Sports-style videos of high level PvP with commentary and telestrating

Summary: GuildWars should promote it's unique market advantage as the only true competition-capable MMOG through the use of edited videos of high-level tournament play, complete with play-by-play announcing, telestration, and interviews.


Let me start out by saying that I've been watching Major League Gaming on my DVR recently. For those who haven't seen it, it's an hour-long weekly show that covers professional video game teams as they play in Halo 2 tournaments. Dec 23 they aired the finale, where the winning team took home $100,000 in a tournament in Las Vegas.

I don't like console first-person shooters like Halo 2. I don't own an XBox or an XBox360. But watching high-level play made me really want to go out and buy one. Here's why: Just like when you're watching a good football game or the olympics or any other competitive sport, when you see a well-produced show of it that explains the nuances of the sport and let's you see the brilliance of particular plays, you get fired-up and want to play some too.

The set of videos that ArenaNet currently has of high level play don't do the trick. Video with no play-by-play, commentary, or telestrating have no drama. I've been playing GW since release day for Prophecies and I can barely follow what's going on. Heck, if Major League Gaming gave Halo 2 the same treatment, it'd be unwatchable too. For someone who's never played Halo2, like me, I don't know the significance of various map points or power weapons -- just having the equivalent of watching over a player's shoulder would be very uninteresting to me. But explain to me what's going on as I watch it, and I get into it in a hurry.

I think that ArenaNet has all the tools to produce videos of high-level play that could bring lots of attention to competitive GW. They have observer mode, which basically saves the entire contents of a match to their servers where they can access any part of a past match from any players' viewpoint. They have writers who understand GvG play who they could tap for play-by-play and color commentary. It's just a matter of devoting some time and energy to producing something that's exciting to watch for both experienced players and people who've never played GW before. You don't need to cover every minute of every match -- just break it down into key/interesting plays like the ESPN Sportcenter version. Show me a slo-mo video of three players being spiked in succession; a bodyblock at the flagstand; a key Blackout on a monk. Tell me how godly a monk's reflexes are as you show me.

Imagine iQ's famous Glyph of Sacrifice + Meteor Shower play at the Factions championship in a highlights video with commentary and telestrating. Show some clips of "The Linebacker" in action, verbally describing how the skills work together. Describe how iB has the morale advantage at the beginning of VoD and how iQ is playing defensively. Telestrate the trapper's body block at VoD. Explain how Balthazar's Aura was then applied. Then show, from the point of view of the E/Mo, the Glyph and Meteor Shower that massacre the NPCs and swing the match. And if you can, how about an interview or two afterwards? Were iB expecting it? How did the strategy change through the match? You get the picture: Make a video that I can show to my friends (who don't play) to describe what makes PvP in GuildWars so great.

That's the key. These videos are a great marketing tool. You have hundreds of thousands of GW players. Each one of them probably has a bunch of friends who don't "get" GuildWars. Personally, I've given trial keys to a couple of WoW-playing friends who tried GW but never gave it the time to "get it". Videos like this would stoke their competitive nature and make them want to play. GuildWars is great for competitive play. Showcase it.

Here are some more examples of well-produced videos for non-traditional sports/games.

Major League Gaming: http://www.mlgpro.com/ and http://www.usanetwork.com/sports/mlg/
Magic: The Gathering video coverage from their 2006 championships: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...rlds06/welcome

Thanks for reading.

One single bump for those who may have been away for the holiday week.

this would actually be really really cool!

I think that this would be very cool, as does my guild leader - his exact words were "If guild battles were on tv or something like that, I'd watch them."

I enjoy the PvP side of the game because I find strategy of any sort very interesting, no matter what the subject. As I understand the PvP side of Guild Wars more and more, I become more and more excited about it, and more and more apt to play for longer periods of time.

However, I don't understand everything. When I'm in Heroes Ascent playing with guildies, friends, or folks who I just happen to find sitting around advertising for groups, I love most of all being told where to go and what to do for what reason. It's the explanation of benefits or problems that really gets me going, and pulls me further into the game.

I do enjoy watching Guild Battles and Hall of Heroes matches on Observer mode but I, like the original poster, don't always know what's going on. I have more fun/enjoy myself more when I'm watching one at the same time a guildie or friend is, because I can hear what they have to say about the match - thanks to Teamspeak/Ventrillo. I get to learn strategy this way: builds, skills, placement, classes, and so forth. It's actually helped me out with developing my own PvE builds at times.

If Anet were to supply it's fans with something like this, I'd be pretty darned excited. Of course, it would take some work, but if they could swing it then I think it would be worth it.

Just to clarify -- it needn't be part of every tournament. It'd only need to be done for championship finals. (e.g. You could show a few clips of key plays for each Finalist's road to the finals and then show the highlights from the actual match)

This would be an interesting addition to observer mode imo if they could manage it. It might actually serve to help noobies grasp how the big boys play. I say this as someone who stays away from PvP because I always tend to get rolled badly...