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Blizz announces WoW arena tourney with $75,000 grand prize
Do you have a hot 3v3 team in WoW? Do you want to win some money? If so, this news is for you. Blizzard announced a new global 3v3 arena tournament yesterday, starting in April with two qualifier rounds. The tournament events will run on specialized realms where players can create level 70 characters and choose epic gear from vendors, to level the playing field. The vendors will be stocked with Arena and honor gear as well as "a selection of raid epics with the approximate power level of the Arena gear." Characters will also be given access to gold, gems, enchants, and class-specific items like ammo and soul shards. There will be an entry fee to compete in each qualifier round of $20/€15/local equivalent per competitor.The qualifiers are broken down by region: Europe, North America, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau, and run for six weeks. After this, the top four teams in each of the two qualifying rounds for each region advance to the regional finals, competing for "more than $27,000 in cash prizes." The regional winners will then compete in the championships, with $120,000 in cash prizes available. And the grand prize? $75,000. Who's going to take a stab at it? For more details, see the tournament FAQ.[via WoW Insider]
Blizzard announces a 3v3 arena tournament
Blizzard announced today that they will be hosting a 3v3 Tourney beginning in April with international qualifiers and some pretty hefty cash prizes at the end. After paying an entrance fee, teams will compete in qualifying tournaments with other teams from their region for cash prizes totaling $27,000 before proceeding to the global championship, where the grand prize will be $75,000. The twist is that this tournament will take place on dedicated servers in which participants will play with pre-made level 70 characters. You can read the FAQ here.It sounds like this Tournament will be something that PvP Enthusiasts will want to watch with interest. The entrance fee should ensure that most of the field is made of dedicated players, or at least players who are somewhat sure of their ability, and the establishment of pre-made characters to ensure a "level" playing field should definitely lead to some exciting matches in which we'll see how differences in skill can make or break an arena match. However, It may also bring to light class and talent discrepancies as we watch which team make-ups rise to the top and which fall. Since we already know that additional class changes will be coming to 2.4.0, we certainly have to wonder if Blizzard will try to make some last minute class adjustments to this patch in preparation for this tournament, or if they'll use data from this tournament in making further decisions on class balance. But either way, if you fancy yourself to be pretty decent at 3v3 Arena play and think you're willing to part with a bit of money to try and win a lot MORE money, it sounds like you'll want to keep an eye out for the sign-ups for this.
Bornakk: Incoming Arena queue relief in 2.4
Bornakk revealed a welcome bit of future patch info on the general forums recently, announcing that there is an incoming improvement on a future 2.4 update that should lower arena queuing times across the board. This is definitely welcome news for many of us, although those who counted on getting chores done during the queue might get a little disappointed!We've heard in the past that blizzard didn't want to rush in to any quick fixes and was considering the queue time issue carefully, so hopefully that means they've found a solution that will stick. Thus far, aside from the occasional mishap from a sneaky warlock and the lack of certain expected class changes, they seem to have had a smooth and well received patch on their hands. While some people were asking for a hot fix in the thread, Bornakk assured them that the change was complicated enough that needed a patch. Being someone who often ends up running his 2v2s on Saturday or Sunday evening and experiences queue times that sometimes climb to 10 minutes or more, I'd say the wait will be worth it if it means I don't have to wait around quite so long in the future. Faster queue times, at the least, mean I can fit another daily or two in.
New online tool shows popular arena setups
You may already be aware that SK Gaming has a listing of the top arena teams in the US, Europe, and Korea, all ranked against one another. Now SK Gaming has added another feature to this listing, which shows both the most "popular setups for high ranked teams" and the "average rating for popular setups." You can see very clearly the top five class combinations in each category of the arenas, from 5-vs-5 to 2-vs-2, all right above their regular listing of the top teams in each category.I originally found this new interface via World of Raids, and they have their own summary of the most popular class setups. However, clicking through some of the options on SK Gaming's site, you can clearly see it's not just a simple matter of having the right classes in order to win. In 5-vs-5 it seems that, for the most part, the warrior and the paladin provide the backbone of a good group, while after that, you need a balance of some hybrid healing and dps classes. In 3-vs-3 and 2-vs-2, however, you can find many groups doing very well without any warriors or paladins at all. The traditional roles of "tank, healing, damage" we see in PvE obviously don't always apply in the arena, where the balance of your team's abilities working together is what matters most. Druids, rogues, and warlocks in particular seem to shine much more here than in 5-vs-5. So if you're a serious arena junkie, and you like analyzing these things, head on over and see what you make of these various class combinations. As always, our regular Blood Sport column can help you, as V'Ming has lots of information about how the classes are balanced together as well.
