First level associations are boring. Quake? Ztn-frag-explosion, what a mind-bogglingly creative idea, how one can even come up with originality like this?!
The banner above is genius.
no one have replied yet, so i will take captain obvious role:
i think the dreamhack ql logo is because of 2gd show, he said at the first show smth like go play quakelive, go to the site esreality.com, they are very friendly, there are basically rainbows and butterflies.
Well, SC2 ended up getting way more, and I went to sleep after a few games, but across all streams (I don't know how many were on DOTATV, either) there were at least 25k at one point.
I was there, and the chat was fullfilled by peoples spamming "what the fuck am i watching?, is this minecraft pvp?, i didn't know doom is an esport!, is the LOL final already finished? when is the LOL final?"
I returned later to watch the lol final, and the numbers didn't changed....
No: the numbers started raising whith the proceeding of the time: the peoples started to connect to watch LOL, but due to the fact that the QL final has been in late, they found the "minecraft pvp", and stayed in chat to not lost the final
No, no, i didn't want to say that: for the final, i don't know with precision due to the incoming peoples from the other games, but maybe around 4 k?? i may be wrong; but during the semifinals etc. we weren't over the 2k/2.2k
So what? Whos said that only quake players are true viewers? How many football fans actually play football? I used to follow quake tournaments before I started playing it, the same goes for sc:bw. Even if they were just waiting for lol they were actively watching ql (as chat spam comments prove) and I believe ql is great game to watch and easy to understand.
Discontent ones are always most vocal but even they watched it and maybe eventually enjoyed it to some extent.
I don't think that we should be so protective about quake, chasing away everyone who doesn't like it. It's amazing game and it can very well defend itself.
edit: also casual viewers tend to watch just the finals and there is nothing wrong with that.
Some parts of my post weren't meant to respond to yours - just general thoughts.
You suggesten that 20k number of viewers was somehow false.
I don't agree and even if ql isn't as popular game to play as we would like it to be still as an esport game (where viewer is consumer not player) it fucking delivers :)
Also looking at this disparity in viewer numbers between regular games and the finals I think that commentators should concentrate more on promoting quake for new players and explaining duel basics for ppl who haven't seen it before like the aforementioned lol players.