Guild Wars 2

You expected a quality kittenpost bashing and saying how bad izpurt is for this game?
Well too bad, cuz’ i’m asking a genuine question here. I see a few players saying that anet needs to stop this whole esport thing but i don’t see any benefit in killing the high end competitive scene in a game.

It’s not like esport is taking ressources that can be used in designing/developping spvp systems anyway.
While it has a small public, this public is usualy players that are invested in the game and are more likely to produce content around spvp (builds/guide/videos/streams/ect) and this content is very beneficial for the entire community as it produce more interest in the game.
It creates an insentive for very competitive players to play and show the rest of community all kinds of tricks/new tactics/strategies/high level play that adds a lot of depth to the game.
The actual tournaments creates advertissement for the game. (even though pro league s1 was probably the worst advertissement we could have for spvp)

No, really, i can’t find any reason to kill the esport scene right now.

It’d be ridiculous to kill it now imo considering streams are finally in a lift.

pvp more views than ever
more hype than ever behind competitive events
more interest in pvp in general from gw than ever

top pvp players are more connected rn than ever

‘’stop esports!’’
pls, it finally has a fair chance.

There isn’t really any, and I’m sure a-net would had ended it already if it wasn’t beneficial overall for the game.

It just seems to be a common misconception that gw2 e-sports is somehow taking something away from player’s who don’t care about it, even though devs have explained it doesn’t.

nothelseth.4621:

pvp more views than ever
more hype than ever behind competitive events
more interest in pvp in general from gw than ever

top pvp players are more connected rn than ever

‘’stop esports!’’
pls, it finally has a fair chance.

And finally the top players connected! To farm gold/low plat players via the amazing competetive matchmaking system

skylink.4972:

And finally the top players connected! To farm gold/low plat players via the amazing competetive matchmaking system

Don’t want to be mean, but we are talking about the current pros and cons of keeping the esport scene alive. The current ranked matchmaking is completely irrelevant to the discussion and you already have your own topic to pour your own salt.

I’d like to keep the discussion constructive.

skylink.4972:

nothelseth.4621:

pvp more views than ever
more hype than ever behind competitive events
more interest in pvp in general from gw than ever

top pvp players are more connected rn than ever

‘’stop esports!’’
pls, it finally has a fair chance.

And finally the top players connected! To farm gold/low plat players via the amazing competetive matchmaking system

You forgot to mention the 3 plus month wait for balance patches to fix skills and classes that are either over tuned or under powered, that are then just half hearted attempts at balancing at that.

You forgot class stacking.

You forgot fair poor match quaility.

You forgot throwing matches and trolling and creating game breaking conditions fully allowed.

The last year of PvP in GW2 has been such a train wreck that they have to resort to bribing PvE players to fill in for the PvPers that evacuated the scene with high end PvE items.

Now name me another eSports that has all of those problems. Also name me a eSports that struggles to get 4k viewers during their championships, because they are exciting and fun to watch?

TL; DR…

We say ANet should give up on eSports because. They either do not have the will power, the man power, focus, or the expertise, to allow it push pvp into a healthy direction.

Better to leave eSports to the games that have dedicated dev teams and focus on competitive PvP.

nothelseth.4621:

pvp more views than ever
more hype than ever behind competitive events
more interest in pvp in general from gw than ever

top pvp players are more connected rn than ever

‘’stop esports!’’
pls, it finally has a fair chance.

Can I have some of those drugs you are on?

Tournaments in the past have received significantly more viewers on Twitch than any since the joke that is HoT, even the odd player made tourney got 5k a long time ago, there was a time Teldo alone used to get more views than any stream does these days and more than most combined, you are playing a game where the actual PvP population left long ago and they have to literally bribe PvE players to play it with ascended armour, legendary backpack, etc to fluff the numbers of a game mode that doesn’t even have the population for 2 queues or frankly even for 1 queue.

Oh and guess what, none of the fundamental issues that prevented it from ever getting near “e-sports” have gone, it is still terrible to watch for example, which is why even with a company behind events, prize money, etc the tournies still get less views than some kid sitting in their bedroom streaming some random game.

The idea that PvP is doing better than ever is absolutely laughable.

NotASmurf.1725:

cranos.5913:

It’d be ridiculous to kill it now imo considering streams are finally in a lift.

Lol so 2 streamers are doing better than usual (by gw2 standards) and suddenly we espahrts? There are only 2 teams signed up for the upcoming tournament that should tell you something.

