Guild Wars 2

A lot of us have seen the excitement from the first ever cast matches in EU and NA today.

Here are some notes so that the game can actually become something more fun and engaging to spectate. (These are not necessarily directed at anyone, just what I consider to be a general guideline)

1. Research!
   1. Know the general terminology. Eg: stomps, resses, knockback, knockdown, dodge, etc…
   2. Know what ALL the skills in the game do, this is the hardest part, but it is also the most important. You don’t necessarily have to be calling everything by name all the time, but you need to know what did what in order to better analyze the game and to help viewers/spectators understand what’s going on in the game.
   3. Know all the names of the players in the games that you are casting. Stumbling through names multiple times can be distracting for the viewers as well as your co-caster.
2. Practice!
   1. Practice public speaking, you don’t want to be stumbling through sentences or jumbling words together a lot. It’s very important that what you’re saying is clear, specially since there are many viewers that are not all native English speakers.
   2. Practice swapping through the different preset camera angles in your spare time or even before a match begins so that you don’t get lost in the middle of a game or accidentally click something you didn’t want to click.
3. Be Professional
   1. Use PG language. I know we’re all grownups, but it’s not professional to mouth off.
   2. It is extremely important that when something goes wrong in the game you don’t say things like “GG ANet” or the like.
   3. Do not call the game or what you think the outcome of the game will be until you see the “GGs” rolling out in map-chat. It’s very rude and unsportsmanlike to say something like “Looks like it’s GG,” when the game is not over yet. Acceptable comments when a team is very prominently ahead would be: “Looks like Red Team is going to have to pull some big moves to catch up,” or “Blue Team has established a very comfortable lead, it’s up to Red Team to make a game-changing play, now.”
   4. If you’re going to be showing people’s build in a match please have their consent to do so. It’s the polite thing to do.
4. Talk Strategy
   1. Try to talk a little bit about the comp that each team has before the game starts. Briefly go over things like the general role of each class in a team and how people generally play that comp.This is extremely important for people that are either new to the game, or know nothing about it.
   2. Know when objectives spawn and keep a good eye on where most of the action is happening.

These are the big things. Other small things will surely come up in discussion.

Thanks for reading,
Ac

Definitely noted, thanks! Will be applying this over the next few weeks. Apologies for some language tonight, I was having some technical issues and they were a bit stressful for this being the largest audience I have ever had. Once again, apologies if I offended anyone.

If only my internet was good enough to stream in something higher than 360p…

Anyway, you did good Blu. Everyone gets shaky sometimes and someone who judges you on force of habit language is in the minority.

Acandis.3250:

1. Know all the names of the players in the games that you are casting. Stumbling through names multiple times can be distracting for the viewers as well as your co-caster.

Or more simply , shoutcast their profession

Props to BLU!
Hopefully NA can put together more than random teams next time :P

Pls also if you are gonna stream it without having stream resolution options do it in a format that people with the average internet connection will be able to watch it without getting frame lag every few sec.

Also a bit less switching cameras would be great ..you know ,once today there was this 1vs1 and as one mesm got down there was his thief friend that came in to the resque and then..BAM..switch ..we never found out :P
Anyway gj for having the balls to be the first to do this in this game

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Acandis.3250:

1. Know all the names of the players in the games that you are casting. Stumbling through names multiple times can be distracting for the viewers as well as your co-caster.

Or more simply , shoutcast their profession

Yes, this also works. Though I think more down the line names will actually be better. Not to mention that professions can get confusing if team is running more than 1 of something.

kostbabis.8791:

Pls also if you are gonna stream it without having stream resolution options do it in a format that people with the average internet connection will be able to watch it without getting frame lag every few sec.

Also a bit less switching cameras would be great ..you know ,once today there was this 1vs1 and as one mesm got down there was his thief friend that came in to the resque and then..BAM..switch ..we never found out :P
Anyway gj for having the balls to be the first to do this in this game

Unfortunately having the option for multiple stream qualities is only available for Twitch partners (as it uses a lot more of twitch’s server capacity), and I have found 720p to be the resolution that most people can view. Anything below this and details start to become harder to note and some viewers may not be able to pick up on certain things. I will definitely be seeking an opportunity to fix this with twitch in the future, but for now it is something I cannot change

I hope it’s not asking too much, but would it be possible for atleast after the stream is over, to make it available to watch on 480p or even put on youtube? That would make it incredibly easier to watch and even download to watch later/on travels/away from home etc.

Thanks for the great work and I sure undertand if that’s not feasible at the moment!

stomp is a warrior utility; finish is fine

Dan.8709:

I hope it’s not asking too much, but would it be possible for atleast after the stream is over, to make it available to watch on 480p or even put on youtube? That would make it incredibly easier to watch and even download to watch later/on travels/away from home etc.

Thanks for the great work and I sure undertand if that’s not feasible at the moment!

Talking to Zael again tonight, we need to send files between each other so it takes some time to upload them to youtube