Senior CM interviewed about eSports
This story comes from the somewhat unusual source of Amped eSports. They have an interview up from Blizzard's Paul Della Bitta, whose title is Senior Community Manager. He says he "oversee[s] our community teams for all franchises as well as the eSports team," so that's who he is in case, like me, you hadn't heard of him before.
The interview mostly talks about "how did WoW become an eSport" (with the introduction of the Arena system in BC) and "how do you feel about the tournaments this year" (very excited). If you're interested in WoW as a sporting event, you should definitely give the article a read. However, there is at least one juicy item of interest in there for all WoW players:
We know that pro players need to practice for hours a day; they can't practice and grind out levels and farm for items It is something we're aware of and we're going to hope to address in the future.
Is this a sign that there will in the future be a meaningful way to participate in PvP without leveling a character to 70? How would you feel about that? Personally, I think I'd welcome it, as it would give further distance between the PvE game and the PvP game, which BC already does pretty well and which I think is very needed. I see the argument for rewarding players who put in the effort to level (as does Paul Della Bitta: "we wanted to reward the players who had taken their characters from 1 to 70"), but on the other hand I don't see why it should take hundreds of hours spent in PvE in order to compete in PvP. Your thoughts?