Helseth’s kitten is this way ^ if you want to suck on it so badly.

Personal insults aside you’re still not making sense, none of you are. “Omg stahp e-sports” for no reason whatsoever. Cringeworthy car advertisements are better I suppose? lul

Reaper Alim.4176:

skylink.4972:

nothelseth.4621:

pvp more views than ever
more hype than ever behind competitive events
more interest in pvp in general from gw than ever

top pvp players are more connected rn than ever

‘’stop esports!’’
pls, it finally has a fair chance.

And finally the top players connected! To farm gold/low plat players via the amazing competetive matchmaking system

You forgot to mention the 3 plus month wait for balance patches to fix skills and classes that are either over tuned or under powered, that are then just half hearted attempts at balancing at that.

You forgot class stacking.

You forgot fair poor match quaility.

You forgot throwing matches and trolling and creating game breaking conditions fully allowed.

The last year of PvP in GW2 has been such a train wreck that they have to resort to bribing PvE players to fill in for the PvPers that evacuated the scene with high end PvE items.

Now name me another eSports that has all of those problems. Also name me a eSports that struggles to get 4k viewers during their championships, because they are exciting and fun to watch?

TL; DR…

We say ANet should give up on eSports because. They either do not have the will power, the man power, focus, or the expertise, to allow it push pvp into a healthy direction.

Better to leave eSports to the games that have dedicated dev teams and focus on competitive PvP.

Abandoning esports would be mistake since it does not take away resources, but you got a point.

Frequent balance patches and more accurate MM would not pose a problem.

What really ticks me off is that they abandoned team queue. I’m not saying that we should go back to the old system.

Just add a godkitten seperate guild league that starts after/before the normal season. And shorten the duration of the seasons. There is no real way to compete as a team now.

Will be interesting to see how much teams the upcoming tournament will get. Maybe anet will realise that they are killing esports right now. Giving the community the task to build a competitive outlet is such a weak excuse.

All these people saying “it doesn’t take away resources!”.. Could you please explain how 200-400k $ are nothing? They are spending almost all of their advertisement budget on a PvP scene that’ll never take off when PvE is what carries the sales.

If you’re marketing your product to the wrong audience then yes, it’s a problem. Stop pretending there’s nothing between cringe taxi ads and e-sports.

Spoichiche.1290:

skylink.4972:

And finally the top players connected! To farm gold/low plat players via the amazing competetive matchmaking system

Don’t want to be mean, but we are talking about the current pros and cons of keeping the esport scene alive. The current ranked matchmaking is completely irrelevant to the discussion and you already have your own topic to pour your own salt.

I’d like to keep the discussion constructive.

So you want a game to have an e-sport scene while its unable to provide quality matchmaking ranked system and unable to provide a serious team training ground or team leaderboards? E-sport in gw2 waved goodbye when solo/duo was announced.
Hope that is enough constructive of a respond.

NotASmurf.1725:

All these people saying “it doesn’t take away resources!”.. Could you please explain how 200-400k $ are nothing? They are spending almost all of their advertisement budget on a PvP scene that’ll never take off when PvE is what carries the sales.

If you’re marketing your product to the wrong audience then yes, it’s a problem. Stop pretending there’s nothing between cringe taxi ads and e-sports.

They have already explained it and you don’t know anything about their budget.

Reaper Alim.4176:

We say ANet should give up on eSports because. They either do not have the will power, the man power, focus, or the expertise, to allow it push pvp into a healthy direction.

Better to leave eSports to the games that have dedicated dev teams and focus on competitive PvP.

skylink.4972:

So you want a game to have an e-sport scene while its unable to provide quality matchmaking ranked system and unable to provide a serious team training ground or team leaderboards? E-sport in gw2 waved goodbye when solo/duo was announced.
Hope that is enough constructive of a respond.

Yeah, okay, that’s exactly the thing i can’t follow.
You’re going from “spvp ranked system is garbage/not competitive/whatever” to “gw2 esport must stop until we fix these issues”.
To me, there is absolutely no logical link between these 2 statements.

It seems like you are mixing competitive ranked system to esport. The esport scene doesn’t need a perfect competitive ranked system to be okay. There never was one in gw2 but we have an existing and alive esport scene.
Correct me if i’m wrong because i’m not familiar with these games, but super smash bros melee doesn’t have any competitive ranking system, but it still has an esport scene. Call of Duty whateverwarfare doesn’t have these systems too, but it still has an esport scene. Rocket league had an esport scene before implenting a proper rank system.

