Guild Wars 2

Pros:

• Introducing Clips: Those were amazing and fun to watch to gain an overall view about the Team Captains and get a ‘personal connection’ to them.
• Stage: The stage was nicely done and put together with nice colors, complimenting the logo and lights effect
• Host: The host, who’s probably new to Guild Wars 2 actually did a good job at hosting the Tournament. Ofcourse, it was done by a professional but I felt to share this nevertheless. He was fluent and had the crowd started.
• Casters: The casters did a great job overall. Great job Daniel & James!
• Analysts: Quite surprised about Chro Nick being so active as an analyst overall and the way he could overlay points towards his partners. Also his English pronunciation was off the charts for someone who doesn’t speak English as main language! Props Chro Nick! Wish I could speak English as fluent as you!
• Advertisements: Now this is a double-edged sword which I will have to split in Pro but also in a Con. It was shorter compared to Boston and China’s ads, which was followed by a solid transition back into another match. Total ad time was like 5-8mins max
• Introducing teams and its members: Before the matches were going to start, teams got introduced with a picture with names to its respective owner. This again gave a personal touch, so people know who they’re watching
• Keyboards and mice: I did notice most players were playing with a different mouse and/or keyboard compared to its partner. I don’t know if they are the player’s personal equipemnt brought from home or ArenaNet/Gamescon actually was able to deliver what the player wanted. Me personally I would love to continue seeing this in the future LAN’s. I remember seeing every player had to use the standard SteelSeries equipment in previous LAN’s. This is something that scared me away of even trying to join a LAN since I cannot play without a Naga/G600 (12 sidebuttons) by my side due my left hand being less responsive. Quite sure there are more like this amongst us!
• Prizes: This is again a double-edged sword split into a pro and con. I felt the prizing was solid, certainly for our “Flex-Machine” Toker who got the MVP prize (Alienware PC if Im not mistaken). The Team Captain got his hands on a brand new GTX980 (4GB DDR5 If Im not mistaken) which is a very solid GPU. Now I’m not sure if all team members got something asside the prize money, there were more GTX 980’s lying on the floor, next to the Host.
• Announcement: It was a great PvP announcement for Veterans amongst us to hear leagues are finally going to be a thing. I remember making a big Word Doc for ESL 1-2 years ago (while I was an ESL Admin), suggesting leagues and how they should work. So to hear we’re getting Leagues inside Guild Wars 2 PvP is one of the best things that could’ve been announced! This was quickly followed up by Curse Entertainment with a bit more in-depth about the announcement on their Youtube channel. I’ll link the specific video below after my feedback! It also makes we wonder why Curse would announce this.. I’m hoping for an Ingame Curse VoIP personally. (despite many ppl are against this, which can be discussed in another thread)
• Pause scene: The pauses were quite short and had nice background music if you ask me. Made me even wonder if that music is HoT specific music? If so, wow!

Cons:

• Introducing Clips: As said above in Pros, I loved the personal touch of the team Captains introducements. Although, I was quite disappointed by the fact the Chinese Captain “Nocturne” didn’t had a voice in his clip. I know (from the interview done at gamescom day before) his English is not good enough. Imo he shouldve spoken Chinese and just added subtitles with it. I missed the personal touch from the [GLFH] captain clip. Remember; Languages shouldnt make boundaries!
• Casters: Aside from doing an overal goodjob, they did miss some important kills/decaps which were game changing. Example: Situation A happened, Situation B however is game changing and right after A. Casters sometimes were still talking about Situation A while B was already done and changed the match slightly.
• Advertisements: As said above; double edged sword. The ads theirselves were good except for the Alienware and GTX960. Alienware ad was the exact same as previous WTS one. The GTX 960 ad felt ‘odd’ since ArenaNet actually handed out GTX 980’s. But that’s just my opinion..
• Prizes: In my opinion the prizing should be slightly higher for the effort put into getting this far. I know they’re just playing a game, but top-tier nevertheless. As said above in Pros, I dont know if any other teammember got GTX980’s aswel, which, imo, should be done. Could be the team captain (Caith in this situation) could already have this and maybe give/sell to someone else. Which is sad since there might be players next to him with an ‘old’ GPU.
• Lan or..?: Afaik there can be DC’s in a LAN. But if I heard it right, a caster mentioned ‘internet’. Not sure if he was wrong or the Tournament is actually logged onto the internet. If they are, then that might cause (security) problems compared to 100% LAN without any internet. This might be far-fetched but a DDoS can always happen to that certain IP once its traced. (even if its illegal, as we know it doesnt stop certain ppl from doing it). Could be its not possible with GW2 client to run without internet and/or routers had issues.
• Time: I felt the time was actually a huge problem for USA. For them, it was between midnight and morning. I wouldve taken afternoon, so both EU and NA could enjoy the Tournament Stream. I think highest number of views was 7,500. Which is not bad for Guild Wars 2, but couldve had much more in the afternoon. Even China wouldve been able to watch still (considering it was a Saturday anyway).
• Cameraman.. Awkward: Between the matches the cameramen were closing up to a players face. Np, right? Though, it felt really awkward to keep watching the cameraman slowly zooming in and recording the face of the player. Now I cant read minds but it surely had to feel awkward to have a camera pushed in your face for a solid 15-20s without moving for the player. I certainly felt awkward for me to watch it. This happened to Levin and Toker mostly.

