Article by Samuel "oPlaiD" Lingle.


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ST. LOUIS, Missouri -- After a year full of events ranging from WSVG to Blizzcon, Dreamhack, and CGS, only one European champion has ever triumphed in a LAN World of Warcraft event -- the Spanish duo WTS Skill at the CGS’s Arena 2v2 WoW World Championship last month.

Read that over again and let it sink for a minute.

In the wide world of eSports, it’s become second nature to think of Europe as the favorite and America as the underdog. Games like Counter-Strike, Quake, and Warcraft 3 have historically favored Europeans or Asians over American competitors, and it stands to reason that WoW would be no different, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t been the case. CGS’s tournament in December though, was one of the first signs that Europeans will soon get their time in the sun.

Thanks to most WoW tournaments being held in the United States in 2007, it’s taken the European scene a bit longer to jump-start a real thirst for competition to equal their Yankee rivals. Unlike in the US, where a real competitive metagame grew around communities like the Bloodlust battlegroup, it took a while for Europe to find its own identity with little to compete for other than in-game rewards.

“The EU scene was scattered around on multiple different ‘big’ battlegroups before the start of [Arena Season Three] when the migrations to Stormscale and Cyclone started in earnest. The US had Bloodlust developed before the first season,” explained Ville “Vilu” Vainikka, member of Finnish team ID Gaming and one of the progenitors of many of Europe’s competitive WoW initiatives. “Now that we've got rather similar situation going on here, I think the scenes are much more even in terms of organization and progression.”

For someone unfamiliar with World of Warcraft mechanics, all this talk about “battlegroups” probably sounds like some sort of code.

In games like Counter-Strike: Source, Dead or Alive 4, Forza Motorsport 2, or almost any other eSports title, you can hop online and play against whomever you want whenever you want.

In World of Warcraft, though, that simply isn’t the case due to divisions created by the needs of hosting virtual worlds.

Each character is created on a specific game server and stored on that specific machine. That character cannot play on a separate server, since the game is sectioned off into specific realms. Each set of realms are segmented into groups of realms for a specific purpose, PvP (Player-versus-Player), hence the term “battlegroup.” A given character can only battle against characters hosted on servers in their particular group.

The upshot of this for building a competitive gaming scene is that it’s much harder to develop a strong community when the best competitors are spread throughout the various battlegroups. The best teams in every BG can’t get the best practice possible since they can’t compete against all the high-level teams.

In the US though, this wasn’t a major problem thanks to the growth of the battlegroup aptly labeled “Bloodlust” after an ability in the game. The high level of play from an abnormal number of top PvP-minded guilds and players created the environment that spawned top tournament competitors like Pandemic and Fnatic, the CGS Dell 3v3 Invitational champion and runner up respectively. The success of those teams and the Bloodlust community created the solid foundation of America’s World of Warcraft success.

As Vainikka pointed out though, Europe lacked a similar environment, and that caused its top teams to wither in anonymity until recently. A movement spearheaded by him and other top PvPers created an artificial migration of the European scene to the “Cyclone” battlegroup, whipping up teams in a growing whirlwind of excitement that has created a community rivaling America’s own Bloodlust.

“It has helped a ton. Before Cyclone we had multiple dying BG's, heck, pretty much every BG was slowly deteriorating away. Now we've got an extremely strong one full of life,” said Vainikka, on the rapid assembly of a viable competitive community. “As for how it happened, there was a small 'migrate Cyclone' project at the end of [Arena Season One], with some fictional hype surrounding it. But when top teams from different BG's had achieved everything they could in their own respective BG's, the hype started to interest them, and they wanted to see if the ‘grass was actually greener’ in Cyclone. All it took was few teams brave enough to take the first step, and the rest followed when they saw others were having fun, and wanted a share of the action.”

And there has certainly been plenty of action. While the American scene has largely languished in the post-tournament doldrums that seems to grip every eSports scene during the off-season, Europe has seen a renaissance of Arena action headed by a series of online tournaments hosted on their primary battlegroup, Cyclone.

So far, they’ve been invite-only based on Arena ratings and success in Blizzard’s public ladder. They lack any prizes, but that hasn’t stopped them from riling up plenty of action.

“It's funny how much a promise of a little recognition will motivate people and how much more activity such ‘small’ things bring to the whole ladder,” explained Vainikka, who acts as an administrator for the events.

“Also, I was quite unprepared for how badly people want to win. Being part of the tournament organization staff has taught me a lot about people,” he added.

That drive to win was something missing from the European Arena scene last year. While WSVG was sweeping up America in a frenzy of PvP thrills, Europe shrugged it off with statements like, “I don’t like the format,” or “We’d win if we could get to America.” The teams that did end up going simply had no real chance to compete, unable to get the same quality of practice in their homeland compared to the honed American players.

The volatile European scene has been playing catch-up though, and now, it’s possible they’ve even surpassed their US counterparts. Last year, most of the biggest innovations in class compositions and strategy came out of America. Now, though, Europe's the one starting the latest trends. A new 5v5 lineup labeled "Eurocomp" (after its place of origin) uses the Rogue and Druid combination as its centerpiece, and has been dominating online tournaments in both the US and Europe, a testament to the growth of their scene as a hotbed for competitive creativity.

Despite the strides his homeland has recently made, Vainikka reserves judgment on any cross-continental comparison until there’s another international tournament.

“I think the scenes are in different phases of progression, mainly due to their ‘age’ difference. The US scene has been more consistent for a longer period of time, so it has more or less stabilized. The EU scene hasn't been united under the same banner for long, and the heterogeneous origin shows. Where EU is still mixing and matching to see what really fits, US is more set on its ways already,” he said.

While World of Warcraft may be a few years old, WoW as an eSport has barely been a viable concept for a single year. For a game in its competitive infancy, it’s always hard to predict what the future holds for teams worldwide. Whether Europe comes to dominate WoW like it does other games won’t be something we can answer until at least the end of this year, but one thing is for certain: the US teams can no longer ignore their brethren across the pond.