I’m back! It’s the first Zechs Files of the new year. I hope you all had a good Christmas and I trust you’re ready for a flame war because I get the feeling that this column will induce one.

Now before I get to the core of this week’s piece, I want to say congratulations to World Elite and try and dispel the impending accusations of sour grapes. Warcraft III is a thinking man’s game and WE simply played smarter than any other team at the WC3L finals. Micro is great to watch but, when all is said and done, it’s secondary to intelligence.

However…

What of creativity? What of showmanship? Fittingly on Sunday, Manchester United had a goal ruled out against Chelsea because they tried something a bit different, a bit original and off-the-cuff, but the linesman was caught out and disallowed it. To me, Sky is Warcraft’s equivalent of that linesman.

I don’t want people to think I’m criticising Sky’s ability, because clearly that would be ridiculous. You can’t win back-to-back WCG by being a bad player. It’s not that I have anything personal against Sky either; I’ve never met the man and probably never will. Finally, I’m not just some grudge-bearing human hater – one of my last WC3 columns was in praise of a human player, in fact.

No, my problem with Sky – and he’s not just the only villain, but he’s the main one – is that he’s making WC3 mind-numbingly boring. His play style is robotic: if the AI had been coded to play coherent strategies in WC3, human would play like Sky. He is ruthless and undoubtedly efficient, but if there was an international boring championship, the other competitors needn’t turn up. The human race probably has more options than any other when it comes to viable unit choices, but so many of Sky’s games feature footmen, peasants and nothing else.

For those of you who know your Counter-strike history, Sky is like the old-school terrorist eco rounds – the ones that SK were so famous for under the old money system. Those rounds were smart, well though out, cruel even, but Jesus Christ they were boring to watch! Likewise, the strength of the tower rush clearly has not been diminished by Blizzard’s last patch and so we are forced to endure games like WE vs SK’s 2on2 yesterday.

Ironically, someone on IRC said that SK’s response to the towers had been robotic, that they should’ve hired different heroes instead of going for the same old cookie-cutter strategies. Well, yes, that’s probably true (although you can’t get a pitlord or a panda on LT) but what’s the excuse for Sky and Infi doing the same thing over and over? After all, the tower rush is little different from the dozen or so towers Sky builds in his own base in the games where he doesn’t rush. I understand that human needs base defence – all races do – but has the man got no shame? Overkill is overkill, no matter which way you look at it.

Blizzard, to give them credit, has tried to tone down the strength of towers over the years. But tinkering around the edges clearly doesn’t work. When they nerfed towers directly, human players just built more. The latest change to repair times in 1.22 evidently did nothing. My suggestion is not one that I’ve heard before and it’s a rather bold one, I admit: give guard towers a blight effect. By this I mean something similar to undead’s system of only being able to build on ‘blighted ground.’

I don’t like the idea of killing off an entire strategy, even one as tedious as tower rushes, but I fail to see any alternative. My patience has worn out with this ridiculous style of play. At least with orc or elf tower rushes – apart from the sense of uniqueness – there is often a level of stealth and cunning involved. Moon in particular has a nasty habit of building a row of ancient protectors just out of and orc player’s vision during the night. That’s inventive and it’s clever, unlike piling into your opponent’s base with ten militia and dropping instant scout towers in his base.

Many have complained about the bleak future of WC3 this year but I try to be optimistic. If the money is still there, the players will be too. But what will be missing, if players like Sky continue to dominate with their monotonous, tiresome use of towers, is the spectators.

The world's first and only weekly esports column is back next Tuesday, assuming I'm not burned alive by flames.