The end of WarCraft 3 teams

WarCraft 3 has crept its way towards its peak in terms of popularity over the last few years, golden age began to shine and not even sky was the limit; players became stars, events offered higher and higher prize pools, the community became so large even the Chinese would say "w00t, that's many people", fans began to rise like a tidal wave, pushing motivation of teams such as MYM or SK to greater limits - or is it actually pushing likes of Grubby, Moon and Lyn to surpass themselves in each new tournament? Are you really interested in the teams or the players? And what's even more important is: are sponsors interested to support a single superstar who has the potential to win a couple of highly remunerated tournaments or a team with many average players which seldom wins anything - and if they win as a team, will the prize money be that low, such that not much is left for their employer? Winning a team league is not about money, but prestige!

To get an answer to these questions, let's start with a quick expedition (something like Columbus did back in the old days, with only difference being we'll be cruising around on the waves of this article...and we probably won't find a new continent anywhere around):

So let's begin our journey with China, a country where that new drug called "gaming" is not blamed to have a negative influence on their youth generation. A friend from Beijing just told me a few days ago: "WarCraft 3 is like so common here. I would venture a guess that in my office during lunch, at least 20 games of WarCraft 3 are going on!"

The general issue about RTS games

Well, that was a short trip to China, now let's move outside Asia and take a look at Europe where we have two major problems at the moment: Firstly, the RTS community lacks, compared to the FPS community, a strong and large fan base. Games like Counter-Strike always have much more fans - a quick note, fans are people that shed tears when their idols lose and throw bras on the stage when they win. While it might be flattering for the young Casanovas out there to receive women's underwear, it isn't the key reason as to why fans are good. Bottom and the most fruitful line is that more and more people are interested in buying the gear and mousepads their idols used to enhance their performance. Would companies like SteelSeries or Razer be able to become what they are and invest those huge amounts of money in eSports without FPS games? I wouldn't be so sure about that!

Before we continue - back to the bras thing, there is no filmed evidence of fans throwing such items so that was just a bold assumption, female rights protection groups if you wish to shoot me for that I can be your hostage and you'll be my terrorist but please don't take it to your hearts. Back to the topic, I wouldn't say that RTS is not an interesting genre for the sponsors, but if you are able to attract a possible audience of let's just say, 100 000 people on Steam that play Counter-Strike 1.6 at the same time and 'only' 40 000 people that play WarCraft 3 at the same time on Battle.net, the teams of which game would you choose to sponsor?

The situation in WarCraft 3

Some people like to play with guns, others prefer playing with heroes, so let's turn our minds back to WarCraft 3: Yes, we are in the year 2008 and things have changed in WarCraft 3. Where are all the European events? Where are all the new young talents? Where are the crowded Battle.net and Garena rooms? Where are all the fans that buy merchandise? Not that everything has gone bad, but as a matter of fact, less people play the game if you compare the Battle.net stats from this year and the last year. Fewer pages do WarCraft 3 coverage, fewer players get interviewed and less WarCraft 3 related news are written. Players like Rotterdam, and even ToD lately, started to do shoutcasts since they noticed this is a new way, which also happens to generate a healthy income, where they can make use of their outstanding knowledge of the game.

No NGL, no WC3L, no teams

More or less proven rumors confirmed that the NGL still owes a couple of teams thousands of Euros and can you remember for how long have we already waited to cheer at the NGL One Finals? Most likely we will never do that again! The NGL issue brings us to the other big team league: WC3L. For years this event was carried by the teams that participated in it, the teams that covered travel expenses for their protagonists to fly around the world and fight under their banners, or tags more precisely.

I hope you won't mind me slipping in here just one example: If SK or MYM had to fly their Koreans to Germany for the WC3L finals, the money spent for each flight would be about 700 Euro. 5 players x 700 would make it 3500 Euro. Add the salaries of the players, add the percentage of the prize money that players keep to themselves (around 80%) and then take a look at the actual prize money that is,

Rotterdam the shoutcaster

even for a first place, far less than 10,000 Euro. So, is there any sense for a team to play and attend such events if they lose more money than they make out of it? After all, eSports is business and it is all about the money!

One example wasn't good enough for you? Well it wasn't good enough for my fingers, either so I'll type you another one: Look at srs, the Rotterdam's team , just a few days ago they have announced their departure from all of the team events. It is quite likely a matter of time until they will release the whole team and keep only one or two key players.

Shouldn't we learn from Asian events, especially those from Korea that have been preaching us for years that events which feature individuals are the future, that those are the ones that attract viewers and sponsors? Wouldn't it make more sense for all those big teams to disband their whole team and stick with one or two players? Let them win all those "star player vs star player" events, and organizations like SK, MYM, mouz, mTw and Co. would be much happier.

The teams make the teamleagues

Team, or no team?

"I carry passion in what I do, and I can't stand to lose more fans. I have higher expectations, and with them comes a great responsibility towards winning," the biggest eSports idol ever, Boxer said this once. Not sure but he could probably say Spiderman's uncle (it was his uncle, right?) ripped off his line when he said "With great power comes a great responsibility." When you hear such words from the star players you realise they have this hard motivation, they are driven by their fans to sometimes go even beyond necessary to accomplish victories - though it is hard to have a team with five players that are all highly motivated in the same way. Furthermore, you won't ever find a team that consists of stars. You cannot make money with players as a brand if they all lack of that superstar status.

And yes, as what Korea has taught us, we need stars - they are the future of eSports! Tournaments which feature individuals attract more interest, especially in Asia, as they are the future of WarCraft 3; team leagues are dead. The question for organizations to have a team with two or more players will no longer need to be answered, it will soon be a fact that there is no reason to have large teams anymore.

Final question: Isn't it in overall a positive development that team competitions get less and less promoted? One vs one tournaments have all the excitement, they have all the tension, the action and yes, they have the stars (those shiny yellow dots you see in the sky at night, but during daylight they fall down and turn into progamers - there, another mistery solved - where do the stars go when dark is gone)!