A Giant Bronze Orc says: All is well in the world of eSports

Blizzard Entertainment, the fine folk behind World of Warcraft and Starcraft: Brood War, recently moved into their new headquarters in Orange County, California. To mark this milestone, they decided to put up a huge and immensely detailed statue of an Orc riding a wolf outside the gates, as you do. Made out of the finest bronze (probably), it does please the eye and suggests that not at all big corporations have yet been credit crunched. A massive show of pimpish grandeur, one might think?

I say that more than anything else, this is a good sign for eSports. When the creators of the most competitive strategy game ever (not to mention the world’s most popular online game, WoW) choose to invest some major doe in making a solid iron-sculpture of a computer game-character that saw its first bit of pixellated daylight in Warcraft 1 back in the mid-90s, that is inspiring. Watch how this mean, lean wolf-riding machine gets put into place, here. Way to go, Blizzard!

However, there are also more real signs for a brightening future - as Artosis tells us in the latest edition of SCforAll News, the prestigious and (in terms of eSports-history) ancient Electron Sports World Cup has now finally after six years opened its gates to Starcraft. This international league, which is the next best thing to the World Cyber Games, has been going on since 2003 and is a major cornerstone in the professional lives of all the gamers that compete in the games certified by ESWC.

Until now, the best game has not been represented, but this year it will be different. Regional playoffs are already under way, and later on we will have another opportunity beside of WCG to watch the foreign hopefuls of Starcraft do their worst against the Korean mayhem-machines. Will be a riot. Team Fortress 2-players will have to wait a little longer, Counter-Strike still rules supreme among all the Valve-creations, but maybe the time will come also for the Demoman? We hope.

The finals of the Electronic Sports World Cup will be held just outside of Seoul, South Korea during the 2nd-5th of May, 2009 - all the details can be found here.

$9,000 and bucketloads of glory await the winner of the Starcraft championship, which is the lowest prize pool of all the represented games, but regardless - it is good to be part of this major league.

From a Starcraft-exclusive point of view, SCforAll.com will provide news, insights and detailed coverage of the event. Artosis even promised ’secret surprise commentators’ - which certainly will mean that Nich ‘Tasteless’ Plott and ‘SuperDanielMan’ Lee will be our eyes and ears. Though I also wonder - is it possible that other talents will be recruited as well? sc2gg.com has a great stable of world class-commentators; such as Klazart, Cholera, Diggity and Moletrap - each one hungry for such an opportunity. You heard it here first …

As a viewer of eSports and avid fan of the professional computer gaming-phenomenon, these are all great news - and the Bronze Orc is just another two tons of icing on this cake. It will be possible, through some hassle and paying for cable TV connections, to watch the finals of these events on TV - and it will definitely be completely easy to enjoy it via Your computer.

This movement, I think and hope, is getting closer and closer to regular mass media - and with that the social acceptance for the fact that pixel-based competition certainly can constitute a sport. Click this link or the picture up to the right to view ESWC’s promo video. These are, indeed, inspiring times.

What do You think? Is this exciting news, or just rabid fanboyism? I do appreciate all input, critique as well as praise, and would love to hear Your opinion.

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Tagged as: blizzard, esports, scforall.com, starcraft

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Hellen CLARK 03.22.09 at 1:02 pm: Hey, I justed wanted to give you a compliment on your blog, keep up the great work. I will be back to check it out in the near future.
2 kneff 03.22.09 at 7:49 pm: Thank you very much, I greatly appreciate it, and especially so since I have just re-started my blog and value every comment like if it was a solid gold brick! More updates are coming soon, with increased regularity, thanks again!