Snutz broke down the prize pool earnings and “hourly” pay and technically players are only getting paid $2/hr if they aren’t the winners of top 3.
He also said most of these people have to RMT in order to pay bills because being pro at WoW isn’t realistically going to keep you alive and twitch is only profitable for some of the pro players and not everybody.
It’s paints a picture at how little interest there is for AWC not only from advertisers but from Blizzard themselves to make this an actual esport career.
Some thoughts on the awc from a rival pleb point of view.
It’s 10 times more enjoyable to watch with the damage so high and healers ooming around the 3 minute mark some matches. Seeing healthbars bounce is exciting.
Cross kills are super exciting.
Supatease getting excited adds hype.
Eiya is a pretty girl but is really really bad at casting. She’d be a fantastic sideline reporter like erin andrews or tracy wolfson but the format of the awc doesn’t support that.
Azael did awesome.
I hope blizz doesn’t revert to dampening metas where the shortest game is 7 minutes long. I could watch something like this awc live. The 7-12 minute games I just wait til they go on youtube and fast forward through 90% of it all.
No, they didn’t force me to play pvp. As a host, it wasn’t ever my job to add my own input except for maybe here and there. My job was to ask questions and lead discussion.
I will always be less experienced than Azael, Ziqo, and Supatease but I am working hard to improve now that I am being asked to cast. It is really hard to see everything as it’s happening and call it out but I felt way better at it from day 1 to day 3.
You’ll probably notice that I am a bit more insightful when it comes to melee classes as that is what I play, and I am working to expand that for future cups.
I appreciate the thoughtful critique without being insulting and I can only hope that the community gives me the space to continue to grow and improve.
One suggestion – would it be possible for a Blizzard employee (with their blue text and icon) to make a forum post whenever the AWC stream begins? It would be more visible.
well I’d hope she got better. she had nowhere to go but up. I feel she would be better off as a host, with two other commentators going off each other during the match. she can do intros and team comps and basic chatter fine, but she doesn’t know the game enough to do play by plays. Hell, I don’t know the game enough to do play by plays so I’m not saying its on her.
EDIT:
I didn’t realize you were in the thread, and I don’t want to come off as a jerk. I just feel that calling fast paced arena matches is a hard skill and it seems like only a few people do it really well. Its like they are setting you up to fail when they have you across from Azael, ven, or whoever. they are seeing things most of us miss as viewers, so when its tossed to you, it slows down the momentum
I’m going to be honest, this isn’t meant to be mean at all, but I don’t think it’s possible to get there. You can’t just ‘watch and listen’ to get there, or play casual wow content. The reason the other casters are so good at analyzing and casting is because they’re active r1 players. They play at that level and have played at that level for a long time. There are things happening in the game that you won’t ever know/see because they are things that high end pvpers know/see only. It’s literally impossible. No matter how much NBA I watch, I will never be able to analyze a game like Lebron James or even a random player on his team. The people that played basketball at a high school or collegiate level would even know that what I was saying made no sense.
It’s not just a ‘you’ thing. I have nothing against you personally. It’s a critique I have on every single game who has casters/analysts that aren’t playing at the highest level. While some people may not notice it, the mid-to-higher players will just face palm and cringe at the comments being made because the person making them has no idea how wrong the comment is.
You want to be a caster? Grind through LFG to a rank 1 title, and not getting carried by the rank 1 players to get there IMO. Personally, if I were in your shoes, I’d focus on improving at being the host. There’s lots of room for improvement there and if you can become a good host for WoW, you could probably figure out how to be a good host for other games as well. Where as being a r1 WoW player and a caster doesn’t translate to any other games unless you become top ranked in those games as well. I’ve seen games try to bring over casters from other games (who were low ranked in those other games as well), and it was PAINFUL to watch. I think being a good host still requires some game knowledge but the floor is wayyyyyy lower barrier to entry.
Examples: F., FindableCarpet, etc. I don’t know anything LoL so I can’t comment on how good Azael is at casting LoL.
Anyways, that’s my honest feedback. No disrespect, just open honesty.
with how fast pace arena has been, it’s likely very hard to keep up with what’s happening. even ziqo, who’s been at this for much longer, falls behind in commentary and i don’t fault him.
she’s typically been the host and a very good one at that, commenting is a totally different ball game.
That’s also a mod issue. The mods on AWC are sooooo bad. I’ve never seen mods be so soft in my life and on a power trip. You can’t even say “Eiya doesn’t pvp” in chat without getting timed out. It’s actually mind boggling. I saw a guy say something like “wow mods stop banning people” and he got banned instantly, like wtf.
I hope you enjoyed casting and that Blizz continues to give you the opportunity to do so if you want to. I personally find you to be well spoken and good at leading the conversation when hosting, and I think casting is an extremely difficult role that just takes practice, like anything else. Imo you did way better than I think a majority of people would do on their first go at it, regardless of experience/status/etc.
