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Sweden33719 Posts
On November 06 2008 10:34 LosingID8 wrote:
great job haji, so this is the article you were telling me about lol
wcg is sooooo bad.
especially this year when they have "partner time: microsoft" instead of showing any of the semifinals for games such as bw or cs
but it's ok because we get to watch the consolation 3rd/4th place match for GUITAR HERO YEAH!!!!!
*groan*
Do I even dare to ask what "partner time with microsoft" actually is? The name makes me think of an over-commercialized childrens show..
Haji, very good read.
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Then in 2005, Dead or Alive is included in the list. I could probably list at least 10 games past and present in the fighting game genre that deserved to be included instead of DoA, taking into account community support, popularity, along with competitive legitimacy. Three years later even today, DoA is still not considered a legitimate fighting game title no matter what PueroRican claims. The ONLY reason DoA was included was because of the dollars Microsoft provided to WCG. Oh, and it also looks pretty! There is simply no logical defense one can take to support DoA’s inclusion. And so a title that hadn’t even gone through the arcades, with a miniscule player base entered the fray while games such as Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, CvS, MvC, SSBM, etc etc stood on the sidelines despite a larger fan base, world wide player base, proven game play and balance at the highest levels… the list goes on.
The reason I first wanted to watch WCG was to see the top Street Fighter players competing, but instead I saw that they were hosting DOA-WTF?. It was then I saw that WCG was simply a place a event where game developers with deep pockets go to promote their new next generation software. If Daniel Lee wasn't hosting, I wouldn't even bother with the event since it means squat.
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I actually didn't know it was that bad. Wow...
Good read though, good read~
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Sweden33719 Posts
On November 06 2008 13:25 BraveGhost wrote:
I enjoyed the article..
However, the comments on the game selection is a little off.. Your obviously going to be biased cause of your game preference, and I will be the first to say that SC BW is the best competitive game ever, but does it really mean other games shouldn't be played internationally?? That's like saying that no games should have a chance but yours.
Halo for example is a pretty established competitive FPS, and there is a clear skill gap between the pros and the am bracket, its not the best FPS ever, and Halo 3 is actually less competitive then Halo 1, but its still a good game. However WCG is a joke as far as halo community is concerned, not a single top 16 team attended from the US, I could have probably came in top three if my team had attended.. Canada had one top 16 team attend... but mostly due to the scheduling. Who schedules a WCG qualifier the same weekend as the playoffs for seeds for the national championships happen in Dallas??? Now the U.S.A., the only place Halo is played as far as the competitive gaming world goes, is not going to medal.. Fail on WCG's part.
I don't think that's what he's saying, Halo was mentioned as an example because when it was picked, it was completely new and unproven. Obviously today there are far worse choices than Halo..
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It is annoying that they sell the event to uninitiated fans and the curious as the epitemy of competitive videogaming. I hadn't thought of that before
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On November 06 2008 11:22 Roxen000 wrote:
Thank you for this article
Australia had its own Cluster-Fuck with the WCG this year. A lot of the WCG games weren't supported in Australia (including Starcraft :< ). Although there was a decent enough excuse for this, which was, there was just not enough gamers to support each game.
As far as I know, there was no online qualifiers in Australia for any game this year (could be wrong), but there was just 1 or 2 locations chosen in each state of Australia and people would just turn up, pay their entry fee and compete. The winners of each state would then compete in Sydney for the spots to Germany.
There was one incident where the Aus WCG had chosen a specific location to hold one State's qualifiers and people turned up on the day to a completely closed venue. That was it. Apparently they had organized the qualifiers to be played at an internet cafe but because of poor communication it just didn't happen. So because of poor communication and planning, one WHOLE state of Australia was not represented at the national finals. Ridiculous.
There was also another issue where many players who won the state finals, didn't get flights or accommodation to Sydney for the national final. They just had to get there themselves. Where as some people got everything paid for. It was as if the WCG Aus organizes just sat down and said "Ok. Everyone who wins from these states gets paid flights and accommodation but fuck the rest."
Anyway, good article. I thought I would just share that with you guys.
Yeah, its very sad that the organisers in Australia are absoutely useless.
Horror story
I was once a respected member of the cyberslam community (the guys that are in charge of WCG Aus). They were given a tournament to run. A tournament that Aussies could win and get a free flight to somewhere in Asia to compete for a 10k prize. Not bad. The call went out for referees and I signed up. To my horror, I found out I was one of TWO referees for the entire event. I immediately voiced my concerns saying that there needed to be more refs. However I was told that there wouldnt be that many games that needed to be ref'ed.
How? I thought, for a chance at 10k, your going to have a lot of people competing. However I soon realised why when I looked at the schedule for the event. They had decided the best way to run the event was a single elimination 16 person online tournament. How to get into the tournament? Simple, be one of the first 16 people to sign up. I watched horrified as registration opened and the event filled up in seconds.
This however didnt exactly impress the Australian Warcraft 3 community. A tournament that offered the chance at 10k was about to be played by a bunch of nobodys. The best players in Aus had missed out on a spot and the uproar was massive. The response from cyberslam was "We weren't aware that there would be so many people entereing this tournament". After some negotiating, cyberslam gave the hosting rights up to a Warcraft 3 site, but their sheer inability to properely run a tournament almost cost the warcraft 3 community greatly.
This company is in charge of WCG Aus. And year after year they show that they are still unable to run a tournament effectively and professionally.
Great article btw. I agree with every point made.
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United States17042 Posts
Good article Haji. It's pretty bad over in the WCG system, and I think that it's going to take some competition in the esports arena to force them to do better.
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Good article, good read, I hope in the future WCG sucks less. I assume that as e-sports gets bigger WCG will naturally suck less, it's just that the audience isn't big enough to make them care as much yet.