The 2-vs-2 arena queue and you
We usually don't realize it, but there is actually an upper limit to the number of instances that can be created in WoW at any given moment. If all the players on your server somehow decided to run Karazhan at about the same time, you'd find that after a certain number of raids had gotten started, some players would be stuck at the loading screen, waiting for the others to finish. Normally, of course, it's not a problem, because people don't all go to Karazhan at the same time. But at prime time, the 2-vs-2 arena instances are as popular as can be, so the 2-vs-2 arena instance slots get full, and frustrated players sometimes find themselves waiting a good long time for one of their turn to fight.Last month, Drysc said that the Blizzard team still didn't know what to do about it. But now, he says that they do have a special change planned to help solve this problem. It's going to require a patch, though, and not the upcoming patch 2.3.2, either, but it is scheduled for some point in the future, "as soon as possible." Patch 2.4 perhaps? "The change," Drysc says, "will make it so that more instances can kick up in a shorter amount of time. Which doesn't necessarily mean there can't ever be a wait again, but it should drastically decrease them." However much "drastically" is, shorter is always better than longer, when it comes to queues!
WoW 3v3 tournament ended, videos from the finals
The Dreamhack Winter festival in Sweden ended last week, and video footage of the Electronic Sports League World of Warcraft 3v3 arena tournament that took place right there in freezing Northrend Northern Europe is now online. The series went right down to the wire in a best-of-five between MoB-TurtleForce and team Pandemic. The videos are a little blurry (see below), but the grand final is definitely worth watching if you're at all interested in seeing competitive gaming in an MMO, with five extremely close games and amazing teamwork. Check them out! As we covered previously, the tournament itself arose from the ashes of the deceased WSVG, and whilst the high quality feed of the event was broken, it's nice to see it went off without *too* many hitches. And it gets better -- the commentary was almost passable.
No incoming fix for long arena queues
With the popularity of the new arena season, queue times across the servers are getting pretty long. This is especially noticeable in the 2v2 bracket, which is the most popular team size. When a player posted his complaints about the long queues today, Drysc chimed in to give indication that there will be no quick fix incoming. Instead, the devs are going to wait to get the big picture on the influx of PvPers instead of making rash decisions.I don't know what your experiences have been like lately, but the queues on my main server seem to be getting longer and longer rather than diminishing. The new season has only been out for about a week now, so perhaps it's too early to expect interest to be fading, but I hope there is some sort of solution soon. I've contemplated moving up to the 3v3 bracket, but I've heard via word of mouth that those queues are getting pretty lengthy as well. Perhaps it's time to give 5v5 a chance once again, if I can corral some of my guildmates to chose a specific time to do our matches and stick with it.What has your experience with the arena queues been like since the new season began?
