esl-tv
Latest
ESL interviews Tom Chilton
Jay Harding from ESL TV was able to catch up to Blizzard Lead Designer and the resident PvP guru Tom Chilton at the World of Warcraft Arena Tournament Regional Finals in Cologne, Germany last June and got to squeeze a decent length interview. Because of the focus of the event, Chilton talked a lot about PvP changes, particularly the impact of the upcoming Patch 3.2. Chilton, also known as Kalgan, expressed Blizzard's intent on trying to keep different comps viable while taking small steps to curb the dominance of extremely popular comps such as RMP and cleave, which he stopped short of calling a "faceroll comp" (still goes to show he was thinking it, though!). Highlights from the video include: Resilience - the change to Resilience in Patch 3.2 will make the greatest impact in Arena PvP, slowing down matches and likely impacting the effectivity of "burst" comps. The nerf to the 2v2 bracket is intended to equalize class representation since 2v2 isn't always a good bracket for all classes. Chilton mentions that "as the bracket size comes down, you lose a lot of those different synergies between different classes" Chilton says, "there's room for competitive Battlegrounds," and that "rated Battlegrounds is something that (Blizzard) has been thinking about for quite a while." He says they'll provide more information in the future. Isle of Conquest is intended to be epic, they want to "bring back a little of that crazy, big battle feel" and intergrating some features of existing Battlegrounds with new ones. Kalgan and his girlfriend will kick your butt in 2v2. It's a nice interview for ESL's WoW Wednesdays, and while it doesn't give too much information we don't already know (especially since you obviously read WoW.com...), it's always good to hear news straight from the proverbial horse's mouth. This actually got me all excited for the PvP Panel during BlizzCon, hopefully we'll hear a bunch of new stuff there.
Blizzard eSports channel streams Arena invitational
The gates are about to open and mayhem is about to ensue as the second week of the ESL TV Invitational Arena Tournament kicks off today. This special invitational event will feature four top teams from all over Europe -- x6tence from Spain, Rest in Many Pieces from Germany, aAa Nawak from France, and newcomers Sickology from... some mysterious place in Europe, probably. The whole event will be streamed live on the Blizzard eSports channel at 22:00 CEST (4pm EST).The Spanish team x6tence won the Intel Extreme Master Global Challenge, while aAa Nawak is one of Europe's top RMP teams, placing 3rd at the IEM Global Finals. Also playing RMP is Rest in many Pieces (formerly known as mousesports), and completing the line-up is Sickology, composed of relative newcomers running a WLD (Warrior, Warlock, Druid) comp. The show is estimated to run for two hours, and should be a real treat for Arena enthusiasts. Active World of Warcraft subscribers can find the Blizzard eSports Channel through Account Management or simply head over to the ESL's Blizzard TV channel. It seems like a good day for sports fans, too, with this show squeezed between the Champion's League Finals match between Barcelona and Manchester United and Game 5 of the NBA Western Conference Finals between the LA Lakers and the Denver Nuggets. For World of Warcraft PvP afficionados who also happen to love football and basketball (could be just me, I dunno), it looks like we'll have to look for a very comfortable chair.
Blizzard partners with ESL TV for Blizzard eSports Channel
Blizzard has announced a partnership with ESL TV to bring streaming footage of eSport competitions of Blizzard's games, including Warcraft 3, WoW, and Starcraft. The service has been dubbed the Blizzard eSports Channel, likely due to its preponderance of Blizzard, eSports, and channels (but no man can be truly certain). The service is accessible for World of Warcraft subscribers through the Account Management page of WoW's main site. This is pretty cool news for the type of people who like to watch really, really good players have it out, replete with commentary. I visited the site today and found that there was not only a ton of archived games to watch, but there was a bunch of live games going on too. You can filter the videos and live channels by the game or game type, too, in case you hate watching Starcraft players practice their uber micro but just love Sentinels on Scourge action.I imagine the chances are pretty good that we'll see Starcraft 2 added to the list of games available for viewing once it's launched, too, as well as future titles that make their way to Battle.net. Given Blizzard's years-long push now for better representation in the eSports world, this is a neat step in the right direction, even if it might not be everybody's cup of tea. If you love eSports, it's worth a look; if not, then OMG! No rush.
