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World of Warcraft gears up for its Arena tournament with a $250,000 prize pool
Still hoping to prove you're the best World of Warcraft PvP player around? You're in luck; qualifying rounds have just begun for the 2014 North American Arena Tournament, which will be held at BlizzCon this year. Qualifiers are open to 3v3 teams who are ranked at or above 2500 on their home realm. The best of the best will face off against seven other teams for a chance at a $250,000 prize pool, so there's certainly motivation to smash some faces. If that's not your thing, you've still got something to look forward to. A special live developer Q&A session will take place on Friday at 1:00 p.m. EDT with lead game designer Cory Stockton and lead narrative designer Dave Kosak, answering player questions on everything from world design to Garrisons. There's no prize involved there aside from information, but if that's what you're tuning in to get, you'll probably be happy with it.
Five days to qualify for the North American Arena Tournament
The deadline is fast approaching for those PvP enthusiasts who wish to take part in the North American Arena Tournament. This competition will determine who goes on to represent North America in the WoW Arena World Championship at BlizzCon 2014. To qualify, teams must have an individual 3v3 Arena rating of at least 2,500 on the live realms by 10:00 am PDT on Monday, August 25th. The tournament itself will use a double-elimination format to determine the top three teams from North America, who will then move on to the competition at BlizzCon. The total purse for this year's event is an impressive US$250,000, with a winners' share of US$120,000. Not bad at all! Good luck to all those who are working to qualify!
The 2014 North American WoW arena tournament
BlizzCon 2014 is on the horizon, getting steadily closer every day, and thus so is the 2014 World of Warcraft Arena Invitational World Championship. If you're a player on the North American servers--which include North America, Oceania, parts of Southeast Asia, and South America--your chance to qualify for the tournament is coming up in the next few weeks. In order to be eligible for the North American Arena Tournament your 3v3 team must have a minimum rating of 2500 by August 25, 2014. The tournament will be a double-elimination with teams competing in a best of five match format. At the end of the tournament, the top three teams from North America will be invited to BlizzCon to compete against five additional teams from around the world for the championship title. Think you have what it takes to compete at BlizzCon for a piece of the $250,000 purse? Time to get your teams ready and push for that 2500 rating by August 25th. Good luck to all the competitors!
Be nice to Blizzard employees or they'll spawn Ragnaros in your arena
NSFW Warning: There's some cursing. On the EU Tournament Realm a few Blizzard Community Managers got together and went up against Wargame in an arena match. The result? Vashj and Ragnaros made their presence known, amongst others. It's a good video to watch and fun to see these NPCs totally out of context. It reminds me of the good ol' days at the end of betas when entire cities would be destroyed by spawning Azeroth's worst nightmares. Lord Kazzak stomping around Stormwind and Orgrimmar killing everything he sees? Yes please. The moral of the story is that you should always be nice to the blues. You'll never know when they'll come in and purge you with fire.
MLG DC starts tonight for WoW
If you're not keeping up with the PvP tournament scene, this is a friendly reminder that MLG DC starts tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST. You can watch the MLG stream at MLGPro.com when it starts. I'll be in attendance at the event personally, so if you have any questions you want answered by the teams and players, leave a comment and I'll do my best. The WoW tournament will only run for a couple hours tonight, then continue all day Sunday. Notable teams competing are Nerdstomper Blue, the winners of MLG Raleigh, and their sister team Nerdstomper Black. Also in attendance are Arenapwnage, Evil Geniuses, Complexity Red and Black, Skill Capped, and Penguin Smash. Unfortunately, as World of Ming reports, the tournament will not be played with the new 4.0.1 patch. Apparently, there was a conflict with MLG's viewing client and the new patch.
Nerdstomper Blue win MLG Raleigh
The latest WoW champions in the 2010 MLG Pro Circuit are the members of Nerdstomper Blue, who claimed their victory Sunday evening in Raleigh. It was a close win for Nerdstomper Blue, after its opponents, Evil Geniuses, won the first set of the finals three to one. Evil Geniuses entered the finals from the lower bracket, though, and needed two winning sets to claim the championship. Things seemed doubtful for Nerdstomper Blue after it lost the first two games of the second set, but it made an impressive comeback, winning three games in a row and taking the championship. In addition to the $9,000 prize for first place, Nerdstomper Blue will now be seeded favorably at the MLG Finals in Dallas later this year. If you missed the livestream, you can still watch the rebroadcast from Sunday's games at MLG's site. For those of you who are curious, Nerdstomper Blue used a shadowplay comp (priest-warlock-shaman) for their first set against Evil Geniuses, then switched to RLS (rogue-warlock-shaman) for the second. Evil Geniuses used RLS for both sets. Congratulations to Realz, Glickz and Kollektiv of Nerdstomper Blue!