All in all I really enjoyed watching WTS this time, felt much smoother compared to the two previous WTS for sure. Despite the DC’s, the breaks were absolutely much shorter and transitions much nicer & fluently done (between Ad – Host – Casters – Analysts)

By all means I know this feedback might not go along with your opinion, and I truly respect another view on the matter. I also dont expect ArenaNet to take this personally or find this important.

• Video link of Past Broadcast WTS 2015 Cologne: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/10124128
• Video link of Curse Entertainment Announcement (Leagues, legendary PvP backpack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ZMj4Iyi1U

Big props to [RIP] The Abjured for taking the victory back for their region!
Big props to Magic Toker (Dustin) for keeping cool, rotating perfect and the sneaky decaps! You sneaky Thief you! Flex for me!

Expect me one of the coming years to represent EU! :p

Sincerely,

Denied

Terrorsquad.4802:

• Keyboards and mice: I did notice most players were playing with a different mouse and/or keyboard compared to its partner. I don’t know if they are the player’s personal equipemnt brought from home or ArenaNet/Gamescon actually was able to deliver what the player wanted.

As referee for this event I guess I can give some insight. All players could bring their own equipment if they wanted to. Some players didn’t bring their own equipment and in that case we provided them with proper keyboards and mice.

Terrorsquad.4802:

Lan or..?: Afaik there can be DC’s in a LAN. But if I heard it right, a caster mentioned ‘internet’. Not sure if he was wrong or the Tournament is actually logged onto the internet. If they are, then that might cause (security) problems compared to 100% LAN without any internet. This might be far-fetched but a DDoS can always happen to that certain IP once its traced.

All matches happened on the live GW2 servers. Obviously ESL took security into consideration and did everything to prevent DDoS attacks or similar events. Some of the internet problems we had were actually because of our security, some new IPs had to be whitelisted for it to work. It’s still not really known what caused one of the other internet issues, whether it was ESL’s firewall or the GW2 login servers, but I can say for sure that it wasn’t a DDoS attack as that would’ve affected more than just a few players since we were all on the same network.

Oh and also, it wasn’t just Chaith who got the NVIDIA card, all the players got one, he was just the only one to have it handed to him on stage

It was quite exciting for sure, but the length was a problem for me, even tho I live in europe I couldn’t sit for 8 hour to watch it, and I think a lot of us was the same; They should have split it for 2 days, even for the players it’s a huge interval to stay in a good mental shape.

DCs was quite awkward because for example Abjured got reseted at around 50-25 at the finals but they had a huge map advantage in 5v4, it’s just pure luck it didn’t turned the whole WTS around; Imagine if they lose the match after a reset…

The personal introductions and the preshow was really good those players are more than just a nickname, hope they get more viewership in the twitch after this.

The big announcement about the new PvP leagues were well timed, because I know I love the GW2’s PvP but I cannot compete against pros like the players there, but with HoT now I can actually play against players like me.

Looking forward to next years WTS and congratulation to The Abjured!

I mostly agree with everything you said. Overall very good WTS!

I hope that together with the league system, we will have a much better PvP scene. This game has an awesome combat system. It has a lot of potential.

P.S: I hope they reset the MMR for the league.

Brix.8461:

Oh and also, it wasn’t just Chaith who got the NVIDIA card, all the players got one, he was just the only one to have it handed to him on stage

Thank you kindly for your answer, Oliver!
I’m really happy all players got a GTX980, which I was hoping for!

Also kudos for your work there, hope you enjoyed your time there aswel!

Nice sweater u had there btw :p

It was pretty good overall.

I’d only add that at the start of games we didn’t get into game view quick enough a lot of the time. Especially the very first game I think we watched a good 30s of the players faces whilst the game had started. The opening splits is a key point to see for the viewers.

I’d say that this was the best WTS to date. Nicely done. There were exciting games and the length was fine for me.

I think the tournament scene for GW2 is definitely growing and the OP pointed out a lot of improvements that I also liked.

I would say, however, that I still think that we need a good recap video with highlights for those of us who can’t spend hours watching it live at the crack of dawn. =P

I haven’t watched it because I actually watched the stream, but somebody made a highlight video on reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3gfdnw/wts_cologne_highlights/