Of course a good competitive ranked system is an invaluable tool to build and expand an esport scene and the community behind it, but these two things are fundamentaly different.

Esport in this game doesn’t need to be at the level of dota/lol/cs:go. There is already a small subset of the community who enjoy the show and killing it will not bring any positive change whatsoever and might just hurt the overall community of the game.
As for budget and ressources allocation, no one but anet and maybe nc-soft knows the actual numbers and percentages. I’m no fan of baseless conspiracy theories so i’ll just stick to what anet said.

Dear ESL players and all those who support the E-sport Dream

I am your typical casual player, I am the one who play in the background away from the spotlight, I am the one whose names will never appear on a stream or mentioned in a blog post….I am the one buying gems with RL money , I am the one paying for your tournaments

The game is balanced to please you…even though the game doesn’t effectively need you, everything is balanced with teamplay in mind..even though real teamplay action is only found in high profile organized tournaments ruled by strict restrictions not found elsewhere in the game…I am tired of this type of approach

I am the one bringing the money here and as I do that..I can do the same somewhere else, reason I stay is because I like the art and gameplay, economic model of GW2, not because I care about your E-sport dream.

I am one of the bricks used to build the house..while you are barely the roof and we can replace the roof however we like.

I want to play the game the way I want..not the way you want, I am not interested in your teamplay experience..because I am no part of it, you cannot expect the game to be balanced to please you, who keeps playing the game while being financed with my hard earned cash.

I want to be free to play any profession the way I want..not the way it best suits your idea of “perfect team composition” as me as your average casual player will never experience..we casual players will never experience your perfect match with perfectly tailored builds made to perfectly synergize with each other while using a 3rd party communication system.

Unless the game start to get balanced the way it should be…I won’t bother with the 2nd expansion, like me others will follow the example with time.

You can work with us, the casual playerbase to create a game that suits us both..or you better prepare yourself to jump ship….if there is another ship out there ready to become your personal cash cow for no reason or benefit.

Best Regards

Remember when the meta was terrible and it needed a balance patch but they said “we can’t balance till this tournament!”. That tournament had 10 players in. And we didnt get a balance patch for 6 months as a result. That is why esports needs to die. All it does is ruin the game for everyone else because they wont do balance changes.

Also they always balance around their kittenty esports which nobody plays or cares about. They should balance around in game ranked play. And they should balance as much for lower levels as higher levels.

Esports dream killed this game and will kill it again if it is allowed to come back.

Also esports is negative advertising. it just shows the game in a bad light. Most of the players are toxic and the game is spammy.

I don’t have a problem with promoting Esports if it’s justified.

The thing with Esports is: if you want to go for it it’s all or nothing. All your balance should rely on the best players meta, not on the average player and all rules that are in place for Pro players should be in place for casual player so that they can identify with them and understand what they play like.

The problem with GW2 is that they don’t care about esports. They don’t care about balancing their game according to pro players’ feedback. They just want some numbers on twitch and throw that “World Championship whatever kitten” on your screen right in your face every few months.
That isn’t esports. That’s just wasted. And that is the reason people say they should give up on esports. Because they don’t take it serious. Their management of the gamemode is more of an insult to any serious player.

If they were serious about Esports they’d have much more regular balance patches, a fully seperate PvP balance and the same rules for everyone.
If you want to push your competitive scene you have to motivate your players to reach for that competitive level. But there is no motivation in GW2. The competitive scene is almost dead, balancing has been utterly slow for years, obviously broken things ignored for ages and the matchmaking does not at all give you a motivation to jump from good player to pro player. Hell, it took them over 4 years to start giving you a slight representation of your actual skill.

This game is catering to Casual weekend players in every single aspect and esports simply doesn’t fit in there. Because there is no true competitive spirit in this game. It may be fine for “casual competitive” players but it just doesn’t make players devoting their life to it.

Wouldn’t mind eSports if it were organized more like a sport. IMHO, the ESL GW2 is so disorganized, it suffers from lack of structure with respect to things like trying out for teams/team formation, team stability(have a set number of teams) with divisions and such, there is also no real season structure or playoffs, etc. This hardly be called a “sport” at all. Any sport worth participating in or watching is highly organized. I would love to see a true/stable/structured league of Gw2, but until there are investments made with respect to infrastructure, it will continue to be discombobulated and frustrating for players/fans.

