baels

I tend to agree that the window to capture a huge spvp audience has passed.

Even if MMR and ladder somehow get into the game in the next 2 months, I suspect that some people will try it out but not many will be willing to stay in the long term due to:

1) If the ticket system stays then spvp is pay/grind 2 play which has little appeal to new teams who are probably going to lose a lot in the beginning. Its very disheartening to lose hard earned tickets over and over again and it ultimately becomes too expensive to learn how to play at a competitive level.

Its no wonder why the hardcore wannabe e-sport heroes who sit in queue all day farming new people 500-0 have barely any viewers or competition. Beating newer people over and over makes it impossible for them to keep playing because they have a net-loss of tickets so they just leave since farming frees or buying gems only to most likely lose them is lame.

2) Conquest mode is played out at this point. We have 5 maps that are virtually the same thing and they lean towards a meta that is unappealing to a lot of people at this point.

The prospect of people returning to a game mode that is already boring even if it has MMR and ladder is still probably fairly low especially when they will be largely confined to a very narrow meta.

3) As long as a true solo queue is not in the game it will never be able to build a large skilled player base. A huge number of people do not want to commit to a team and prefer to build up their skill in solo queue. It is these people who create the audience for an esport.

It also greatly improves the competition in a game because it gives teams a strong pool to recruit from. If someone has a poor solo rating, then they are probably not going last long on a competitive team, and it allows people who do not have teams to actually be able to prove their skill.

The beta was so delicious, I just want to play this game every second of every day. I've had dreams where I'm playing GW2 for 3 days in a row, now. And I can't bring myself to play Starcraft 2 competitively any more, I just stare at my hydralisks and imagine that they're krait and that I'm slaughtering them with a harpoon gun, all the while my Terran opponent is dropping into my main base. Damn you ArenaNet for making such an awesome game!! I hope this doesn't end up like Half Life 2: Episode 3 where I'm hyped for a good 1000 posts and five months, and then the game just disappears off the radar for a five year stretch. I mean, we still don't have a release date.

Oh god, I'm starting to suffer PTSD from the thought of what Gabe Newell did to us with Episode 3. Someone, hold me.