subscribers as of March 2011 according to Wikipedia.
Total Players Ranked in LoL are 160,955 according to their homepage.
SC2 had sold nearly 4.5 million units in December 2010. Probably over 5 million units by now.

I can assure everyone that LoL do not have over 100k real viewers.

On June 18 2011 22:37 freddievercetti wrote:
I think the main problem with LoL in eSports is the asymmetrical warfare and RPG system inherent in MOBA games.

All the different heroes make up for alot of different comboes in game, while in Starcraft is fairly balanced around 3 races. I'm not totally sure but I think this contributes to imbalanced situations in the game sometimes, as well as some heroes not being great picks at all, or certain heroes being a good pick no matter the matchup.

The MOBA games start out with your hero at level which is fine, similar to how RTS games start out with your worker building and some workers. But the problem is that MOBA games concentrate effort on improving the hero, while Starcraft is about expanding and getting more stuff, or getting in a timing attack to kill of your opponent, which is easier to translate into lategame power for non-player audiences. Tastosis and Wolf/Moletrap and Day[9] help make it easier for the non-player audience to understand why players are doing what they are doing and why they are doing it.

SC2 is alot of fun to watch and my sister loves to watch large battles not that she knows whats happening, as well as the various harassments and drops and landmines and things in SC2. Its just easy to get into since she doesn't play the game. MOBA games she just likes to see the character screens what heroes I pick and such forth.

On June 18 2011 23:02 Novalisk wrote:
I think the only conclusion we can get from this is that Blizzard should take notes from Riot on how to promote their game.

On June 18 2011 23:02 Seiuchi wrote:




That's just the ranked players over 1200 on the US server. They don't show the rank of players below that, which is like 60% of the ranked player base, and then the majority of players don't play ranked, so you can start to see what small fraction of the actual player base that is. It's like if you took the number of Diamond and above players on NA server for SC2 and said that was the entire SC2 player base.

On June 18 2011 23:01 GizmoPT wrote:
i dont think they have that much lol if u merge all the sc2 viewers in 1 stream youll get way over what LoL does... just saying

On June 18 2011 22:23 Angra wrote:
On the topic of dota/lol/hon, here's the HoN stream from Dreamhack http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/breakycpk

I believe they are in between matches right now though.

Though only 3k viewers. Le sigh. HoN had a really unlucky run in the fact that they decided to make their game have an initial price, when their main competitor is free to play. I think it's one of the main reasons why LoL is so much more popular than HoN is now.

On June 18 2011 22:51 Batch wrote:

Define "not all that far behind"...

WoW had 11.4 million subscribers as of March 2011 according to Wikipedia.
Total Players Ranked in LoL are 160,955 according to their homepage.
SC2 had sold nearly 4.5 million units in December 2010. Probably over 5 million units by now.

I can assure everyone that LoL do not have over 100k real viewers.

I switch to my other tab and notice LoL with 80k+ viewers.

On June 18 2011 22:51 Batch wrote:

Define "not all that far behind"...

WoW had 11.4 million subscribers as of March 2011 according to Wikipedia.
Total Players Ranked in LoL are 160,955 according to their homepage.
SC2 had sold nearly 4.5 million units in December 2010. Probably over 5 million units by now.

I can assure everyone that LoL do not have over 100k real viewers.

On June 18 2011 23:25 iruel wrote:
ive been wanting to get into get into spectating fighting games recently, specifically SF4. is there a central hub community comparable to TL for that scene? where can i find tourny streams and or vods and such? ive done some googling but havn't found anything satisfactory as of yet.

On June 18 2011 23:32 HeavOnEarth wrote:
LoL has always had high stream viewer counts, not a big surprise to anyone actually following the scene( which i barely do)

On June 18 2011 19:01 TheAwesomeAll wrote:
Dreamhack is competing with the gsl finals atm, lets not forget.
Also, im not sure about this, but some people say that everyone who logs onto LoL will get the stream.
edit: im pretty sure people logging in to LoL will automatically connect to the stream.Riot games uses
'Pando Media Booster'

messing with the viewer count.
End of the thread imo

On June 18 2011 23:40 Kaoriyu wrote:
LoL has a HUGE casual fanbase due to it being F2P but it doesn't necessarily mean that LoL is the most popular or successful E-Sport either. I'm happy that E-sports is growing as a whole there is no way that LoL can match up to the professionalism and prestige of SC2

On June 18 2011 18:59 Phenny wrote:
25kish all up, 12k on Day9tv, 6k Totalbiscuit, 1.8 for ICCUP, 3k for Khaldor, 500 for SETT, 1.2 for Ragequit.