Soothsayer.9206:

Wouldn’t mind eSports if it were organized more like a sport. IMHO, the ESL GW2 is so disorganized, it suffers from lack of structure with respect to things like trying out for teams/team formation, team stability(have a set number of teams) with divisions and such, there is also no real season structure or playoffs, etc. This hardly be called a “sport” at all. Any sport worth participating in or watching is highly organized. I would love to see a true/stable/structured league of Gw2, but until there are investments made with respect to infrastructure, it will continue to be discombobulated and frustrating for players/fans.

They should stop doing the big tournaments and just do weekly tournaments with small/medium cash prizes.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Soothsayer.9206:

Wouldn’t mind eSports if it were organized more like a sport. IMHO, the ESL GW2 is so disorganized, it suffers from lack of structure with respect to things like trying out for teams/team formation, team stability(have a set number of teams) with divisions and such, there is also no real season structure or playoffs, etc. This hardly be called a “sport” at all. Any sport worth participating in or watching is highly organized. I would love to see a true/stable/structured league of Gw2, but until there are investments made with respect to infrastructure, it will continue to be discombobulated and frustrating for players/fans.

They should stop doing the big tournaments and just do weekly tournaments with small/medium cash prizes.

Not necessarily a bad idea! Make a real season whereby teams compete weekly to earn both rewards and a spot in an exclusive tournament playoff system and compete in a grand event – e.g. the NFL has the most exclusive playoff system I know of, furthermore I also like the overall model because games mean things during a season (season = a set period of time accruing wins/losses – I think this would give players/fans a chance to have both a multiplicity of teams and have players/teams to get behind/follow).

Also, I would find a way to keep/enhance the rivalry NA has with EU because it creates drama and that is good for players and fans.

Spoichiche.1290:

Yeah, okay, that’s exactly the thing i can’t follow.
You’re going from “spvp ranked system is garbage/not competitive/whatever” to “gw2 esport must stop until we fix these issues”.
To me, there is absolutely no logical link between these 2 statements.

It seems like you are mixing competitive ranked system to esport. The esport scene doesn’t need a perfect competitive ranked system to be okay. There never was one in gw2 but we have an existing and alive esport scene.
Correct me if i’m wrong because i’m not familiar with these games, but super smash bros melee doesn’t have any competitive ranking system, but it still has an esport scene. Call of Duty whateverwarfare doesn’t have these systems too, but it still has an esport scene. Rocket league had an esport scene before implenting a proper rank system.

Of course a good competitive ranked system is an invaluable tool to build and expand an esport scene and the community behind it, but these two things are fundamentaly different.

Esport in this game doesn’t need to be at the level of dota/lol/cs:go. There is already a small subset of the community who enjoy the show and killing it will not bring any positive change whatsoever and might just hurt the overall community of the game.
As for budget and ressources allocation, no one but anet and maybe nc-soft knows the actual numbers and percentages. I’m no fan of baseless conspiracy theories so i’ll just stick to what anet said.

No logical link between? ANET doesnt have unlimited resources but somehow you think they do. If ANET has to put resources to set up some e-sport scene it will be in favor of the very minimum amount of players, we are talking about top 1-0.5%? Im not going to throw numbers representing the amount of money required to establish e-sport scene but i know that its not for free. Why use the resources to satisfy the top 0.5%? Id rather see some improvements on rankedQ/matchmaking/class stacking/ more frequent balancing. You know, fixing the stuff that MAJORITY enjoy? Even in PvE the breaks between living story/raid releases are huge already. Hope you can see what im trying to point here.

why not espot?

1. I am sick of seeing 4+ DH in the every game, just because they are not used in ESL
2. I am also sick of Rev been nerf to hell, because every team in ESL used one.
3. I am sick of 3 month balance patches

The point of esport is to attract viewers, which hopefully able to convert these viewers to players.

Here is the problem, gw2 is too complicated, too many skills to use, to many aoe.

Even for a 4-year veteran player like myself, it is hard to make out what’s going on in a team fight, how about a person who never played? If I am a new player, I’ll take look at one match, and think this is a complete mess.

So I am asking you Anet if your ESL can’t attract viewer thus new players, what good is it?

It’s not very fun to watch, can’t really tell what’s happening in fights.

In comparison: I have friends, that never even tried Dota2, but watch tournament games and “dota fails” from youtube, because they can actually tell what’s happening in them even if they haven’t played the game. Even more now after some changes.

