Is AoE Online e-sport material?

So do you guys think we will see AoE Online become a big part of RTS e-sport to rival the likes of StarCraft 2?|||Definitely not!
|||Not a chance. Thank god.
|||

No way. Those games must have the best ballance, popularity, publisher and so on...

There is no way crap like this will even be considered as a participant, let alone be choosen.

P.S. Which of the games from the series got that far? I think, that at least one made it.

|||There won't be $1000 tournaments but it will have a good competitive scene. There are already multiple tournaments planned for the next few weeks, one of which is offering a weekly money reward. Not to mention www.youtube.com/iloveaoeonline

So it will be competitive with tournaments (it already is) - dunno if that falls under the definition of "e-sport".|||This game is moreappropriatefor the Indie category...|||

The game does have the competitive RTS qualities, it just needs some finetuning and balancing. Most of these thigns are outside PvP.

The gearing aspect I think will be quite appealing. It's new sort of. You can always change gear to play entirely different than your previous game(s).

IMO it can definitely compete, but it needs to have the proper tools such as replays, spectate mode, custom games (custom as in, lots of options), 3v3, etc etc. and the spectate mode needs to have a UI full of information like SC2 has.

When that happens, gamereplays.org will pick it up, and then it begins.

|||We also need a company who wants to go into the scene and sponsor some tournaments. That definitely helped SC2.
|||

Is AoE Online e-sport material?

Why not. With the correct structures it could be done. Will they do it, do they plan to do it, will they work in order to do it, who knows... but with matching skirmish system, a ladder and things like that, why not. After all, WoW does it with its unbalanced arena combos, SC2 does it, ... if they build the structures for doing it, clearly yes, AoEO is could become e-sport material.

|||Continue dreaming. Microsoft wont do that, because it gives no money and asks for them to do a good game and spend a lot of money. Only in dreams.|||Ya, MS for some reason is not putting PvP in the forefront. I mean, it should be done as soon as possible, perhaps before some of the campaign stuff, even.
|||

Nobody knows at this point but I highly doubt it. Saying that MS won't back a competitive game monetarily though isn't a good reason, they sponsored Halo competitions.

|||I think the game could become an e-sport, obviosly their must be balance changes, maybe a few more civs, and a lot of improvements to PvP stuff already mentioned, but the game could certainly become an e-sport.|||

Well they could do it, I mean, just about anything can become an "esport" with enough popularity these days. The bar has been... lowered, in recent years.

But I think it's still too early to tell, I don't think enough people are playing this game competitively to get a good sense where the game is at.

I mean given that the game is "evergreen" I don't think it's quite developed enough for it, it needs more factions, PvP options.... a good PvP community needs to form first. It could take awhile.

But even if it does form a nice community, they'll probably run into similar issues that Blizzard's Arena did. They pushed that game hard as an esport and it never really soared. I think a big part of that was because Blizzard had to provide the servers to even run a tournament. Very inconvenient. Factor in leveling/gear progression and it makes the barrier to entry kinda cumbersome. I think they wanted to add "Pro" civs to bypass this? We'll see.

Microsoft would have to push it pretty hard though, and I have no idea if they have the interest to do that. Going from "free to play experiment" to "pushing as a major esport" is kinda a big leap. I would love to see it though, just because I always thought AoE series deserved better.

|||No.