For another wcg sucks story:
I won't mention names, but my friend played vs someone and won the first game, but couldn't play a second game. He asked the player if he could postpone, and the player agreed, and they had a wcg admin also agree to the postponement. So then the guy doesn't show up the next day, blocks my friend on msn, and reports he won despite having no evidence of such, and being 0-1. For some reason, a few days later, it's posted on the wcg brackets that the guy had beaten my friend lol. So I badly copy the guy's hotkeys and fake a short replay, and my friend submits that to a wcg admin along with the other replay and says here're the games, I won, advance me. And they advance him lol. Just, no questions asked at all rofl. They just don't care at all. This was usa wcg btw.
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Another Australian horror story everyone most likely still remembers from last year.
When Fabian Baumann entered the Olympics of video games over the weekend, he intended only to watch.
Little did he know he would walk away with an all-expenses-paid trip to Seattle and the opportunity to represent Australia against the best in the world.
As a last-minute entrant to the Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars tournament at the national finals of the World Cyber Games, held at Luna Park, he first had to overcome one big issue: he had never played the game before.
WCG Aus had announced that there was not going to be a C&C3 player sent that year. However on the day, they changed their minds. None of the competative C&C players showed up and this guy went on to win the spot.
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lol going from DOA4 to VF5 is going from a mediocre game that nobody plays to a good game that nobody plays. And the most current version of VF5 that is actually played by anybody isn't even on console, so while Japan (and to a lesser extent, Korea) plays VF like mad, they're not even playing the same game, as I'm pretty sure VF is being included as a nod to its 360 port (Microsoft~) and I'm 99% sure that WCG isn't going to shell out the money to buy a bunch of hella expensive VF5:R setups.
Ironically, they probably could have gone with Soul Calibur IV instead, which has a much bigger player base (ie. people actually play it outside of Japan), is a newer game, and the console version is the current version and that will continue to be the case thanks to DLC. And it's on 360, too. Dunno why they chose VF5, other than being out of touch with what people actually play and thus compete in~
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I felt that the treatment of SC:BW at WCG USA was borderline offensive. They only had, what, one staged game? And, it was a loser's final! There were a slew of technological failures which made some of the VODs unwatchable! And come on, it's ridiculous when there aren't even sound-proof headphones, so the commentators can't even talk about what's happening in the game! I guess they just don't care...
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AWESOME quote in the end. Fits the context SO well, brilliantly written. Hope this article changes something, or at least enlighten the ones still in the dark. Nicely done, enjoyed it thouroughly
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Great article! I have been "working" for the SC community on my country (yes I know WHERE IS GUATEMALA AGAIN??!!!!),.. anyway, I have been involved since WCG 2003 as a player and help with "organization" since 2006/2007.
I have see a lot of things to improve in that time, and sadly most of them havent change in this years, I will share with you my memories about it later... I need to type it down first, I am going to loook for some mail I sended to WCG organizers first and make a "little" report for TL community, if WCG check this site and the community opinion who knows, maybe it will the start of the the improvement...
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Jeez, I knew things were sketch at WCG but I didn't realize it was this bad. Thanks for the info. Canada not being able to send JF (or even that testie character) was a huuuge disappointment.
Time for a new entity because obviously I don't see how the WCG will ever be anything Olympic-like. Has there ever been an attempt by anyone to have an IOC branch off? Maybe an ICOC?
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1226 Posts
On November 06 2008 15:27 Fen wrote:Another Australian horror story everyone most likely still remembers from last year. Show nested quote +When Fabian Baumann entered the Olympics of video games over the weekend, he intended only to watch.
Little did he know he would walk away with an all-expenses-paid trip to Seattle and the opportunity to represent Australia against the best in the world.
As a last-minute entrant to the Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars tournament at the national finals of the World Cyber Games, held at Luna Park, he first had to overcome one big issue: he had never played the game before. WCG Aus had announced that there was not going to be a C&C3 player sent that year. However on the day, they changed their minds. None of the competative C&C players showed up and this guy went on to win the spot.
Ah man. I forgot about that shit. Thinking about that pisses me off =/
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I think a big part of the funding problem lies in the lack of a wider audience. It's probably fairly difficult to find funding for events like WCG since there are so few viewers. Organizers (WCG) probably have to bend over backwards to accommodate the sponsors they actually do get. And when you don't have enough funding to cover certain countries, the only thing you really can do is exclude them. A lot of the funding problems are inevitable for an large event catering to an embryonic field. They may have just overextended themselves.
That's just the funding part though, there really is no excuse for the shitty planning/execution.
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That was a very excellent read. I really hope the unparalleled corruption doesn't carry over and continue when Starcraft 2 is released .. or even after this year at all. And to a point, I agree with you, Inc. Who knows where this game would be if WCG didn't hold it, however I must still support Haji.
On November 06 2008 10:26 soudo wrote:
Amazing and enlightening article.
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Very nice article. It's a pleasure to read, pretty smart and to the point.
I think Korea is the only one doing right - having the most competitive game on the gaming scene.
I've been a WCG referee for 3 years in WarCraft3, if I'm not mistaken from 2003-2005.
I always wondered why there were some games and some weren't there. At least I consider WC3 competitive enough and still do, it's just too specific in my eyes.
And what was really pleasurable but we always had SC and most people I knew were proud of that (I don't know anything about after 2005, never cared).
I sincerely hope Blizzard puts the most effort in SC2 rather than any other of their titles, to make it at least as good as SC:BW is gameplay vise.
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its just business. a worldwide competition like this should have never have even happened because who would pay attention to it, let alone sponsor it? all the companies involved in this have something gain.
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EPT