The Daily Quest: This is madness
Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites. Another week, another weekend, another round of arenas played on the tournament realms. I finished the 50 games needed for the pet pictured above, did you? Oddly, while I normally stay away from arena PvP due to the fact that I am tremendously ... bad at it, I found the tournament games fun. Sure, I lost slightly more games than I won, but I had a good time doing it, and shouldn't that be the point? Still, I think I'll stick to battlegrounds and leave the arenas to the experts -- and today's Daily Quest has several bloggers chiming in about battlegrounds and PVP: Cynwise's Battlefield Manual shares some thoughts on healers and battleground roles. Roxton at Great Balls of Fire has an analysis of Arathi Basin and how to win it. Gnomeaggedon.net has several helpful tips for Strand of the Ancients. Spicytuna gives us a frost mage guide to spell penetration and resilience. The Wanted Priest asks the question, is it possible to end-game raid and play competitive PvP simultaneously?
Breakfast Topic: What's new with you?
I've been having a lot of fun with my It Came From the Blog alt lately,(check the polls and updates to follow along with the latest adventures from the guild!) now that I've hit level 20 and I can ride around in comfort. With level 20 came a few milestones; getting a mount, the fact that this is the first time I've gotten a warrior beyond level oh ... 15 or so, and suddenly I had a level 20 warrior quest! I realized as I accepted it that this was something entirely new. I'd never done this quest before. For someone that has Loremaster on multiple characters, this is a rare and exciting thing -- I had no idea what it was for, or what I would be doing, or what I would get at the end! So I decided to go through the chain and deliberately keep myself in the dark. No Wowhead, no hints, no spoilers, just playing it through how it was intended to be played. I'm in the middle of the chain now and the quests are red, so I'll complete them as I go along, but I'm looking forward to finishing it! The warrior class is entertaining -- I find I'm enjoying the aspect of being the one that wants to be hit, rather than the one that's trying to avoid it. Speaking of having my head beat in, the other "new" thing I found myself doing was registering for the 2010 Arena Tournament last night. I don't arena. I barely PvP. I'm terrible at PvP, so I've simply never done it, because I figure it is better not to clutter up the arena and frustrate other players with my outright awfulness. However, a friend has convinced me to give it a try, and against my better judgment I am going for it -- after all, the worst that can happen is I will get beaten repeatedly. Arena scores don't go into the negatives, right guys? ... right? So what's new with you? What's something in game that you've never, ever done before? It's rare that I find these things and seek them out, but as Cataclysm approaches I find myself wanting to try the things I've never done before just in case they disappear or change. And an additional challenge to those of you looking for one -- that new thing that you thought of? Go out and do it! You may end up like me, somewhat bewildered by the experience but thoroughly enjoying it.
World of Warcraft Arena Tournament 2010 registration open
It's official: registration for the 2010 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is now open! Like last year's arena tournament, players will participate on regional tournament realms -- separate from live realms -- for a spot to play at the live events. The arena tournament will use the 3v3 arena format for teams, and the regular arena season on live servers will not be interrupted by this event. The cost of registration is one payment of $20 per eligible World of Warcraft account. For more information on eligibility and restrictions, check out the Arena Tournament rules page. This year's cash prizes, including prizes awarded at both the regional finals and world championship, amount to over $200,000. But even if you don't win the big prizes, there's still something out there for participants -- players who have participated in at least 50 rated tournament games on one character with the same team will be eligible for Murkimus, the gladiator murloc pet that players may remember from last year's tournament. Please note that as of patch 3.3.3, Murkimus is an account-wide pet that will apply to all WoW characters on your Battle.net account. Players who have a character in one of the top 1,000 teams and have participated in at least 100 rated tournament games during the last four weeks will also receive the Vanquisher title for their live characters level 71 and over. While the news may be good for players that missed out on last year's games, some have expressed disappointment that there was no new pet and title for this year. Zarhym addressed this in a post on the Arena Tournament forums: Zarhym While it would be cool to provide a new pet, we're not necessarily trying to encourage as many people as possible to pay $20 and sign up for this tournament ultimately because they want a new pet. It's a nice perk to encourage people, but we don't want the Arena Tournament to be a more complicated version of the Pet Store. We want players who are serious about competing to sign up for the tournament, not just a reason to take in more money through offering a new vanity pet with each new tournament. source So for those of you looking for a new pet -- sorry, looks like that's not in the cards this year. But for players who missed out on the pet last year and players who would like a chance at the cash that Blizzard is paying out, you can sign up for the fun and games on Blizzard's website.
