Guild Wars 2 – The Spectator Side of Things

A look at the possibilites behind the spectator and eSports side of Guild Wars 2.

Since Guild Wars 2 was shown to the public audience back in 2010, especially its PvP part, everyone has been wondering if it’s possible for GW2 to become an eSports game, and since World of Warcraft had some relative success in it, if GW2 could surpass it. ArenaNet, the company behind GW2, has always stated that the game will focus specially on balance between classes, skill instead of gear, and the well-known ‘less is more’ rule. The balance issue as well as the entire PvP system in it shall be in other articles, but in this one I’ll focus on the observer aspect.

Most of us have watched games of Starcraft II or League of Legends for sure, since they are the mainstream games in eSports, we must look at them as examples. The joy the spectator gets from watching a 1on1 on Starcraft II when a burrowed Baneling kills dozens of Marines, people scream and get excited and cheer louder and louder, or when an ultimate is supremely well landed and that turns the tides of battle in League of Legends, that’s what makes eSports what it is today. They must be exciting to watch, and there must be certain game aspects that are able to deliver this kind of excitement in certain situations.

Does Guild Wars 2 have what it takes to create this? Even though the game launched 2 weeks ago, the base mechanics are there, as well as the production quality, and the infamous balance ArenaNet is so proud of. It takes some time for a game to become successful in eSports, but ArenaNet has already stated that they will focus on the competitive side of PvP, as well as the spectator side of things.

For a game to be successful in eSports it must be simple to a point that it is easily understandable to the general audience, both people that know the game and people that don't so they can be introduced to it easily. One of the key aspects for an easy understandability is the visual art. GW2 is well known for its visual art department, and they have succeeded in it. The world is beautifully rich, the effects are stunning and the kind of art style is unique to the MMO genre. The animations and spell effects are good to the point that they are easily distinguished and understandable to the general audience, in other words, the spell effect speaks for itself instead of relying in other aspects to be described. There is a slight problem in this, ArenaNet might have to simplify them to a certain point. Now that the game has been out for 2 weeks, people have noticed that in a group of 10+ the effects get mixed up too much, there’s too many effects and it is hard to tell who’s casting what on who. This specially happens on WvW where hundreds of players battle against each other. But since we are talking about competitive PvP, so far being 5v5 only, and maybe 3v3 in the future, this is less of an issue, but still if ArenaNet could make effects simpler for competitive PvP, it would be better for the general spectator. On the other hand, developers constantly defend that PvP must be playable “visually” only, in other words, you as a player, and as a spectator, must easily identify boons, conditions and abilities, and that’s what’s happening so far, apart from the spells effects. If ArenaNet take this in consideration, not only it will improve the PvP aspect of the game, but also the probability that more people will follow and understand what’s going on inside the game.

The other point I would like to mention is the observer mode. For this Starcraft II is the perfect example. The observer inside the game is able to fully control the camera, follow the POV of the player he wants to follow, talk with other spectators without disturbing the game, read data and statistics, etc. This system is perfect for eSports, making things so much simpler and easier to understand what’s going on, and giving the spectator an insight and immersion level that it wouldn’t be possible otherwise. For someone to be excited, they must be involved in it to a certain point, and that’s what’s lacking in Guild Wars 2. There’s no observer mode like this, and personally I think it should be a priority for ArenaNet to put this in their to-do list, if they want it to be a true a successful eSports game. Since we’re talking about an MMO, this hasn’t been done before. WoW had some kind of observer mode but it wasn’t good enough, maybe that was one of the reasons why it didn’t have so much followers as it could have had. Guild Wars 2 is dethroning WoW from being the best MMO to date, and I’m sure ArenaNet’s team is more than capable of finding and building a solution that’s both effective for the in-game spectator as well as for the outside the game spectator (streaming, etc).

When will they start focusing on the competitive side of things, we don’t know. The game launched 2 weeks ago and their focus is the server stability and major features like PvE, trading, crafting, WvW, etc. I’m sure that as soon as the game enters another level of stability, they’ll start gathering feedback from the community and focusing on the competitive side of things. Anxiously, we’ll wait...

Pedro 'Moriah' Benjamim