I don't get why such a casual oriented game like LoL has 80k+ viewers, not that I'm not happy that esports is growing. I think it's great!

Might be too soon to call your question, all I'd bank on is Starcraft for now, but if that's how many people usually tune in to large LoL tournies that's amazing.

On June 18 2011 23:25 MoonBear wrote:

Batch, do you actually have access to internal data on the player base of LoL? I highly doubt it. Please don't spout nonsense when you don't actually know anything.

While the exact number of LoL players is currently DNA, what I can tell you is that LoL is #2 in terms of player base in the Western World just behind WoW. If you're asking me for proof, the best I can give you right now is a statement by the President of Riot Games on the official forums.

As the others have stated, being listed on Ranked is only a small proportion of the player base. There are many many players that don't play ranked. There are also 4 separate server locations so just relying on the NA data will be misleading.

On June 18 2011 22:11 BlindGamer wrote:
Once we get the next Quake-esque game, I think that will be the next explosion in e-sports.

Starcraft will grow and grow, as well as all the other titles, but if there were some kind of casually-playable game, like CoD, that could also somehow be played to the standard/competitiveness of Quake (whether it be 1v1 or 5v5 etc), there would be a built in audience of hundreds of thousands of people with the proper support/advertising of the creators

On June 19 2011 00:04 xarthaz wrote:

Wrong. Quake is dead. Fast hard games are dead, no one wants to play these any more. There are excellent well polished balanced quake games with modern engines - quakeworld, warsow, painkiller. no one watches these because no one playes these. the quake learning curve is way too brutal for casuals so with the availability of "tactical" shooters the hardcore fast shooters will never be popular again.

On June 19 2011 00:18 TreXx wrote:
Some guys say if you look in lol you look the stream, so i think it's unfair to compare it.

I think Sc2 has a good future and you need skill for sc2. What you must do in LoL you must micro one unit omfg :D SC2 you controll 40 marines 8 tanks and so on.

LoL players are usually 12 years old!

On June 19 2011 00:18 TreXx wrote:
Some guys say if you look in lol you look the stream, so i think it's unfair to compare it.

I think Sc2 has a good future and you need skill for sc2. What you must do in LoL you must micro one unit omfg :D SC2 you controll 40 marines 8 tanks and so on.

LoL players are usually 12 years old!

On June 19 2011 00:04 xarthaz wrote:

Wrong. Quake is dead. Fast hard games are dead, no one wants to play these any more. There are excellent well polished balanced quake games with modern engines - quakeworld, warsow, painkiller. no one watches these because no one playes these. the quake learning curve is way too brutal for casuals so with the availability of "tactical" shooters the hardcore fast shooters will never be popular again.

On June 19 2011 00:25 Count9 wrote:
Isn't it good? Who the fuck cares which e-sport it is, as long as one e-sport spear heads the charge to change western culture (in general, I know some countries have no problem with it) and get people's attention it's good for everyone.

On June 19 2011 00:26 Jibba wrote:
100,000 people don't spontaneously start watching a stream. If they're getting those kinds of active viewers (and not the background client viewing that people have said LoL uses), they'd be talking about it somewhere. Are there any LoL forums moving at double the rate of TL during peak?

On June 19 2011 00:26 Jibba wrote:
100,000 people don't spontaneously start watching a stream. If they're getting those kinds of active viewers (and not the background client viewing that people have said LoL uses), they'd be talking about it somewhere. Are there any LoL communities moving at double the rate of TL during peak?

I don't doubt that LoL's numbers are pretty damn substantial and more power to them. But big numbers like that leave a trail.

On June 19 2011 00:29 LoLAdriankat wrote:

Solomid.net is the TL equivalent for LoL, and it's not nearly as active as TL. However, the official LoL forums is MUCH more active than TL (at least 3x more active than TL atm, I'd say), which shows how huge the casual fanbase of LoL is.

