[Emperor Newt]

So as already stated in the other thread I have been involved into "esports" as a player and team-organizer for over ten years and as an admin for leagues and tournaments for about eight years. And while I am still a fan of PS2 (despite my ramblings on WDS) and eSports I just don't see this working out.

For one it's impossible to organize a "professional" team of 48 players. There is a reason why all eSports teams have a max team size of five. That's not a number that comes out of the blue. If you have ever managed an eSports team you will come to notice that it's already a pain in the ass to organize your five guys plus the one or two backup players. I don't see how organizing 48 players and having them being online at the same time without having a huge amount of backup players (as you want to have players who know each other and work well together) will work. Except you make tournaments a once every two months thing. But I really don't know how you want to grow a competitive eSports scene from this schedule.

In addition to that, prize money is always a big thing in eSports. So let's just assume MLG gives out 10k USD as prize money. Which is a lot for a niche game like PS2 (yes, in eSports terms it's a niche game). Then that's about 200 USD for every player, not counting backup players who usually get paid a smaller amount too.
Then you have the problem that eSports relies to a big part on a live audience. And that's for two reasons. For one to get people to come and pay entrance fees, but also to check for "cheating allegations". If a team is able to perform great in front of a life audience people are less like to jump to cheating conclusions. How does one want to make 48 players go to a tournament? If you only send five it won't cut it. If you send all the prize money wouldn't even be enough to pay for the travel expenses. Unless they go up to the 100k prize money category. But then nobody except the two favorite teams would be able to attend because it would be a huge loss for them. Also the tournament would need to provide 96 PCs for people to play on. And that's only for a single game. That's just not feasible. So playing in front of a life audience is pretty much out of the question for PS2 and hurts it's eSports "capabilities" big time.

Also the game currently lacks any kind of spectator tool which allows you to monitor the game on an acceptable level. I don't want to diminish the work people do during the community clash but it shows how bad the spectator cam is as a "professional" spectator tool. Just look at the amount of tools, shortcuts and data games like Dota2 and StarCraft2 provide to the caster. afaik PS2 doesn't even have the ability to go into first person view in a first person shooter (although I heard server mods can do this?). That's like the worst precondition to cast a competitive first person shooter.

And even if SOE can magically fix all these problems there is still the big unknown: will people actually care? If have seen EA putting thousands of marketing dollars into their games for eSports, but once EA didn't want to put more money into them anymore the eSports leagues and ladders died. Almost instantly. People flock to where the money is and I currently do not see how this is going to happen in PS2. There are a few exceptions from this rule like LoL which was able to get a wide audience by filling a niche and was able to expand from that.
But I currently don't see people being all too interested in 48 vs 48 fights. Most games that are big in eSports are because they have a very clear structure and mostly short but fun engagements. It's the thrill of these small engagements that make a good and fun to watch esports title like the dota-like games. Or even Counter-Strike. And I don't see how these situations could be staged in a 48 vs 48 environment and be casted in an entertaining way that attracts viewers who don't know much about the game.

Maybe it will attract some new players but those will soon find out that playing an uncerted toon on Connery will be VERY different to what they have seen during MLG. And that's just another issue I have with the eSports idea: there is too large of a discrepancy between what the MLG mode looks like and what the game for a everyday player looks like. Except they only want people to play on the Nexus. Which I hope they don't. Of course there is a difference between playing a Dota2 match or a Counter-Strike 5vs5 in a public or an eSports environment. But the overall gameplay situation is almost exactly the same. The overall gameplay situation on PS2s continents is not like the Nexus. It's might be similar, but I feel that someone joining PS2 and looking for the Nexus might be very disappointed with what he finds the game to actually be.

But to refrain to the good: The only good thing I can see MLG could bring is new players. And the game desperately needs more as servers like Miller have lost about 50% of their population since June and can barely fill a single continent.
The bad thing is: I don't see how this is going to work out. The whole eSports idea feels shoehorned in and (imho) lacks any kind of direction or idea what they want to do with it except "We have the Nexus, let's do eSports on it". But I am sorry, that's not how eSports works. Maybe in the end it's a big success and I am proven wrong. I would actually be very happy if so. But unless SOE steps up their game and throws hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the MLG and other leagues and tournaments, I see very little chances of this happening.