I’m not saying that GW should take the same direction, but unless it does, the only ones watching whole thing are players that want to be better in PvP, it’s not really a big audience to start with. I like PvP, but I’d rather read my tips from forums than watch the stream. Even if I don’t play dota2 anymore, I still watch games and tournaments because they are fun, so in my opinion the difference in “watchability” is just so vast. I even enjoy watching CS tournaments and I don’t play FPS games.

I’m not really sure if it’s worth trying. I think you’d have to undergo too many changes to whole gameplay until it would break through. That’s of course just my opinion as (average?) esports consumer.

Scykosix.7836:

Spoichiche.1290:

Yeah, okay, that’s exactly the thing i can’t follow.
You’re going from “spvp ranked system is garbage/not competitive/whatever” to “gw2 esport must stop until we fix these issues”.
To me, there is absolutely no logical link between these 2 statements.

No logical link between? ANET doesnt have unlimited resources but somehow you think they do. If ANET has to put resources to set up some e-sport scene it will be in favor of the very minimum amount of players, we are talking about top 1-0.5%? Im not going to throw numbers representing the amount of money required to establish e-sport scene but i know that its not for free. Why use the resources to satisfy the top 0.5%? Id rather see some improvements on rankedQ/matchmaking/class stacking/ more frequent balancing. You know, fixing the stuff that MAJORITY enjoy? Even in PvE the breaks between living story/raid releases are huge already. Hope you can see what im trying to point here.

As i already said no one knows how anets budget is actually handled. The only official statement from anet was that the money used to fund the esport scene was from the advertissement budget and if it wasn’t used for the esport it would be used in making more ads instead.
Also, money is not the only resource when it comes to game developement. Throwing more money or hiring more devs on a project doesn’t necessarily make the progress faster. The main resource for designing/developing is time, and past a certain threshold (depending on the scale of the project) no amount of money can change anything about the time required to complete the project.

The frequency of the balance patches don’t have anything to do with esport. Balance patches are tied to the a-bit-more-than-quaterly updates and to the spvp seasons. We had a balance patch in the middle of pro league season 2.

I can understand the issues of balancing the game around the highest level of play. I strongly disagree, but still, i guess it’s a valid point.

The esport scene not getting bigger, or never being ‘successful’ isn’t a big deal. Even if it’s super small, having a competitive high end scene is still extremely beneficial to the overall spvp community. (main reasons listed in the first post)

nothing wrong w/ esport but take it from the founders of riot games, they said build a good pvp game and the community will make esport out of it. you dont shove it to your player base throat. but to be clear im all for esport in gw2 if they really think is beneficial of the game not juts select few.

Esportz is a waste of money, the joke of a tournaments barely bring in a few thousand viewers and that’s with giveaways to lure people in that have no interest in the actual stream.

Other people have already covered the balance issues that revolve around ESL/pro league which makes the game unfun for the rest of us. I don’t even play Rev but I can see it got nerfed too hard outside of top tier play which is like what, 5 of you? And god knows we’ll have to wait 6 months for them to fix that because muh esportz.

Just putting that ‘esportz’ 200k budget into hiring 1 more person who actually works on PvP would be nice. It took Evan what 6 weeks to acknowledge there was an issue in matchmaking because we’re not pro league players complaining.

Why would we care about your esports when the rest of us get trash?

I have to say. eSports style PvP is actually super fun when focused on, and done correctly by a dev/publisher/upper management. The above eSports are also super fun and exciting to watch.

We all would love for GW2’s PvP to be a actual eSports. Sad thing is we all know that a PvE centric MMORPG more so a super casual one, just doesn’t have the time or resources to actually make PvP fun so it can develop into a eSport on it’s own.

ANet had the best format for a not only healthy, but fun eSports before HoT. But instead of focusing on that, what did ANet foucused on? A expansion when nearly the whole selling point was to have non competitive Sup’ed up versions of the normal classes that will just make life much easier for their causal community. Boon share spam and Condi spam meta did nothing for but hurt both WvW and PvP, and both modes have suffered dearly because of it. ANet knows this but was too busy enjoying that short term burst income to do anything about it. Hence ANet didn’t have PvP anywhere near the top of the list. That’s why we say ANet should just give it up and used that money for PvE or making PvP fun again.