On June 18 2011 23:24 Probe1 wrote:
It's the biggest League of Legends event of the whole year. They'll never have numbers remotely close to this again until next year.

On June 19 2011 00:29 LoLAdriankat wrote:

Solomid.net is the TL equivalent for LoL, and it's not nearly as active as TL. However, the official LoL forums is MUCH more active than TL (at least 3x more active than TL atm, I'd say), which shows how huge the casual fanbase of LoL is.

On June 19 2011 00:32 xarthaz wrote:

Look at the facts bro. They have these insane numbers DESPITE very poor feature set for esports: no spec mode, no reps, no demos, no TV-mode. the devs fail terribly at delivering esport-oriented content, and yet the viewer count is insanely high. there can be no doubt: LoL is the ultimate esport game.

On June 19 2011 00:11 Aggnog wrote:



All those games you listed are way worse than any of the classic competitive multiplayer shooters that still have tournaments today.

On June 19 2011 00:36 floor exercise wrote:

It is pretty shocking how slowly they have developed LoL. I wonder if it's the limitations of Adobe Air as a platform or something. They seriously rake in money hand over feet but don't seem to show much for it. They are like a mini Blizzard

On June 19 2011 00:30 Aggnog wrote:


Not to mention the 1000+ page threads per day we had during MLG.

On June 19 2011 00:34 Jibba wrote:

I understand the community is huge, but are the forums actively moving as people talk about the matches? Aside from the fact that the website is still online, I'm looking at the forums and there's nothing comparable. It's like if you said 100,000 people went to a football match, but afterwards in the stadium there wasn't trash strewn everywhere and the bins were only half full. There has to be more evidence than just the viewer count.

On June 19 2011 00:39 floor exercise wrote:


Yes. A game just ended with this Xan team winning and there's already pages of threads http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=2

It's a legitimately huge game, partly because of the economic power of "free" and because it brought Dota to a level that so many people can enjoy. I think the conspiracy talk can be put to rest.

On June 19 2011 00:34 Jibba wrote:

I understand the community is huge, but are the forums actively moving as people talk about the matches? Aside from the fact that the website is still online, I'm looking at the forums and there's nothing comparable. It's like if you said 100,000 people went to a football match, but afterwards in the stadium there wasn't trash strewn everywhere and the bins were only half full. There has to be more evidence than just the viewer count.

On June 19 2011 00:39 floor exercise wrote:


Yes. A game just ended with this Xan team winning and there's already pages of threads http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=2

It's a legitimately huge game, partly because of the economic power of "free" and because it brought Dota to a level that so many people can enjoy. I think the conspiracy talk can be put to rest.

On June 19 2011 00:45 Jibba wrote:

Thanks, that's what I was looking for, except it won't load now. o.o When I was looking at that specific subforum before, though, the number of threads was high but the posts/views weren't.

On June 19 2011 00:47 Kipsate wrote:


Thats the thing in my opinion, League of Legends promotes there game/E-sports by throwing it in your face at the login screen, people who have never been on the League of Legends forums or Solomid.net tune in out of curiosity, casuals tune in out of curiosity. Which leads to such a high viewer count and thus interest.

They have no need of a website as teamliquid or such because they simply attract people through the actual game rather then a forum outside of the game.

On June 19 2011 00:51 waffleduck wrote:

I think you're missing the point of TL...

On June 18 2011 19:01 TheAwesomeAll wrote:
Dreamhack is competing with the gsl finals atm, lets not forget.
Also, im not sure about this, but some people say that everyone who logs onto LoL will get the stream.
edit: im pretty sure people logging in to LoL will automatically connect to the stream.Riot games uses
'Pando Media Booster'

messing with the viewer count.
End of the thread imo

On June 19 2011 01:08 Nqsty wrote:
Its very difficult to view high level play in LoL due to the design's limitations, no replays, VoDs etc; hence the second everyone can grab some insight on how high level matchs work, they jump on it, I myself have had the stream on all day.

Compare that to SC2 where no-one gives a sh*t about watching live because you can get all the replays and/or commentaries the next day.

Boom, there's your 150k viewers.

On June 19 2011 01:08 Nqsty wrote:


Also, can someone explain why LoL is so much easier than HoN ? High level ELO seems pretty strategic to me, and I've never played HoN fyi so I'm genuinely curious.

