Highlights from the 2008 Arena Tournament and TTR

Last year's arena tournament was a lot of fun. Prior to the 2008 tournament Blizzard has a Tournament Test Realm open for everyone to log on and play with. The test realm let them get the mechanics for the real tournament realm ready before hand, allowing Blizzard to work all the kinks out.

We had a lot of coverage of the event, and some of it is pretty interesting to go back and read.

There were two main tests, called stress tests. These were where as many people as possible logged on and attempted to play. You can check out our coverage of Stress Test I and Stress Test II.

And of course, the highlights of the stress test were the GMs that came and spawned all sorts of terrible creations.

%Gallery-18020%

Drysc was, at one point, a vomiting tree (this is more amusing than it sounds). We snapped, what are for me, some of the more memorable screenshots of the World of Warcraft during the events. You can check them out in our gallery.

Each stress test by all estimates had around a hundred of thousand players involved, many of whom were clustered around GMs. The GMs were not afraid to interact with players either, some dueling, some changing people into chickens, while others were out right casting Death Touch on the players. We were even fortunate enough to be whisked away to Old Dalaran - still the coolest thing that's happened to me in WoW.

There is no information if there'll be another tournament test server this year, however I kind of doubt it given the immediacy of the tournament announcement today (registration starts February 17th). But man, last year was a blast.

%Gallery-17974%