WoW tournament resurrected at Dreamhack, $75,000 in prizes
Electronic Sports League have announced a "new" World of Warcraft 3v3 tournament to be held at this year's Dreamhack Computer festival in Sweden, between the 29th and 30th. The tournament will be 8 top-ranked teams, invite only.Prize money is as follows:First place: $45,000Second Place: $22,500Third Place: $7,500This seems to be the replacement for the now-deceased WSVG a few months ago, but ESL have picked up the reins, along with the usual sponsors -- Dell, Intel, Blizzard. A new spectator system has also been unveiled, DreamArena, which should mean there'll be decent coverage of the competition for those who want to watch it. Here's hoping this one goes ahead![Via Curse.com]
2v2 almost was 4v4
Nestled in a hokey thread (as important as the overpowered McRib is, it's not something I'd really expect a blue to be commenting on), Kalgan has dropped some insight about how Blizzard is viewing the very strange 2v2 Arena lineup. 2v2 is the weirdest balance of all, because not only is WoW not a dueling game, it's not a 2v2 game either. It's very possible for there to be two classes within four players that don't have balances against each other.And Kalgan says that Blizzard realizes this, and as a result, they are still not happy with the way 2v2 is balanced out-- Kalgan says that there are a lot of classes "left out of having a reasonable chance" to compete in the format, because of the "endurance" nature of the game. In fact, Blizzard almost went with a 4v4 Arena instead (in addition to the 3v3 and 5v5 teams now in the game), and abandoned the 2v2 idea entirely. The reason 2v2 stayed is that Kalgan agrees that players should be able to grab a friend and play. So Blizzard apparently took on the bigger challenge of balancing 2v2 just to keep players who didn't have lots of great PvPing friends in the Arena game.Was it worth it? I've played both 2v2 and 5v5 formats, and I'd have to say that 2v2 is an interesting format, but the players angry about balance are right-- there are just some fights that can't be won in 2v2. I don't know if that's reason enough to have decided against it and gone with 4v4 instead (and I also don't think that there are lots of players that have friends enough to play 2v2 and not one of the bigger brackets), but Blizzard does have a long road ahead of them if they want to make 2v2 seriously balanced. Depending on how many people they've got playing there (my hunch is that 5v5 is much more popular, but that's just a hunch, I haven't seen the numbers), that may not be a road worth traveling.
WoW Insider interviews WSVG President Matthew Ringel
This Sunday afternoon, July 29th, the WSVG is coming to network television. Starting at noon, CBS is showing an hourlong special of WSVG events, including their recent tournament in Louisville, as well as other events in this, their second season, leading up to the December finals in Sweden.WoW Insider got to chat with WSVG President and Commissioner Matthew Ringel about how he's trying to turn videogames into a spectator sport, what the real standard for Arena combat is, and how you can explain a fight between six people with different specs and different classes to an audience who's never seen this game before. No easy task, to be sure. The entire exclusive interview starts right after the jump.
Curse previews WSVG on CBS
Curse has posted a reminder that the WSVG is bringing WoW Arena combat to CBS one week from Sunday, July 29th, at noon. They've even got a video up from CBS promoting not only the WoW tournament, but also Fight Night 3 and even Guitar Hero. If you never thought a Guitar Hero tournament would ever appear on network television, you can join the club-- the line starts right next to me.Right now, as Curse says, Team Pandemic is the team to watch in Arena matchups, but word is that Insurrection and a couple of other teams will make a showing as well. Supposedly, only 3v3 will be shown, which is a little strange because Blizzard seems to be promoting 5v5 as the standard for Arena play (you actually gain more points in game for winning at 5v5), but maybe CBS figured having ten players in one match would be a little too confusing. Of course the big question will be how it's presented-- will CBS be able to make a so far practically unwatchable event interesting enough to pull in a larger audience? Find out on July 29th.
