[General] Why I Think That Competitive Gaming Can Be Good For You

So, I had a thought on my personal blog just a little bit ago that I wanted to take a moment and expand on. The thought was:

I think that competitive gaming is good for ones being. It can teach you to be more confident, and assertive in your life. It can ease your doubts, and more importantly allows a means of relaxation.

I say this because of a few things, but lets looks at some in depth examples. Lets take a game of Starcraft for example first. In Starcraft you have to be able to react quickly. That's just a fact, you have to make on the fly decisions, and you have to be able to multitask. These are things that you naturally learn while trying to get better at the game. When the time comes, you have to make the decision to attack your opponent, and from experience when you are first starting out that can be a tough decision. You will lose matches because you didn't make decisions fast enough. You will lose matches because you didn't execute those decisions fast enough. It will suck, and you will lose. But eventually you will learn. And you will win. It can also help your concentration. One thing that you will notice is that the more focused you are, the more quickly you will execute your decisions and the more you will win. Because of the type of game Starcraft is, even 30 seconds of distraction can cost you the match.

Now lets look at League of Legends. The one big thing that I think most people will learn in League is how to work as a team, with minimal communication (because most people Solo que). It will teach you how to deal with jerks, and again how to focus. It will teach you how to separate good and bad decisions (should I chase my opponent down the lane and get the kill, or will I not get the kill making it not worth it.)

FPS's will teach you generally the same skills, with a little more focus on the quick thinking part. The more I look at it, I would say that all competitive games probably have life lessons you can take from them. This makes competitive games the best kind of games in my mind, because I like games that even after putting them down, your left a better, more reliable, human being. I like knowing that the more league I play I'm learning skills. I like knowing that Starcraft is making me a better decision maker. However the thing I like most of all, is that I love playing these games, just for fun. It's not like going to some decision making class, or something. It's learning these things in an environment that I like being in. I think that it's moments and thoughts such as these that will bring gaming into the public eye, and seen as a true hobby and not just something that "nerds" do.

[World of Warcraft] Are other games, like LoL, GW2, and Day Z "killing WoW"?

As many people know, in this last quarter World of Warcraft is down another 1.1 Million subs, bringing the total down to 9.1 million subs a total of 3.5 million lost over the course of Cataclysm. However, I want to discuss this most recent 1.1 million lost. Where did they go?

I would say that what we are seeing is wear and tear on an aging game. Other games chipping away on it slowly. As crazy as it sounds, not everyone hated SW:ToR, it's sitting on 700,000 subscribers itself. Add those people to say the millions of league of legends players, and the people caught in the Day Z craze, gamers just have a lot more to do now a days. Diablo 3 was a huge release, they mentioned that they sold 10 million boxes for it.

Another big thing to note is that over the last year or two we have seen many, many MMO's go free to play. We have seen Lord of the Rings: Online, Dungeons and Dragons: Online, Everquest 2, DC Universe, and many other lesser known games not cost a dime to play. To a lot of people who maybe don't care about quality as much, these games (once they went free) where much better options then World of Warcraft.

Now, you weigh all of that, against the fact that WoW hasn't had a content update in 8 months now, and you get a very bored player base. Dragon Soul was not an epic enough raid that got nerfed far to quickly to last the majority of people 8 months. WoW has hit a weak point in life cycle, and while no one game could rise up and deliver a massive blow to it, I think that all of these little blows, are starting to add up. People who were playing a few months ago (i.e last quarter ) have now finished the content, and been left with nothing to do but wait for Mists of Pandaria. A lot of these people probably unsubscribed, and starting using there time and money elsewhere.

WoW also has a massive competitor right on the horizon in Guild Wars 2. This is a game that a lot of people have gotten into, and loved. Most people are calling it the World of Warcraft of the modern day. And a lot of people I have seen have said that they can't play WoW, or SW:ToR, or any other traditional MMO after playing it.I don't know what impact it will have on WoW, but I have played both Mists of Pandaria (in beta) and Guild Wars 2 (in beta) and I can tell you that I like Guild Wars 2 slightly more. I don't know what the endgame for GW2 will be like, so WoW might still win out, but as far as the gameplay itself, I find GW2 the winner in that regard.

Only time can tell if Mists of Pandaria will stop WoW's subscription leak. What do you all think?

[Update] League of Legends, No Updates. etc

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have been really busy, and playing a lot of League of Legends.

On that note, I have been thinking of starting to commentate league of legends matches. I would obviously start with some of my own matches to practice and then go into other peoples. I figure that watching and commentating on others matches could potentially help my own game, or at least help me understand the game a lot better.

Anyway. More posts coming soon, I haven't forgotten about this blog, I have just been busy with life, school, and LoL.

[E Sports] Dota 2 Versus League of Legends

I am going to start this off saying that I am only 'decent' at LoL and have only play a total of 5 matches of Dota 2. That being said I would like to take a moment to talk about these two games.

 

Dota 2 is a remake by Valve of the original Dota mod that LoL was based off of. The hired the latest lead developer of the mod, and a gave him a team to re create the game in the Source engine. After playing it, and reading about it online a lot, I have found that it is a pretty faithful recreation. I like that you just get all of the champions for free, and the menus are very streamlined and easy to use.

With that, I dislike the game a lot. I have been spoiled by LoL, that much is certain. I have taken the time to know the champions, played enough matches to know the game, and actually feel alright at the game. In Dota 2 I have a hard time with almost everything in the game. I don't know any of the champions, I find the controls to be not as tight as LoLs and I haven't figured out how to lock my camera to my character at all (which makes me think that you just can't but I don't know.) I guess what I am getting at more then anything is that the learning curb in Dota 2 is much higher then it is in LoL despite the games being so similar.


I have enjoyed League since my first game almost six months ago. I was bad, I didn't know the champions but I knew that I liked the game, and as such, I stuck with it. When I played my first match of Dota 2 all I knew was that I sucked. My team was telling me to stop feeding, I barely knew my champion, and I kept dyeing. To give a comparison, in LoL my average match I get about 5/3. I have yet to get a single kill in Dota 2. It amazes me how different the two games are able to feel even though they are so similar.


Now, I'm not saying that Dota 2 is a bad game. I am just saying that I found that it wasn't for me. If I were better at it, I'm sure it could be amazing. The game is very high quality, and I kind of wish I were better at it. I will probably still get the urge every once in a while to fire it up and play a few matches (kind of like SC2). However my game of choice is LoL. For the same reason it presided over Starcraft for me. I'm decent at it. I'm bad at Dota 2 and SC2, I'm decent at LoL. So I am going to play LoL because I can actually get kills and don't just die.

                               

In a summery, here is my verdict, I like LoL because it is a streamlined, easier version of the original Dota mod. It is very "pick up and play" and pretty addicting. Dota 2 pretty straightforward in nature being a remake of the original mod, keeping the more hardcore atmosphere, and requires a lot of time to become even decent.