Didn't see a thread on this even though it's already kind of old news but the WSVG has been canceled. The future of competitive arena's in in limbo atm. Ming and Gameriot are trying to get something rolling but without any blizzard backing who knows how well that will go.

WSVG Cancelled

Introducing Gameriot WOW Tournaments from World of Ming | GAMERIOT

I'm not sure that I mind. For the most part I did not watch WSVG because of the long breaks, and the announcing that was well below my level of knowledge in WoW. Other than deriving enjoyment actually watching it; I'm not sure how I could have benefited at all from the existence of competitive WoW (maybe more longevity in the game?).

I sort of felt that people often enjoyed using its matches as examples to support their arguments for their vision of class balance. I think it stifled innovation for the average players to semi-serious players, because it seems a lot of players devoted their efforts to mimicking the top WSVG teams. I have not thought about it too much, and I would be interested in hearing ways in which it was a good thing; it seems a lot of people (like Ming) just assumed it was without ever justifying that assertion.

Stifling innovation? It's not like adjusting strategies based on watching what successful players do is anything new. People download movies of raid encounters and adjust/mimic successful strategies all the time. People download class pvp videos and often learn/pick up new things to do and employ making them more successful. There will always be growing trends that everyone spazzes out about, and eventually someone, somewhere, will find an even more successful counter or Blizzard will tone it down.
I think such videos serve an instructional purpose. They've always been around and they'll always be around. it's not like cancellation of WSVG will stop people from mimicking FRAPSed matches of successful teams.

Yah, I watched the 3v3 finals on CBS Sports with my gf a while back, and the show did not seem to be geared toward WoWers at all (even tho we are their main audience). They kept explaining spells instead of showing actual stats and spec of the character. It's like explaining rules of football that everyone knows instead of stats or background for the football player. It could've also used better editting of the gameplay videos instead of showing a live video jumping from screen to screen like in sports broadcasting.

IMO, they should've started on the web with perhaps YouTube for the cheaper production cost and more freedom on release format.

Bottom line is, if they had given more thought into it, and maybe required all the crews to know the game, they might have lasted longer.

Huh, the CBS thing was a random little feature that seemed out of place anyway -- most people watched the webcast, which was terrible early on but got much better commentators by Toronto.

Personally I actively enjoyed watching the matches even though I'm nowhere near that level myself, and it got me much more interested in the 3v3 bracket and arena PvP in general. I'm sad that the LA and subsequent events aren't going to happen, and hope something legitimate does appear to fill that void. I guess a lot of people roll their eyes at the whole thing, but personally I really did like watching the event.

It's not supprising, and goes to support my reply to an article on the pvpsecene website; wow was not designed to be spectator sport. The classic example of counter-strike comes to mind, it's a completely balanced game minus latency difference, and fits perfectly with lan play. Players start on even ground, with their skill, strats, and communication being the only difference. Some people bring up random reflexes but compared to class makeup and gear differences, I find it to be a non factor. WSVG came in with the best intentions and gave it a good shot, but the game wasn't designed for it. I imagine Blizzard's next mmo/game (or even the next expansion) will have some kind of interface like HLTV.

I don't understand why there is no "Save Replay" option at the end of arenas. I would think this would be the single biggest step towards fostering large scale interest in competitive PVP within WoW.

Video recordings simply don't cut it due to a combination of poor resolution making details hard to make out and the fact that so much happens in Arena (Especially in 5v5) that viewing games at a single pass can mean missing out on half the game. Also the large file sizes can make downloading multiple recordings much more of a chore than downloading a bunch of replay files.

I can understand why recording in the normal WoW environment would be infeasible but I would have thought that implementing a replay feature into a small scale environment like arenas wouldn't be too great an ordeal considering the returns they would see in community building.

Isn't it a possibility though that it might have been canceled due to how Blizzard deals with class balance changes? As it is now it takes them months to even make the smallest adjustments to a class due to the way even small changes can affect pve massively. I don't think this game is really suited for tournament play due to that, a tournament should be a display of player skill, but as it is now for some classes its impossible to reach such a tournament due to them not being viable in that kind of pvp no matter how good the player is.

It's got a lot more to do with WSVG's revenue situation than anything Blizzard did or didn't do. I can't comment on the spectator situation, but I'm bummed - the events were a lot of fun. I just hope I eventually see the rest of my prize money, but I'm not expecting to.

Thats a great idea. If they could come up with some way to record the data behind the match and then let you recreate the action in some type of local client instead of a raw single POV video.

Imagine roving around an arena from any angle in a special playback client with full pause-rewind type of features...

This is a great idea, and the UI people seem to be more or less up to date (minus the alt-tab bug). Why stop with arena matches though? The ability to merge some sort of action log, and collate it with chat/combat, then play it back in a local viewer would be a huge benefit to PvE too.

I would personally be more interested in these kind of things (and competitive WoW in general) if the issue of gear balance was removed, I'm not sure how you'd do it exactly since obviously different players will like slightly different gear setups, but I'd love it if they made a stand alone tournament where say players all have same base gear with open sockets - by this I mean no socket bonus, effectively giving free customisation (e.g.S2+vet gear+free choice of any gems available)

Granted most top level teams probably run near identical gear anyways so I guess this late night post is really a ramble about nothing

I have no idea how WoW's viability as an eSport has anything to do with the WSVG's cancellation given that WoW was one of only 4-6 games that were being played at each event. This was a cancellation of the league, not the game. And really WoW is the primary reason why the vast majority of people were interested in the WSVG... they certainly weren't tuning in to see the best locals duke it out in Fight Night. If anything the WSVG is a testament to WoW's potential future in other leagues.

Considering there was a member of every class represented at Toronto's top 8, I'd say this is more of a whine anything else. Yes, certain classes will have to play at 100% while others can hit hamstring and mortal strike and be effective, but that's where player skill comes in.

EDIT: To be a bit more on topic, WSVG simply had too many events over the course of one summer. To host 5+ events when most tournaments are annual is a huge strain on the investors. I do hope some other tournament picks up WoW, Toronto was really fun, despite all the problems they had with setup.