BlizzCon 2009: TSG wins WoW Arena Tournament World Championship
This year's World of Warcraft Arena Tournament Finals had an extremely good attendance despite some hiccups on the tournament stage, leaving the hosts cracking space-filling jokes until the teams were finally ready. Actually, this happened between every match, which was one of the few dampers in an otherwise decent tournament. The strong attendance at the Finals might also have something to do with the presence of a US/Canadian team, TSG, consisting of David Kovacs, Bennett Lynch, and Fabian Siffredi, otherwise known as Valrath, Veex, and Zilea, who ran a strong Death Knight, Warrior, Holy Paladin cleave comp all the way to a $75,000 purse. The last team to stand in their way was Shipit from Korea, consisting of Soonjae "Coilmaster" Cha, Jaemin "Tsukiyomi" Lee, and Janghwan "Kamiu" Bae with a Warrior, Hunter, Holy Paladin comp that never really posed a challenge for the new World Champions.All throughout the Finals, TSG played extremely aggressively, bringing Shipit's Hunter, Tsukiyomi, to dangerously low health within the opening moments of every match. The Koreans faced an uphill battle coming from the consolation bracket, needing to defeat TSG twice in a best of five, but it was clear that the North American team's aggressive style and double melee comp were too much to handle.The Korean contingent walked away with a respectable $30,000 and third place team x6tence from Europe took home $15,000. The awards were handed out by Blizzard's Tom Chilton, who described this year's Arena Tournament as "the best ever". We also saw the defeat of RMP -- as even Mage hero Orangemarmalade couldn't advance within the consolation bracket. It reaffirmed the power of Holy Paladin heals and Death Knights, however, in an environment that saw zero Shamans. It'll be exciting to see what 2010 holds as Cataclysm is likely to change the entire face of World of Warcraft PvP.BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.
Blizzard eSports channel streams Arena invitational
The gates are about to open and mayhem is about to ensue as the second week of the ESL TV Invitational Arena Tournament kicks off today. This special invitational event will feature four top teams from all over Europe -- x6tence from Spain, Rest in Many Pieces from Germany, aAa Nawak from France, and newcomers Sickology from... some mysterious place in Europe, probably. The whole event will be streamed live on the Blizzard eSports channel at 22:00 CEST (4pm EST).The Spanish team x6tence won the Intel Extreme Master Global Challenge, while aAa Nawak is one of Europe's top RMP teams, placing 3rd at the IEM Global Finals. Also playing RMP is Rest in many Pieces (formerly known as mousesports), and completing the line-up is Sickology, composed of relative newcomers running a WLD (Warrior, Warlock, Druid) comp. The show is estimated to run for two hours, and should be a real treat for Arena enthusiasts. Active World of Warcraft subscribers can find the Blizzard eSports Channel through Account Management or simply head over to the ESL's Blizzard TV channel. It seems like a good day for sports fans, too, with this show squeezed between the Champion's League Finals match between Barcelona and Manchester United and Game 5 of the NBA Western Conference Finals between the LA Lakers and the Denver Nuggets. For World of Warcraft PvP afficionados who also happen to love football and basketball (could be just me, I dunno), it looks like we'll have to look for a very comfortable chair.
Murkimus mailed out today
Those who participated in this year's official arena tournament have been not-so-patiently awaiting their reward for playing 200 arena matches in the preliminary rounds on the tournament realm. It's been quite awhile since players expected to get their hands on Murkimus, but Blizzard representatives have been giving a mid-May estimate that proved true today.Players who played their 200 matches should be logging into Murkimus in their mailbox today. You can stop panicking that Blizzard cheated you out of a pet. You can stop worrying that you missed some important detail. Enjoy your murloc, folks.
