Guild Wars 2

Could not watch the ESL on the 23rd of November. I just watched it and I can say that the casters are truly entertaining. Love to hear their thoughts on the match-ups and the history of the various team while giving some great coverage of the fights taking place.

Favorite match from the stream of the 23rd of November : Apex Prime vs Team PZ.
This match-up was super exciting and close. There were lots of action and we saw many game changing moments in all 3 of the matches. I felt like it was more action packed (maybe due to the builds being more bursty and less tanky?).

Anyway, thanks to all the teams that participated in the ESL so far and thanks to the casters for the work put towards that. Will be looking forward for more!

Really? They say the same stuff over and over again, and I don’t blame them. Its mostly ‘blah blah blah will be able to hold the point 1 v 2 for quite some time’ and general just counting heads saying its 3 v 4 at X location.

Well that’s how Sports commentary works in general. Mostly stating facts that you can see for yourself and the occasional bit of extra information here and there.

starcraft has 2 very distinct styles of commentary; play by play and tactical, but thats beside the point. I actually think the ESL has good casters, but they have crap material to work with.

Other Esports like DotA have situations in every game that creates anticipation. The 3-5 seconds before a player teleports to defend a tower creates anticipation of a team fight. An enemy team using a team conceal to stalk the enemy team creates anticipation. These are things the casters can work with.

In GW2 you have casters telling you some guy got finished, only that in 15 seconds he’ll be back doing the same bunker sustain kitten that is Conquest.

Ramoth.9064:

starcraft has 2 very distinct styles of commentary; play by play and tactical, but thats beside the point. I actually think the ESL has good casters, but they have crap material to work with.

Other Esports like DotA have situations in every game that creates anticipation. The 3-5 seconds before a player teleports to defend a tower creates anticipation of a team fight. An enemy team using a team conceal to stalk the enemy team creates anticipation. These are things the casters can work with.

In GW2 you have casters telling you some guy got finished, only that in 15 seconds he’ll be back doing the same bunker sustain kitten that is Conquest.

Let’s be honest about why GW2 has gone e-sport this year.. 1.) Leading up to HoT release, sPvP was really the only fun to be had in the game 2.) By early 2015 ANet had finally balanced sPvP in the game to the point that it was really worth it. These two things lead to the sPvP side of the game being the fasted growing aspect of GW2 leading into HoT. Now that HoT is available, Raiding is stealing a good number of players. Players are always leaving because the balance that took so long to achieve is gone and the Elite Specs dominate. So they pretty much busted sPvP right before the ESL Pro season started… The casters are doing the best they can with what they are being given

Well, I feel like it is true that the material is limited, it is still week one of the ESL and some matches are still complete blowout where a team dominate so hard and there is no anticipation. But just take a look at Team PZ vs Apex Prime, this match was golden. I did prefer NA matches so far, EU were pretty much one sided sadly.

Also, take into account that GW2 ESL take place on a monday (so not going against big twitch top stream such as LoL or Dota2 ESL). It was quite interesting to watch and I plan to watch it today on live.