This week in the Arena
Players participating in Arena PvP get more than cool prizes -- the top 0.5% of participating teams are also going to be immortalized in Blizzard's Hall of Fame. And the top teams from season one have just shown up.Also, the second qualifying round for the 2v2 Championship Gaming Series has begun. The live CGS tournament will be taking place at BlizzCon in August -- and everyone here at WoW Insider wishes the competing teams the best of luck.And finally in Arena news for the week, we've got stats on the top 20 US Arena teams compiled by Caster. The data, as always, is interesting (if a bit disheartening for some classes). Here's the basic class breakdown, but for more details on precise numbers of each class and talent spec breakdowns, check the original post.5v5 Arenas Paladin: 18% Warrior: 18% Priest: 14% Shaman: 12% Mage: 12% Warlock: 11% Rogue: 6% Hunter: 5% Druid: 4% 3v3 Arenas Warrior: 16% Priest: 15% Paladin: 15% Warlock: 14% Mage: 13% Rogue: 12% Shaman: 8% Druid: 6% Hunter: 2% 2v2 Arenas Warlock: 21% Priest: 15% Paladin: 15% Warrior: 14% Rogue: 13% Druid: 9% Mage: 5% Shaman: 5% Hunter: 2%
Arena stats from the second season start
Caster has posted his "first successful pull" of an exhaustive list of arena PvP stats about class and spec over on the forums. There are tons of stats to play around with here-- for each bracket of 5v5, 3v3, and 2v2, he's got the average, minimum, and maximum of specs for each class, wins and losses, the low, average, and high of hit points, and even a breakdown of who's grouping with who.Not surprisingly (though I was surprised back when Arenas first started up), Warriors and Paladins are topping the charts in terms of numbers, so it seems a good way to win 5v5 Arenas is simply to stay alive. Apparently 2v2 teams are the most volatile (since people switch around with them all the time), but the numbers there are the most interesting-- Warlocks and Priests top the charts there (thanks a lot, Fear), and it turns out Druids might have actually have a place in Arena PvP-- as long as it's right alongside a Lock.And the big loser is apparently Hunters-- their numbers are down to single digits in 2v2 and 3v3 (as in 1 and 2 total), which means players are not taking their Hunters into the arenas. Is that because Hunters aren't useful or viable enough in the smaller teams? I'll leave that one up to you.[ via WoW LJ ]
WSVG coming to Dallas this week
The World Series of Video Games is making their stop in Dallas, Texas starting tomorrow, July 5th and ending on Sunday, July 8th. And as always, World of Warcraft 3v3 arena tournaments are on the agenda! I'm afraid registration for the event is closed (though if you show up you can register for a chance at a competition spot opening up), but if you're in the area, you can certainly attend and watch some skilled arena players at work (for the $10 cost of admission). The real question is whether the pros at Team Pandemic will win again: so far, they've won both of the WSVG's WoW arena tournaments. And remember -- one lucky arena team will be winning an all-expenses paid trip to BlizzCon 2007!
WSVG giving away Blizzcon tickets to lucky 3v3 team
Want to hit up Blizzcon but don't want to shell out for the ticket? Our contact at the World Series of Videogames sends along a note that they're sending one lucky guild to Blizzard big event in Anaheim, California. The catch? They'll be picking one lucky 3v3 team at random from all of the teams that attend their next event in Dallas, Texas on July 5-8.Yeah, it's kind of a big hoop to jump through (especially when you can just pay $100 now to get your own ticket anyway). But then again, tickets are going fast (I got mine the other day), and if you're planning on going to the event in Dallas anyway, it's a nice bonus. Interesting that they're giving it away to a lucky 3v3 guild-- maybe they need more of them to fill out the brackets? If you're interested, register an account on the WSVG site, sign up for the event when you're logged in, and then you've actually got to show up to the event to be eligible.We'll keep you updated on more giveaways as they come along-- WoWWiki has already given away a couple of tickets to their own contributors, and we're sure there will be a few more in different places in the days to come.
2.1 and Beyond: New arena: Ruins of Lordaeron
"Games for Windows" magazine has released their third article about the things to come post patch 2.1. Above the Undercity will be a new PVP arena, called "the Ruins of Lordaeron." This will be a new 2, 3, and 5-man arena available sometime after the next content patch. Blizzard has taken what they learned from the previous two arenas and tried some new things in the new map. Attempting to cut down on the geometry features and line-of-sight breaking objects was a goal in this arena. While there are still a few hiding spots, they tend to be in the middle of the map. Another option that Blizzard is thinking about implementing is the ability to choose which arena map you play on. The downside, however, is that by doing so you are limiting the number of people in the queues by splitting them up into smaller specific queues. While I've never been a big PVP buff, I'm sure that those of our readers that are will be excited to have another new arena map to play! You can read the article here.