DreamHack to feature its own WoW realm
DreamHack, the world's biggest LAN party (according to Guinness), takes place in Sweden twice a year. They've just made an announcement of interest to us WoW players: at this year's summer event (June 13-16, assuming "Juni" means what I think it means), they'll have their own WoW realm. This is something that not many events have been able to do in the past. They'll be hosting an Arena tournament at the event, with prizes to be announced in the future. We can expect the realm to feature premades and gear and enchant vendors, like previous tournament realms. They also mention "live showing of raids;" I'm not sure we've seen realms with premade PvE play before, so that should be interesting. More information on registration is going to be released "within the next few days;" we'll keep you posted. Is anyone thinking of competing at DreamHack? Has anyone gone before? [thanks, Raful]
US Arena qualifier results in
Blizzard has announced the final results of the qualifier rounds on the US Arena Tournament realms, and there they are -- you can see that Death Knights are probably the most dominant class in the lineup. Their teamup with a Paladin and a ranged DPS (specifically a Warlock, though there is a Hunter in there) is pretty devastating so far. Shaman have made a nice comeback as well, serving both as utility and healing on a few teams. And of course the old Arena standby of PMR finishes out the top ten.Blizzard will invite the winners from the qualifying round into regional finals -- they will invite the top eight teams, but apparently, according to a few commenters in the forum thread, both "well then" and "GET TANKED" are somehow the same players on the same accounts (but different characters, even though they're same classes), and the same is supposedly true for The Phuox Den and Almost Eighty on Live. So we're not sure who they're inviting -- either these two teams will get to play twice in the tournament rounds, or Blizzard will pull in some more teams to fill in the spots.Or maybe Blizzard will have to come up with something else: we're not entirely sure about which players are on those teams, but certainly Blizzard can check that very easily. At any rate, congrats to all of the winners so far, and we'll keep an eye out for the next round of Arena battles.
EU Arena Tournament standings posted in anticipation of phase 4
Vaneras has posted the latest EU Arena tournament rankings over on the forums (after the latest phase ended), and it looks like PMR has found their way back on top across the pond: Priest/Mage/Rogue teams have taken over the top three spots. The Death Knight/Paladin/DPS teams, formerly dominating, have fallen down to just two spots out of ten, and two Shamans have made an appearance, one partnered with a Druid and a Mage, and the other with a Lock and Hunter. Very interesting.We should see the US standings posted soon. You can see the rest of the EU teams in the big listing over on the Armory if you want. Phase 4 of the tournament, Vaneras says, will be an invitational, and will start next week on April 14th. Congrats to all of the winners so far, and good luck in the rest of the tourney!
Arena Tournament Phase 3 ends tonight
We hope you got those 200 games, because the Arena Tournament is ending this phase of the tournament by 9pm PDT tonight. This means that only the Top 1,000 teams will qualify for the next round, and the rest of the entrants can take the season off. The Top 1,000 teams will move on to Phase 4, or the invitational ladder, for a shot at winning up to $75,000 in a prize pool worth over $200,000. In order to qualify, players must have played a minimum of 200 games with the same character on the same team.Players on the Top 1,000 teams will receive the title of "Vanquisher" for all their characters Level 71 or higher. As an awesome consolation prize, any player who managed to get 200 games regardless of how well (or how badly) they performed will receive Murkimus the Gladiator on one of their characters. When Phase 3 ends tonight, the Tournament Realms will be shut down for one week, after which Phase 4 will begin anew on April 14. Good luck! We know it might be a little late for that, so... uh, congrats?