On June 19 2011 01:08 Nqsty wrote:
Its quite simple.

1- I love LoL.
2- Never seen competitive LoL or any kind of interaction with high level players.
3- Very rare to get the opportunity to watch such a stream.
4- Saturday afternoon.
5- Raining outside.

Its very difficult to view high level play in LoL due to the design's limitations, no replays, VoDs etc; hence the second everyone can grab some insight on how high level matchs work, they jump on it, I myself have had the stream on all day.

Compare that to SC2 where no-one gives a sh*t about watching live because you can get all the replays and/or commentaries the next day.

Boom, there's your 150k viewers.

Also, can someone explain why LoL is so much easier than HoN ? High level ELO seems pretty strategic to me, and I've never played HoN fyi so I'm genuinely curious.

On June 18 2011 18:56 GizmoPT wrote:
Its a free and easier game off course it will attract more people than starcraft xD

On June 19 2011 01:22 Snorkle wrote:
If LoL competitive scene is so amazing, why isn't it taking over as the flagship game for tournaments like SC2 did for MLG? Why is there only one tournament (besides WCG which has laughable games in its lineup such as Lost Sage) that is sponsored by Riot, the game developer? Something just seems a little quirky with their always extremely high viewership numbers and yet lack of a real tournament scene and/or sponsorship outside of the company itself.

On June 19 2011 01:20 Kira__ wrote:
When battle.net starts linking to streams from the main menu, we'll start seeing 100k viewers on streams. Right now, if you aren't on team liquid or reddit, you probably have no idea when tournaments are being played and where to watch them.

On June 19 2011 01:09 Earll wrote:
Kind of annoys me that everyone is calling LoL Casual. What does that even mean? How does one qualify a game as 'casual'? Because they removed some of the more annoying\harder to control mechanics from Dota, such as denying, LoL is suddenly a casual game and not worthy of the hardened e-sports core?

I Would actually goes as far as to say by my definition of casual, Starcraft (2) is a lot more geared towards casual, and more 'casual' friendly, than LoL. Not that that is a bad thing, it just is what it is. To learn a MOBA/Dota game like LoL and get past the level of complete "WTF I have no idea what just happened" you basically need to learn all the heroes, and all their 4 abilities + 1 passive, and there are like what 50+ heroes and a ton of items, so getting over the initial learning curve for LoL is a lot harder than Sc2 where you need to know the fewer and simpler units.

Obviously Sc2 has probably more depth strategically, and has like a looooooooooooooooooooottttttttt more room in terms of mechanics, but that does not make LoL casual friendly. Moba games are always very casual unfriendly in my opinion because of the way the community and the games work, and any new player is flamed and wished death upon for every game they enter.

That being said, LoL is still far from any form players performing perfectly, or any form of skill cap, and as other casual friendlygames ( take WoW Arena as an example) that tons of esports veterans flame, and throw away as 'jokes' because they are not as mechanically challenging as an FPS or a RTS, still will Never ever ever have any lone/single player reaching the 'skill cap' always playing perfectly and never making a mistake. Add that to the fact that this is not a single playing game, but the most important part of it is team play not the performance of a single player, and the "skillcap" is even more impossible to reach.

Looking at the games casted today, all of these players are the top of the LoL community basically, many of which practice several hours a day (Like several.) and there are still tons of mistakes being made, and some teams simply dominate others because they are better, even though they are both good teams\players. So are you saying absolutely all of the LoL players are just worse overall gamers than Starcraft players, and if a half decent starcraft player decided to move to LoL he would just instantly crush face and become the top of all brackets and tournaments? If this is the case then why dont 'you' just start A LoL team and dominate the world, I mean dreamhack is just 1 event\tournament and it has a 100k(?) prizepool.





Just throwing out a guess here but i think probably like 70-80+% of the people watching the streams are watching them more for entertainment value than to get insight on how high level matchs works (e.g more educational value), no?

On June 19 2011 01:21 InvXXVII wrote:



It's free and easier, and that is why it will not attract more people than SCII. It requires less commitment and mental stimulation, and that is exactly why people will tend to be less passionate towards this game. And given that it is easier to play, I have found that it is also easier to get bored while playing it.

