Sydane

In one hole in the playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate, they had almost exactly the same putt, Tiger's was slightly closer, so Rocco shot first. He hit his perfectly, it followed the line, broke where expected, and went in the hole. Tiger made his putt, shot it just as well, went on the same line... and didn't break. For no real reason other than it just didn't. Now it's not truly random, it's obviously caused by the physics of the ball going over the grass and the countless hundreds of millions of interactions that happen to cause it to move. The miss was not caused by the putt not being hit correctly. Stupid comparisons like "what if the ball disappeared" don't apply. And you certainly don't see Tiger crying that he got screwed by the universe.

Everything that happens in the real world is subject to millions of influences that don't exist in the game. A shadowbolt isn't going to get blown a quarter inch to the side. It isn't going to crack, or do any number of other unpredictable things. A sap isn't going to glance off someone's head. You want a real life non-sport, life is freaking random example? In the course of one month, I knew two people that got shot through the neck in Iraq. As in, in one side and out the other, not grazing. One died instantly. The other was walking around a couple days later laughing about it with small patches of gauze on either side. I know countless other similar examples as well. None of that happens in a game where 1 + 1 = 2 always, unless they program it to sometimes not be. Yes, they to choose to implement randomness because you can't just count on "oops, I hit the wrong button" to make things interesting.

If anyone in this discussion is a bona fide, competed in tournaments arena player I'd love to hear it, and hear their opinions out of curiosity, because I'd be willing to bet they are just as split over the issue as us non-rates. But if anything, the lower rated players are who Blizzard designs for. You don't have to keep the fanboys happy, they are always there, and when one leaves, two more step up to take their place. Keeping the masses happy is what pays the bills.

If people want to compete in arenas and be successful at it, good for them. I don't have the least bit of problem with someone being upset when they get screwed by the RNG, nor do I just think they should just get better, because sometimes you do the right thing and still lose. As Shakes said above, people don't like to face the fact that randomness, or at least effective randomness, has huge impacts on life and competition. Humans as a whole don't like the feeling of being out of control, especially rational, "left brain" types who prefer numbers and analysis, as I'm sure most of us on this forum are. If Blizzard released a WoW based FPS I'm sure it would be tremendously successful, and if you want fair, balanced pvp, this certainly isn't the game for you, for countless reasons above and beyond the RNG.

I also contend that there isn't a "large untapped audience" for watching WoW as a Sport, whether pve, arena, pvp, or otherwise. Why? Because people would rather just play the game. This isn't football, where you can't play it alone at midnight but you can watch highlights. Any time you are watching someone else compete, you could be playing yourself. So while you may watch things in passing from time to time, most people aren't going to choose to spend large amounts of their time and emotional energy watching someone else do something they could just be doing themselves. So in reality, the audience for it as an eSport would be non-players, and that audience hasn't really materialized for anything, much less WoW arenas.

To be blunt, does anyone really think arenas will be taken seriously at large, even just in the eSport realm? I certainly don't. Heck, WoW is played by well over 1% of the US population and it isn't even taken seriously, much less a sub-game of it that is only taken seriously by less than 1% of its players. I just hope Blizzard doesn't completely ruin the rest of the game trying to make WoW something it won't ever be.