arena-maps
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Vote for your favorite fan-made Arena
Arena Junkies has an appropriately-themed contest going on over at their site where they asked their community of high-rated Arena players to design their own Arena. The community was quick to whip out everything from pencils to 3D programs and came up with a pretty good selection of possible Arena maps. How good were the maps? Well, let's just say I'd take any of the submissions over the awful Ring of Valor Arena. Alright, so maybe that's not a good gauge... but it's worth going over the entries to see what creative ideas the Arena-enthusiastic community have come up with.The top three winners will receive tickets to BlizzCon while registered Arena Junkies users who vote for the winning maps have a chance to win a Blizzard Authenticator. Pretty cool prizes for a pretty cool contest, so head over to their site and register if you haven't already. New Arena maps would be a welcome addition to the game and conceivably not too much work considering no new mechanics need to be in place unlike the Battlegrounds, which have different objectives. In fact, new Battlegrounds maps using the same mechanics would be an interesting addition to break the tedium.
The Art of War(craft): PvP in BlizzCon 2008
I said it before and I'll say it again. I'm not a huge fan of the new gimmicky mechanics of the new Dalaran and Orgrimmar Arenas. Blizzard highlighted these features in the PvP panel earlier today. There really isn't anything new, as most of these features were touted at the Worldwide Invitational, except that this time there are now textures for the maps. I'll concur that the new dynamic elements add a bit of fun and another layer of strategy to Arena matches. That said, it also brings in an unnecessary factor of RNG. If Arenas are to be truly a barometer of professional and competitive play, it should have as little gimmick elements as possible. In Arena terms, it should be something uncomplicated like a boxing ring or martial arts mat. The new maps are more like American Gladiators or Takeshi's Castle. On the other hand, that kind of format has higher entertainment value. The good news is that the best players will know the timing of the moving pillars, flames, and water spouts and use it to their advantage. The bad news is that those elements will save a lot of lesser skilled players' lives and sometimes break heals or worse, land accidental killing blows. Being at 1% health and dying to a flame spout while trying to get away from an opponent would suck big time, especially in pro competition.
Breakfast Topic: The pre-Wrath patch
Wow. That was some big news there, wasn't it? As excited as we all were for Wrath of the Lich King, I don't think any of us expected the announcement that a pre-Wrath content patch would be unleashed upon the public in -- to quote Eyonix -- "the coming weeks". While this is Blizzard we're talking about, a few weeks isn't quite as nebulous as their traditional "soon". This can also mean that the content patch could be strategically, shrewdly timed to coincide with the launch of another game that also starts with 'W'.If that's the case, then we can expect to see the pre-Wrath patch in about four weeks! That's nerve-wrackingly close. Anyway, Eyonix ran through a list of stuff that will come with the patch and it's exciting to see that Inscription will be in it. This means that players won't be required to purchase Wrath of the Lich King in order to take it up, unlike Jewelcrafting. There are a bunch of other stuff coming in the patch -- what's the thing that excites you most? %Poll-18619%