On June 19 2011 01:29 Greem wrote:


I call the game casual when to learn it and be able to compete in high level you'll need around a week or even few days. I would qualify LoL as one of those games. For example in SC2 in 1 week you'd still be in bronze league, even after month of playing you won't pass diamond level, its takes time, patience and a lot of practice. I got nothing against LoL , or any other game, if you like it, go play it. You simply cannot compare the difficulty of SC2 to LoL, where you control a unit with 4 abilities i mean , do you really need to hear why ? "Sc2 has probably more depth strategically" Probably ? It definitively got more depth, its RTS for a reason. As i said if you like the game , go ahead play it.But comparing LoL and SC2 its like comparing chess and checkers.

On the other hand i don't really care if numbers are real, i'd like to see DH total numbers from all the stream from all the games, because in the end that what matters for eSports to continue to grow.

On June 19 2011 01:29 Greem wrote:


I call the game casual when to learn it and be able to compete in high level you'll need around a week or even few days. I would qualify LoL as one of those games. For example in SC2 in 1 week you'd still be in bronze league, even after month of playing you won't pass diamond level, its takes time, patience and a lot of practice. I got nothing against LoL , or any other game, if you like it, go play it. You simply cannot compare the difficulty of SC2 to LoL, where you control a unit with 4 abilities i mean , do you really need to hear why ? "Sc2 has probably more depth strategically" Probably ? It definitively got more depth, its RTS for a reason. As i said if you like the game , go ahead play it.But comparing LoL and SC2 its like comparing chess and checkers.

On the other hand i don't really care if numbers are real, i'd like to see DH total numbers from all the stream from all the games, because in the end that what matters for eSports to continue to grow.

On June 19 2011 01:33 Legatus Lanius wrote:


if thats true, then why has sc2 attracted more people than bw despite requiring less commitment?

On June 19 2011 01:43 R0YAL wrote:

SC2 has more depth with a single race than all of the characters of LoL combined. I played LoL until a few months ago and after I played all of the characters it got real boring real fast. Just having 4 abilities is a huge limiting factor esports wise. LoL would need you to control all 5 of the characters 1v1 instead of 5v5 for it to be able to compete with sc2.

On June 19 2011 01:43 R0YAL wrote:

SC2 has more depth with a single race than all of the characters of LoL combined. I played LoL until a few months ago and after I played all of the characters it got real boring real fast. Just having 4 abilities is a huge limiting factor esports wise. LoL would need you to control all 5 of the characters 1v1 instead of 5v5 for it to be able to compete with sc2.

On June 19 2011 01:28 SnetteL wrote:
I played lol (until about a month or 3 ago) and i was quite high ranked on EU (top 100) but i can never see it grow like SC.

They patch the damn thing every week and tbh, it's not as entertaining to watch as sc2 at all.

It's fun to play because it's a chill, low APM game but if you don't have enough friends you'll get tired of it quite quickly because like any gamer community, the community is awful.

But playing 5on5 with friends is really a lot of fun .

edit: for lol players wanting to know how high elo works; IMHO it's all about thinking, strategy. You need to filter every bit of info out of everything you can see and make decisions accordingly, being at the right place at the right time, that's what it's all about.

Number Five” : Everyone in Korea are casual gamers.

Most of you new guys come from kotaku, destructoid, gamefaqs, ign, gametrailers, something awful and hell even 4chan. But one of the most common misconceptions foreign gamers have about Korean gamers is that “Koreans are all Hardcore players”

This is false in every way possible. Gaming in Korea is not a hobby, but a culture. People in Korea play games to relieve stress because they already drink and smoke a lot. Many people in Korea play games to enjoy not win. What Blizzard is doing is shoving ESPORTS down Korea (and everywhere else)'s throat not gaming.

The order should not be Esport → Everyone get's all competitive → Even my mom plays SC2!

NO! It should be the other fucking way around

Even my mom plays SC2! → Everyone get's all competitive → ESPORTSSSSSSSSS

When Blizzard said they were aiming for Esports, I knew this game wouldn't do AS well. How can a game be A+++++++ BW quality when they aim for Esports instead of game quality?

When you go to Korea and tell a bunch of casual gamers who played games for fun that 'this is the best new competitive game ever and your blood will boil', who the fuck would buy it?

