I'd like to watch others play Arena

I mean seriously, if this were real it WOULD be a spectator sport, wouldn't it? I noticed last night in the Shiverpeak Arena waiting area that there's an overlook of the (deserted) arena, and thought "wouldn't it be cool if I could watch other people playing there?"

I've heard they broadcast some guild battles on the floor at E3, so clearly they know how to do it, and it'd be a fun way to pass the time when you don't feel like fighting or questing yourself.

As I understand it, this is a planned upgrade either for the first expansion, or as a streaming update.

Not necessarily Soon(tm), but ArenaNet is working on it I believe.

YAY!!!! YIP YIP YIP!!! Woot!! hooooooooo

(now we just need to cross our fingers for teams fighting high level mobs or even Arena-unique mobs!!)

That's awesome, thanks Brandon. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I have been thinking the same exact thing for the past week. We need stands in the arena!

I'm definately going for this idea... i would love to watch this, i mean... i take screenshots everytime i see a huge battle between different mobs (Which i think is BAD ass... i mean seirously... i havent seen many if any games where the bad guys attack eachother!! It's really funny, i try to bet myself who's going to win...) Biggest battle ive seen, i just saw in fissure...

Where you go to the weaponsmith and get that quest to clear the tower of war (?) there's a ton of shaddow beasts that spawn, and they had mesmers/elementalists/ and a monk... it was great, we were waiting for them to split when TWO roaming skeleton squads came into this battle... it took these teams of mobs about 6 minutes for them to fight... Just so ya'll know, those chaos axe skeletons Whooped em!!

*I've done that part of the mission about 4-5 times, and ive never seen them fight eachother... it was a great surprise, and the battle was sweet to watch... especially since they took out the guys we needed to kill ^.^*

Oh man....I would so love to have that aspect in this game. I'm not a huge PvP participant but I'd love to watch some of the battles and dance in the stands or something. heh
Would definitely be a great option for when you want to be in the world but don't neccesarily feel like bashing monsters/players.

yea, it would be fun to watch others duel in an arena (random 1v1) gladiator style where we could place bets on who would win.

I like the idea myself, but....wouldnt this end up with another run of ..... casinos?

Erik Vartuse: RED TEAM vs BLUE TEAM odds favor red PLACE YOUR BETS WINNAR GETS 1ook GOLD!!

::Shudder::

If a.nets really inserting this into the game, I hope they are prepared for this to happen.

EDIT:: *points up to termite* see what I mean?

OT- If bet placing was controlled by ANet and not some random bookie in game, I don't think it would be bad.

But back on topic, I really like the idea of spectating arena battles. It would be nice to get a glimpse of how the top PvPers work as a group.

they could nip it in the bud by introducing a bookie already. One person go to the npc and say 200 gold on party A, then they would have to wait for a second person to go to the npc and accept the bet.

I dont think that'll help, a.net would have to increase thier "patrolling" so to speak, to ensure there are no "illegal" instances of it happening. They removed the /roll command so they wouldnt have to do that, but if this is implemented they'll have too anyway. Sounds to me like they'd be working against themselves.

I'm not saying its GOING to happen though, just speculation. Termites comment proved that its possible. All I'm saying is that I hope a.nets prepared for it should they introduce arena spectatorship, since they've "outlawed" player based gambling, its possible they may need to "police" the arena's with said addition.

That's the thing, as long as it's possible to trade between characters this is going to happen. So if they introduced an in game betting npc there would be no chance of being robbed of your cash.

The only way to remove the scams and/or theives is to implement it themselves.

I see what your saying slug, but what IM saying is that even with an NPC based betting system, scammers are gonna try anyway.

where theres a will theres a way, and theres diffinatly a will. I started a thread here in the sanitarium not long ago that gave gamblers a chance to voice an opinion for an NPC based gambling system. That thread got almost NO attention. It's my firm belife that much of the outcry against the mesures a.net took to remove gambling was in fact, from scammers themselves.

anywho, thats just my opinion. I wont post in this thread anymore, im done.

Promise

I would love to be able to view Arena, GvG and HoH battles! If they made them into "spectator" sports, they could charge you for your "ticket". Voila! Money sink. (Or at least for some of us anyway.) I would buy season passes!

Hmm... Interesting thought. Kills two birds with one stone. I like it