Honestly it would take a GW3 to be heavily PvP focused with little PvE support foundation for ANet to even make a solid attempt at a eSports. The building blocks for HoT alone just will not allow for a eSports scene to develop. I am nearly willing to put money down that the next expansion is going to make HoT look like child’s play in comparison. Because that’s all the current ANet knows how to sell, is super causal content. The more casual the content and play time the better. That is again in no way shape or form conducive to a sub decent eSports scene, it’s like ANet is just throwing money away at that point.

It doesn’t need to stop! The game needs to change to compliment, and promote it.

As it stands now, the rather small group of people who want to watch were already pre-invested in this game, and the scene. But to a vast population it’s not very fun to watch, which E-sports lives and dies on.

Giveaways are a good way to draw players, but the “sport” has to be the selling point in and of itself.

Spoichiche.1290:

You expected a quality kittenpost bashing and saying how bad izpurt is for this game?
Well too bad, cuz’ i’m asking a genuine question here. I see a few players saying that anet needs to stop this whole esport thing but i don’t see any benefit in killing the high end competitive scene in a game.

It’s not like esport is taking ressources that can be used in designing/developping spvp systems anyway.
While it has a small public, this public is usualy players that are invested in the game and are more likely to produce content around spvp (builds/guide/videos/streams/ect) and this content is very beneficial for the entire community as it produce more interest in the game.
It creates an insentive for very competitive players to play and show the rest of community all kinds of tricks/new tactics/strategies/high level play that adds a lot of depth to the game.
The actual tournaments creates advertissement for the game. (even though pro league s1 was probably the worst advertissement we could have for spvp)

No, really, i can’t find any reason to kill the esport scene right now.

THIS is why I quit PvP. Delusions of grandeur. WvWers don’t have the delusions that the PvP community has. They know their mode is screwed. It’s not coming back.

I will tell you EXACTLY what’s wrong with pushing esports. First reason, you can’t force a competitive scene. It’s never going to happen. A game, first and foremost, needs to be fundamentally balanced and fun to play for the vast majority of players, not just for pros. A competitive scene comes from the bottom, it’s never the other way around. The current “scene” is nothing more than a circle-jerk of pro-leaguers looking out for themselves.

Second reason, Conquest. Conquest is boring to watch. More importantly, it’s impossible to fully keep track of the players and the game. This is bad for spectating. In chess, everybody can see the checkerboard. In basketball, everybody can see the court. In conquest, you can’t see what everybody’s doing. You only see the icons on the map. Nobody’s going to want to see a bunch of freakin icons! You have to click on the team members’ names to see the action.

Third reason, fundamentals. If pvp ever wants to be competitive, they need a TEAM QUEUE. They need new modes like 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, deathmatch, random arena, whatever. They need profession balance or overhaul. Balance every three months is NOT going to cut it.

All I’m saying is not rocket science. I speak as a player, as only I know how. This is basic stuff that any multiplayer or online game needs in order for it to be fun to play.

Good day.

I don’t see anything wrong with pushing esports, but …

- they need to balance more often
- all classes should have a place and not only the elite specs
- they need to balance pvp separately from the rest of the game
- they need to rework the mmr system and give players a reason to stay and play every day

And nothing of this will happen, because it costs money (they’ll need more developers and a bigger team for pvp only) and it’s not safe to say they will earn money with it.

The sad part is that WoW esports has ten times the viewers and is by far worse then GW2 esports on all levels

The main argument for dropping esports support is that right now, it’s a money toilet. Flushing the money doesn’t benefit the game or the player base as a whole.

It would be one thing if the PvP scene was healthy or growing, but it’s dwindled ever since HoT released. People quit watching because HoT power creep made the game boring to play and even more boring to watch. You can’t grow or maintain a community if the game isn’t fun. And when everyone sees how awful PvP is, it discourages them from trying it.

And it didn’t just shrink in viewers and casual players. Top players left in droves, and the only “top” players left are the ones who made money from playing. Why have esports if there are so few players to compete?

The money has to come from somewhere. In addition to the prize pool, you also have to consider the money to host events, for people to staff them, airfare, etc. You can argue that it’s the marketing group’s money, but that money is fungible and could have been allocated elsewhere. They could’ve done more ads targeting PvE for example. Or it could have been allocated to hiring a few more developers or improving the communications team.

There is nothing wrong with pushing for e-sports, some people just hate on anything that has to do with pvp and if you need proof of that look no further then reddit. I’m all for e-sports, it’s not like anet breaks the bank on it they just use advertising money that was not well spent anyways. People think if the game went e-sport it would hurt the pve experience of this game, it wont! We will still get our expansions, living story and raids. Smh.