On June 19 2011 01:43 R0YAL wrote:

SC2 has more depth with a single race than all of the characters of LoL combined. I played LoL until a few months ago and after I played all of the characters it got real boring real fast. Just having 4 abilities is a huge limiting factor esports wise. LoL would need you to control all 5 of the characters 1v1 instead of 5v5 for it to be able to compete with sc2.

On June 19 2011 01:29 Greem wrote:


I call the game casual when to learn it and be able to compete in high level you'll need around a week or even few days. I would qualify LoL as one of those games. For example in SC2 in 1 week you'd still be in bronze league, even after month of playing you won't pass diamond level, its takes time, patience and a lot of practice. I got nothing against LoL , or any other game, if you like it, go play it. You simply cannot compare the difficulty of SC2 to LoL, where you control a unit with 4 abilities i mean , do you really need to hear why ? "Sc2 has probably more depth strategically" Probably ? It definitively got more depth, its RTS for a reason. As i said if you like the game , go ahead play it.But comparing LoL and SC2 its like comparing chess and checkers.

On the other hand i don't really care if numbers are real, i'd like to see DH total numbers from all the stream from all the games, because in the end that what matters for eSports to continue to grow.

On June 19 2011 01:33 Legatus Lanius wrote:


if thats true, then why has sc2 attracted more people than bw despite requiring less commitment?

On June 18 2011 22:30 floor exercise wrote:
"esports is the greatest man, let's grow esports, gotta support that esports. Stop hurting esports man, we need to get esports into the olympics. What's that, League of Legends has more viewers? That game's not an esport fuck that casual game for newbies, it's only popular because it's easier to play than dota"

On June 19 2011 01:58 Proxity wrote:
The thing is a lot of people are missing.

League of Legends is not balanced, and can be swayed by things outside of player skil...

On June 18 2011 23:03 spinesheath wrote:

Are you trying to argue that LoL is harder to understand as a spectator than SC2 and therefore it is not very attractive for viewers?
Well sorry man, that's quite obviously not the case. 130,000 viewers.

LoL is very easy to understand for a spectator. I had no trouble watching it without any previous experience in MOBAs. (DotA and HoN on the other hand... lol I still can't see shit when I watch those, and I got plenty of LoL experience under my belt by now)


Fun fact: Riot has not been doing very well at promoting tournaments just until now.

On June 19 2011 02:01 chenchen wrote:


It really hasn't.

I'm almost sure that more BW games are played around the world than SC2 games.

On June 19 2011 02:01 chenchen wrote:


It really hasn't.

I'm almost sure that more BW games are played around the world than SC2 games.

On June 19 2011 02:05 freddievercetti wrote:


No its just that the gametype is too centric around heroes and building their items. Alot of the time its sort of boring watching players creep and go back and forth before initiating, trying to zone control each other. The items are located in heroes inventory, so they buff the hero up, as opposed to building a larger army in starcraft. Its much more exciting for a non-player to watch a large Starcraft battle or constant harrassment then it is to look at 10 heroes, located around different parts of the map. My sister hardly watches LoL when I play but does like watching the occasional Starcraft because it is just more exciting, especially when Tastosis casts on GomTV during the lull periods. She doesn't play computer games at all and this is what I feel is the problem for MOBA games for attracting non-player viewers.

Sort of like how we watch hockey games even though we don't play hockey games or even understand some of the rules behind it. Its just exciting to watch.

On June 19 2011 02:09 shoJu wrote:



The only problem with your arguement is that she watches Tasteless cast therefore the whole argument becomes invalid

On June 19 2011 01:34 BlueBird. wrote:


I agree with you that SC2 is much more competitive and has a higher skill cap, but to say ANY game with even a tiny competitive scene or pitiful competitive scene takes only a few days to be at a top level at is an ignorant statement, LoL and SC2 is a game played by humans, and humans error, the goal of both games is to make the least amount of errors, both games theoretical skill caps can not be reached, if I play a game all the time and practice with my team mates, and you play for a week, and I actually practice and discuss the game, and you just show up after a week of play... yeah, there is a reason korean players consistently do better than foreigners in the starcraft scene, Practice makes perfect.... The players playing right now as we post on this forum discussing this issue are playing for 50,000 dollars, to play a video game, with 150,000 people watching them play.. a video game. If it's so easy why are you not there winning that money and getting all that attention. It was a paid trip for those that qualified, not really any excuses you can make...