Blizzard posts another Arena Tournament update
Aratil posted another weekly update on the top teams on the US Tournament Realms, with last week's number one BARKSDALE CREW remaining stagnant at 2501 rating, allowing last week's third placers well then to move past them into first place. Curiously, well-known pro gamer Serennia's We Met on eHarmony, another Death Knight/ Paladin/ Warlock comp, which was fifth last week tanked to 43rd place. Interestingly, Serennia openly dissed NO LIGHTNING GEN BRAH in his blog as "not-so-surprisingly horrible," while taking a potshot at less popular Battlegroups. The players of NO LIGHTNING GEN BRAH currently hold the top spot of the 3v3 bracket on the Rampage Battlegroup and maintained status quo in the rankings on the Tournament Realms.Of course, it's important to note that none of these rankings really matter at this point. As Serennia noted in the same blog entry, players only need their teams to be in the top 1000 to qualify for the invitational phase of the tournament. Standings right now are merely observational benchmarks and Aratil's regular updates are nothing more than that -- updates. Although the US Tournament Realms indicate a trend towards the Death Knight/ Paladin/ Warlock team comp, the European side has a fair share of Rogue/ Mage/ Priest teams. That said, the top team in Europe as of this writing is also a DK/Pally/Lock comp that wasn't in the Top 10 last week. In Korea, where teams are still working their way to crack 2000, the most popular comps are the expected RMP with the current top team being a Death Knight/ Paladin/ Hunter. Yep, it's almost the same dominant setup with a Survival Hunter instead of a Warlock.
Arena Tournament moves to third phase
Registration for the 2009 Arena Tournament closed last Tuesday and the competition has now moved on to its third phase. Teams have been locked down, meaning existing teams may no longer add players to their roster. Players may continue to create new teams but will be unable to invite additional members beyond those that sign the original charter. Games played prior to the lockdown will still count towards the final tally that determines which teams advance to the next round.This is the home stretch for players who wish to qualify for the next stage in the Arena Tournament, where the top 1000 teams will move on. Players looking to obtain Murkimus the Gladiator need to play 200 games between March 10 to April 6, while players aiming for the Vanquisher title need to get within the top 1,000 teams within the same time period. Currently, the 1,000th team on US Tournament Realms is hovering around 1,600 rating so finishing somewhere between 1,700-1,800 would probably be a safe bet for the title. Good luck to everyone!
Victory from the jaws of defeat
Hate Arenas all you want, but I love it for the fact that you will sometimes see the grandest display of skill and mastery of the game in PvP and when those moments happen... it's magic. How appropriate then, that the most magical moment in quite possibly all professional Arena Tournament history was performed by none other than a Mage. It's a phenomenal comeback tale that ranks right up there with the greatest comebacks in sports -- and not just eSports.Team H O N was down 1-2 against SK-Gaming Asia, better known as the Council of Mages, winners of the Worldwide Invitational in Paris. Both teams from Korea sported the same RMP comps, with some spec changes in between matches to keep everyone guessing. In the fourth match, played in the Ruins of Lordaeron, SK-Gaming showed superb control despite H O N going offensive in the first few minutes... so superb, in fact, that at one point the shoutcasters were already congratulating SK-Gaming. If you've kept abreast of the tiny bits of the ESL Global Finals here at WoW Insider, you'd already know that H O N won the tournament so it should be no spoiler that they escaped from being down 1-2 to tie and eventually win it all.That's not the magical moment, though. You have to see it for yourself. Don't worry, the video might be long (that's just the first part of the match) but the most jawdropping moment happens right before the four minute mark. The movie may well be Moviewatch material if only because it's so unbelievable you're tempted to think it's all machinima. But the coolest thing about it is that it's not, and OrangeMarmalade will be celebrated as one of the greatest PvP Mages of all time.
Arena Tournament moves to second phase
It's time to get Murkimus the Gladiator! The Arena Tournament has officially moved on to the second phase of the tournament, where all matches played will count towards the season rankings. The bloodshed began last February, kicking off a two-week testing phase where players could create fully geared Level 80 characters, test out comps and strategies, and generally get warmed up for the real deal. Players interested in participating simply have to pony up $20 or €15 for a shot at winning prizes totalling $200,000. All ranked matches now count towards the qualifiers, and the players belonging to the Top 1000 teams will receive the title of 'Vanquisher' on all their characters Level 71 and above on the live realms. Players who don't crack the upper echelons of Arena rankings can still get the lovable armored murloc pet by playing 200 matches. The matches must be played on the same character and with the same team charter.Blizzard has also opened up Arena Tournament forums for US realms and EU realms, which players can use to recruit for teams, discuss strategies or ask for advice, and generally keep up-to-date on the latest goings-on in the Tournament Realms. Of course, if you want a good shot at winning, it might help to take some pointers from Korea's H O N, who played RMP to a completely different level, taking home $30,000 at the recently concluded ESL Arena Tournament.
