WSVG Cancelled Indefinitely
You can see it here, but for those that don't feel like clicking the link, I'll quote it below.
http://www.thewsvg.com/ wrote:
WORLD SERIES OF VIDEO GAMES CANCELLED
Effective immediately, Games Media Properties will no longer produce the World Series of Video Games. The remainder of the 2007 season in Los Angeles, London and Sweden is cancelled.
The World Series of Video Games launched with the goal of expanding interest and participation in competitive gaming. Over the course of two seasons, we have been honored by the strong support the community has shown in attending our festivals, and watching our competitions online and on television-- all in record-setting numbers. We have been grateful for the generous support provided by Intel and other sponsors since our inception.
However, the continuing challenges of securing adequate revenues to sustain the production of the WSVG's large scale events and television programming, in a very crowded field of competitive gaming leagues, has prompted us to re-evaluate our direction as an organization.
Unfortunately, the decision is to cancel the remainder of the WSVG season, as we shift our focus solely to growing our online advertising network of websites, which currently reach seven million users each month.
We are proud of the accomplishments and memorable entertainment we have provided through the World Series of Video Games. While we are sorry that this news will disappoint our fans and players, we are deeply appreciative that we have had the opportunity to contribute to the growth of eSports.
Games Media Properties
Players are up in arms over this for sure, as evident by the Battlegroup 9 (Bloodlust) IRC channel where players are venting their anger against WSVG and their partners in the tournaments. I asked a few from the channel what their thoughts were on the cancellation of the tournament.
“This is a huge blow to WoW as a competitive game, I personally thought at every WSVG event the WoW event brought the most spectators along with support - there were always an influx of teams at every event, basically without a season 2 arena tournament announced there is no real reason to play wow competitively. That's the main issue here, I suspect a lot of 'pvp-centric' players will quit wow and move on to more competitive games like RTS/FPS and although they’re the minority of the MMO population this will have an effect on those 'hardcore players' of MMOs,” said Brendan “Trance” Coyle of Check Six.
“Yep that sums it up,” said dudslol - a level 70 Blood Elf Paladin on the Blackrock server - when asked if the WSVG being cancelled has turned him away from playing World of Warcraft. “There's really no reason to play wow now,” he continued “the main reason I played was wsvg.”
“I think it’s pretty horrible. I know I was really looking forward to London and Sweden.” says Tiz – a member of Team Ice on Illidan and the Evil Geniuses eSports team, “Hopefully this won’t hurt WoW too much as an e-Sport, but only time will tell if more sponsors look to pick it up for their tournaments.”
We also had a chance to talk with Chris Lemley, President of Team Pandemic - one of the worlds’ largest and most successful eSports teams - about how this is going to affect Pandemic.WoW. “We'll be fine; it definitely is a hurdle we'll have to adjust for,” he said “but overall the brand will continue to function as normal and we will make the changes necessary to help our guys continue to succeed.”
This is an unfortunate turn of events, and is frankly surprising to see as the World of Warcraft 3v3 tournament was beginning to take off. Hopefully the downfalls and poor management of some of the events during the WSVG doesn't negatively impact the chances of games like World of Warcraft or Guitar Hero II from being introduced to future eSports tournaments, as those two games were certainly the highlights of the WSVG.
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zombiegamersCheck out http://www.zombiegamers.com
They are picking up where the WSVG left off - Amazing Prizes: Tourney for GH2, Halo, Madden and Quake. Planning to go national within a year !!
Check it out.. http://www.zombiegamers.com